Megan Stielstra's Blog

Christopher, during Pirates of the Carribbean:

“Is he dead? Why are they fighting him if he’s already dead and can’t be killed anyway? Oh—now he’s alive ‘cause they turned upside down and—wait—dead again. Right? And are those two in love or are they not in love? They were in love, right? And why crabs? And why are there two little Johnny Depps? And a great big lady? I just can’t deal with everybody shrinking and growing all the damned time—and whose side is he on again? First one and then the other? And does the great big lady love the squid face or hate the squid face? I hate the squid face. And also the lady. All of them, actually. Except Chow Yung Fat. Where are you, Chow Yung Fat?”

Me, during 28 Weeks Later:

“Don’t look out there! Don’t open the door! Don’t go up the stairs! Don’t leave your wife! Don’t get in the motor boat! Don’t sneak across the bridge into the restricted zone! Don’t go up the stairs! Don’t hug your mother! Don’t go in there! Don’t kiss her! Don’t get separated! Don’t lock hundreds of civilians into a stadium! Don’t go into the airshaft! Don’t shoot at all those people! Don’t go to the deserted carnivale! Don’t get in the car! Don’t get out of the car! Don’t drive into the subway! Don’t go down into the subway! Don’t point the gun at the children! Don’t let the bloody kid into the helicopter! Don’t go to France!”

Posted by Megan at 8:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ME: How much is this picture frame?
LADY: Two dollars.
ME: Great. Let me ask my husband if—
LADY: Isn’t THAT a sad state of affairs!
ME: ?????
LADY: You have to ASK your husband for two dollars?
(Lady shakes her head disdainfully and walks away)
(I follow)
ME: Actually, what I was saying was, LET ME ASK MY HUSBAND IF HE LIKES IT. Because we try to get things we BOTH LIKE. Because we are EQUALS, that's what we are, and what you are is a BITCH. And since your purpose for throwing a garage sale is to JUDGE PEOPLE than you can just stick that picture frame UP YOUR ASS and ALSO this isn’t even a GOOD garage sale, it’s a SUCKY garage sale, you have SUCKY STUFF AND A SUCKY ATTITUDE AND I HOPE YOU GET SNOWED ON.
(Christopher comes over and looks at picture frame in my hands)
CHRISTOPHER: That's cool. How much is it?
ME: WE WOULDN'T BUY THIS PICTURE FRAME IF IT WERE THE LAST PICTURE FRAME IN THE UNIVERSE.
(pause)
CHRISTOPHER: Are we having a moment?
ME: YES WE ARE.
(pause)
CHRISTOPHER: That picture frame totally sucks.

Posted by Megan at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Megan at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Such as:

1. SWEAT
2. SPF
3. Bikes
4. Having to hold your dress down to your thighs when you walk downtown so the wind doesn't provide a free show
5. Flip flops, wedges and regular pedicures
6. Waiting an extra half-hour for outdoor seating ‘cause the air at night is so so beautiful and also because you can bring your dog
7. Afternoon matinees of very bad movies in the a/c when the heat gets too heavy
8. It USED to be window a/c units in the bedroom only so you lived in that single room the entire summer, but now it’s central a/c because I OWN IT.
9. Sand in your shoes and your underwear and your bed and a thin coat over your floor
10. Street Festivals/Flea Markets/Craft Fairs
11. Intonation/Pitchfork/Lollapalooza/Ravinia
12. Pride/Market Days
13. Hair rubberbands all over the house and in the car and in your purse and everywhere
14. Lip gloss and blotting papers
15. Weekend trips to Michigan
16. Blender drinks—so every trip to the grocery store includes a bag of ice that you grab from the freezer on the way out
17. The lake and the lakefront and the beach and the dogbeach
18. Porches

The other night, I hung out on the back porch. Our building has this ginormous black hammered steel back porch that’s all connected while still giving everyone their own space. It’s great. Anyhow, our downstairs neighbors, Katie and Steve, are the only ones with patio furniture so we’ve been down at their place, everybody bringing beer or whatever and getting to know each other and it’s been really wonderful. There are twelve units in our building and they’re all sold now, and while people have been moving in since the winter, for the most part we’ve never really hung out. But now, because of summer, we’re all flocking outside—the BEST PART OF SUMMER. Everyone out on the porch and relaxing—we’re making plans for huge building parties, and it’s nice to get on the same page with these people who will be a big part of my community for who knows how many years. We all own property together. We’ll watch each other’s backs—somebody gets locked out? Somebody’s fire alarm goes off? Someone’s dog runs into your unit? Someone needs help carrying something big?—DONE. We’re all really young and new at this, and it’s nice to find like-minded people, especially when I’ve heard so many horror stories about neighbors and condo associations and all that and—yes, I understand there’s a different between drinking with someone and sitting on a condo board with them, but this is a pretty good start. Maybe every corporation should start by having beers on the back porch together.

Anyhow, our unit has two porches: a balcony over Lawrence—

And the back porch, soon to be outfitted with table and chairs and Christopher’s fancy new grill—

—and we are in love with this place and I’m totally in the Pinch me, this can’t be real! stage. I know I wrote already about how great our realtor was/is, and I can’t recommend him enough if you’re thinking about buying or thinking about THINKING about someday maybe doing it. When Christopher and I sat down with Lee, it was more for the What do we need to do to be ready in the next, like, ten years. We had no idea we could do it NOW. That’s what I was thinking the other night, having a beer with my new neighbors: thank you thank you thank you Lee f’ing Diamond at Big Shoulders.

For my porch. PorchES. And also my home.

Posted by Megan at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All week I’ve been listening to the Regina Spektor tune Summer in the City, because D’UH it IS summer in the city, but mostly because Christopher’s been in Texas all week. This is the longest we’ve been apart since we got together more than three years ago and I miss him.

I feel like I should write “cue violins” now. Like I should spin the sappiness into sarcasm, but it just wouldn’t be truthful.

Here’s the truth: I miss him. I miss telling him about my day and walking the dog at night and his breathing and knowing he’s in the next room and sitting on our new back porch and having him read to me and making him a martini and a thousand other things, and, yes, I went out with my friends and had a great time and yes, I got a lot of work done and yes, we still spoke everyday on email or phone and yes, it’s only been a week and he’ll be home in no time and yes, so I’m so so so lucky that I have him and I should be able to go a week without him but whatever, I MISS HIM.

What’s funny is, that Spektor tune is really sad—really beautiful, but really sad—and I don’t remember the last time I listened to a sad song.

And that might be the happiest thing ever.

Posted by Megan at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the Harrison stop, there’s a dad and three little boys and what they do is wait wait wait for the train to come and then they yell their heads off—all four of them yelling over the thunder and screeching of the arriving and departing train—and all I want to do is join them. You get permission to do that sort of thing when kids are there. You can yell over the train or throw pennies into fountains or shut your eyes and spiiiiin with your arms stretched out or lay down next to a skyscraper—a highway to the sky—or ride those little mechanical horses outside the grocery store or tie balloons to your wrist or hang out in the treehouse or the sandbox or the plastic inflatable swimming pool or stick sticky-ribbons on your forehead or cry when you fell down—instead of getting up really quickly and inspecting the sidewalk for the thing that tripped you ‘cause of course it wasn’t your fault you fell down and maybe you can sue—or cry when you don’t get what you want or cry for no reason at all or, on the flip side, laugh for no reason, laugh really really loud until everybody’s laughing, like that laugh game where someone lays on the ground and a second someone lays perpendicular with their head on the first someone’s stomach and a third someone lays perpendicular with their head on the second someone’s stomach and so on ad infinitum and then everyone fake laughs until everyone laughs for real, that impossible laughing that you can’t control, laughing and laughing til eventually you’re crying and even though there aren’t any kids around to make acting silly okay—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.

Posted by Megan at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friend Jeff has an alter-ego. A super-hero identity, if you will: J. Adams Oaks. And what J. Adams Oaks did was kick some serious ass and win WBEZ’s Stories on Stage short story competition Now Hear This, which means his (serious ass-kicking) story, “Connected That Way,” beat out some 700 other submissions for first place AND was performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art AND yesterday it was broadcast on NPR AND you can listen to it here. I suggest pouring yourself some champagne and kicking back on the couch for a while—that’s what we did yesterday at a little listening party at Jeff’s place. His story goes REALLY well with champagne. And maybe, just before it begins, you should raise your glass and do a little toast: “Here’s to J. f’ing Adams, storming the castle!”

Posted by Megan at 7:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Megan at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The short version is this:

I have an excruciating sunburn, it’s the worst on the back of my thighs, I’m on a plane from Houston to Chicago and I can’t, like, SIT without wanting to scream and OF COURSE they confiscated my Solarcaine during security check because SUNBURNED GIRLS ARE REALLY TERRORISTS and also there’s a very big guy sitting behind me with his head thrown back snoring in a very loud, obnoxious way with much choking and gasping and SNORTING and what I’m going to do now is write about my sunburn in order to distract myself for the next two hours as opposed to the other alternative which is jumping out the emergency exit into the cool blue sky below.

Here is the long version:

When I was in elementary school we were talking about albinos in science class—I have no memory of how this discussion began. This was BEFORE the sheep that was conceived in a test tube (Dolly?) (usually, when blogging about something that I don’t know anything about [re: often], I google it right quick so it APPEARS as though I know what I’m talking about. Which, of course, I don’t. I mention this because under normal circumstances I’d google SHEEP CONCEIVED IN TEST TUBE and then ramble on about said sheep for a while and everybody reading this would be all “She’s full of knowledge!” [or “She’s full of shit!” depending on how well you know me] but the thing is, I CAN’T look up the sheep right now ‘cause I have no wireless up here in the sky) and also BEFORE some farmer grew a cucumber-rutabaga (cucerbaga?) (rutacumba???) or a pumpkin-zucchini (pumpkini?) (which is a good name for a martini. Jeff? New martini at Bistro? I’M A GENIUS) or whatever they did with combining vegetables so my POINT is this: genetic experiments weren’t widely publicized when I was a kid, especially those that a third-grader could wrap her brain around and therefore be used as a jumping-off point for discussion (like that teacher I had who used Seuss’ If I Ran the Zoo as a way into talking about the upcoming presidential election—“What would YOU do, boys and girls, if you ran the zoo?” “What would YOU do, boys and girls, if you ran the country?”—which was an awesome exercise, I think. I have all SORTS of ideas on how I’d run the zoo!) about genetics or genetic mutation or genes in general (gggggggggggg alliteration!!! it’s SEVEN A.M. AND I’VE BEEN UP SINCE FOUR!) so why we’d all be talking about albinos is BEYOND ME. HOWEVER. WE WERE. The teacher described the thin white hair and sensitive eyes and white white skin. “An albino’s skin is so translucent you can see their veins running everywhere!” she said. “Like blue rivers on a map!” and, in unison, thirty-two little heads turned and looked at me.

I doubt my teacher knew what she started in that moment. The names I was called. Aaron Stien tracing lines in blue magic marker on the backs of my arms. The movie Powder—but all that’s irrelevant now. What IS relevant is this: I BURN. LIKE A FUCKING RING OF FIRE.

It wasn’t so bad when I was a kid for one reason and one reason only: MY MOTHER. I wasn’t allowed out of the house without liberal coats of SPF 40+ which was reapplied every three hours and/or sooner if I’d been swimming. ALSO: I had to wear hats at all times ‘cause my hair is so thin (the backs of shampoo bottles say FINE which I think is super-funny: HA. HA!) that my scalp burns and I can’t run a brush through my hair without DYING (I’m exaggerating. I don’t DIE. I say OUCH OUCH OUCH and jump up and down, which just is NOT as effective). ALSO: long sleeves. ALSO: socks so my toes don’t fry. ALSO: SPF in all face moisturizer in the winter ‘cause I WILL get sunburned in the winter AND check-ups every six months where I go all hypochondriac and make my doctor inspect every mole. Of which there are a lot. Between the moles and the blue veins my back is a topographical map of … somewhere with many rivers (note: once again, my lack of google up here at _______ thousand feet).

But then! I was eighteen! I was a grown-up! I was out of my mother’s house and away from her watchful eye and free to live my life as I saw fit and what THAT meant, in the early Nineties, was I WOULD GET A TAN.

HA.

It is simply not possible, my dear friends, to document all the sunburns I’ve had over the past decade—we are short time, space and most assuredly patience. To whit: what follows is a brief list of my more MEMORABLE burns. In ascending order of STUPIDITY.

1. Albuquerque, New Mexico; 1994

It was my freshman year of college and I visited my friend Molly for spring break. We went shopping and I got these really nifty sunglasses—big plastic tortoise-shell bug-eyed jobs that made me feel super-cool (as opposed to the book-dork I really am) so I wore them everywhere (without any sunscreen) and at the end of the day, when we got back to her place and I took the sunglasses off, my face was bright electric red except for two ginormous white-white bug-eye squares around my eyes and FYI: when I burn, it does not go away, no, not for months, it’s like a permanent stain on my skin, like Lady Clarion that doesn’t wash out until like the seventy-fifth shampoo. So I spent not only the whole TRIP with white bug-eyes on my face, I spent the last three months of my FRESHMAN YEAR with white bug-eyes on my face, as well as half the summer after several horrible/ill-founded attempts to either A. shade IN the white with make-up and/or B. cover the burn on my face awkwardly with towels and lay out with my eyes closed so maybe the bug-eyes would burn, too; this resulted in several days of near-blinding red whenever I shut my eyes and a face that resembled a patch-work quilt.

2. Gayhead, Martha’s Vineyard; 1994

My boyfriend-at-the-time and I were hitchhiking across Martha’s Vineyard, a truly beautiful place with bright blue ocean and bright blue sky and easily accessible drugs. It wasn’t too long after the bug-eye incident so I was especially cautious: sun block on my face and arms, baseball hat, leggings under my dress. The boyfriend and I stayed up all night and walked for hours, feeling very adventurous, very On The Road, soooo very dangerous hitchhiking across that island of rich people golfing in polo shirts! anyhow, we arrived at the Gayhead cliffs, kicked off our shoes and laid down on giant red clay rocks for a nap. “Do you need more sunblock?” he asked before we passed out, and I (AM SO STUPID!) said no. “I’m wearing this hat!” I said. “And long sleeves and leggings!” except that the leggings were FOOTLESS, a fact I realized three hours later when I woke up and my bare feet were scorched. Tops and bottoms. Peeling up the leggings showed the blue-veined white skin stopping at a perfect line around my ankle and everything below was red-paint red: it hurt to high hell and I couldn’t walk for three days. As though we were settlers and I’d been wounded by a bear, the boyfriend took care of me. He went off to forage for food (Cheetos and root beer from a convenience store a mile back) and I read Tom Robbins novels and listened to the Indigo Girls on my walkman, my feet stained until November with permanent socks.

3. Cannes, France; 1995

I did my sophomore year in Italy and spent my last month overseas backpacking around Europe by myself. I stayed alone in hostels most of the time but occasionally met up with people in bars or cafes who I’d travel with for a while, crashing at their flat or in their tent or their Euro-rail car. I ended up in Cannes ‘caused I wanted to see the film festival, not realizing that you needed, you know … tickets (sometimes my stupidity is ASTOUNDING) or something to wear besides overalls, hiking boots and a giant Gortex backpack packed heavy with everything I owned. Literally, EVERYTHING over the past year jammed into one backpack: clothes, books, journals (this was before the laptop, folks, so all writing was done in journals. Technically, this was before I was a writer, as well, or at least before I actually admitted I was one. I just wrote in journals all the time, and read books, but didn’t learn to put the two together until the following year at Columbia. I really need to go back to those journals, now that I’m thinking about it. There’s some good stuff in there. Like the dumpster diving stuff. Can somebody remind me to write something about the dumpster diving in Italy? That’s some good shit, people) sleeping bag, knife (you could travel with knives back then), carton of American Spirits (I was a smoker that year [hi Dad!]. I landed in Italy having never smoked a cigarette and BAM—I smoked. Then I got off the plane a year later in Boston and never had another. Smoking might be my only true regret. I mean, there’s lots of things that were just dumb or whatever, but I can chalk them up to, “I learned something from that,” or, “That mistake helped me realize blah blah,” but the smoking? What a waste). Where was I? Oh yes—unshowered nineteen-year-old Americans without tickets are generally not allowed in the Cannes Film Festival so what did I do? I went to the beach! and built a sand castle (?????) (I would DEARLY love to recall my logic for that one) and there were these two French boys, a really cute one who spoke barely any English and a not-so-cute one who spoke slightly more than that. “He buy beer!” said the not-so-cute one, pointing at the cute one, who smiled very cutely and proclaimed, “RUN FORREST!” After an essentially indecipherable conversation with the not-so-cute one translating what I said to the cute one and what the cute one said to me (if you haven’t seen the movie Bottle Rocket you should rent it immediately. It’s Owen and Luke Wilson before they were OWEN and LUKE WILSON and there are these really killer scenes between Luke and the girl from Like Water For Chocolate where she’s a maid and this busboy has to translate) so ANYHOW I came to understand that the cute one thought either A. I looked like Jenny from Forrest Gump or B. I WAS Jenny from Forrest Gump and could he please buy me a beer? and what YOU should come to understand is A. I’m saying REALLY CUTE but what I mean is TOTAL FOX and B. I hadn’t had sex in like four months (Dad? You should just skip this post entirely) so of COURSE he could buy me a beer! Or two or five! and by the time we were good and sloshed and ready to go back to his place, we’d already been in the sun for like four hours and my bathing suit was firmly tattooed on my back. It was this black strappy number and when Total Fox got me out of it he said a lot of French very loudly and quickly and then put cold washcloths on my back. Which was very sweet. He was very sweet.

What a nice memory.

What ISN’T a nice memory is going back to the hostel the next morning and having to GET INTO THAT BACKPACK.

4. Whitehall, Michigan; 2002 (?)

My friends Casey and Jeremy have a cabin on the beach on Lake Michigan. When I was fourteen and they were sixteen we’d sneak away to this cabin on the weekends—the three of us went to Blue Lake, an arts camp in Western Michigan were everyone wore light blue shirts and navy blue pants and played in the band and made out with each other behind the theater building. Band kids making out! For EIGHT WEEKS EVERY SUMMER! I never made out with Casey or Jer, though. They were my friends, and we’d make out with other people and then go to their cabin and make bonfires and their friend Dave would play Morrisey songs on his guitar and we’d sing along BECAUSE WE WERE DORKS. So we’ve been friends since then; in fact, when my high school boyfriend and I broke up two weeks before the prom, Casey and Jer drove all the way to Chelsea in matching tuxedos and took me. And did I mention that they’re twins? With red hair and freckles? And yes they auditioned for Doublemint commercials but no they didn’t get it and it’s a bit of a sore spot, actually; what I’m trying to say is nothing’ll make you feel better about being dumped than going to the prom with red-headed twins in identical tuxedos. And also Dave came and he made his own tuxedo. Out of newspaper—are those good friends or WHAT? So anyhow, a few years ago we decided to go to the cabin ‘cause we all needed a little R&R and whatnot, so we get there and lay on the beach and, like a total jackass, I didn’t put on any sunscreen at all so I end up fried, like head-to-toe crispy, it’s easily the worst burn I’ve ever had in my life. Now, if you’ve ever been severely sunburned you know it’s not just your skin—you also feel really hot and nauseous and sick and nothing could be worse.

Except: Red Lobster.

For some insane reason, Casey and Jer thought going to Red Lobster would make me feel better and for some equally insane reason, I went along with it. FYI: Whitehall Michigan is not a pantheon of culinary opportunity. There is a Denny’s, a Big Boy and a Red Lobster. Granted, we could’ve driven the thirty miles South to the Dominoes pizza in Muskegon but we were all worried that by then I’d sizzle into ash and blow away, not unlike those movies where vampires walk into the sun. Also FYI: I’d never been to Red Lobster before, nor will I EVER GO AGAIN because as I was sitting there boiling in my own skin, Casey cracked open his lobster—which like ten minutes before had been alive in the tank with fifty other panicky lobsters and now is lying dead and slimy on Casey’s plate and where this REALLY gets disturbing is that sometimes (say, one out of every hundred, we were later told by a very distressed waiter) when those lobsters are taken from those tanks to be killed and cracked open and eaten, THEY ARE IN THE PROCESS OF SHITTING. AS IN, THEIR INTESTINES ARE FULL OF SHIT. WET. GREEN. LOBSTERY. SHIT. And when Casey took the little lobster-cracking pliers or whatever they’re called and broke that thing open, shit poured out onto his plate and my already red-hot nausea just exploded everywhere.

I’ll end the imagery there.

5. Port Aransas, Texas; 2007

(this one might be anti-climactic after the whole lobster shit thing)

What happened was I was lying on the beach reading Miranda July’s new collection and I kept saying, “I’ll finish this next story and then I’ll go in. Okay, I’ll just finish THIS story and then I’ll go in. Okay, okay: ONE MORE, I swear” (Dear Miranda July Who I Love: You’re super great. I read your book and now I am a chicken-friend steak which I have recently learned is very, very Texas. Chicken-friend steak and also chicken-friend chicken which I don’t know about the grammar of that but some things you just need to let go of). Anyhow, people: you can see where this story is going, right? We’d been very smart and coated me with SPF 45, but ONLY FROM THE WAIST UP. Why? I have NO idea. It’s like I momentarily forget about an entire HALF OF MY BODY but I tell you what, that half of my body is making sure that will NEVER happen again. From the little skirt on my bikini bottoms down I am bright, stupid red. Press me with your fingertip and you’ll see your prints, FBI-quality, white on red and people, it HURTS. The mere act of SITTING DOWN feels like the skin on the backs of my thighs is being torn apart—and seriously, I try not to complain. I try to look on the bright side! I can deal with pain! The tattoo on my back took five hours of being bent in a very precarious position and it was all good! And back when I did kickboxing everyday and had to lift my leg up over my head like fifty times consecutively IT WAS FINE. I have Maker’s Mark and a 200 ct. bottle of Advil on me AT ALL TIMES, there’s NOTHING I CAN’T HANDLE!

Except for this.

(and probably childbirth. I don’t know personally but I’ve heard stories)

AND SO: I will complain. Loudly. I will slam these keys! I will overuse the CAPS LOCK button! Also, I will swear! (shut your eyes, dad) like this: when I finally get off this fucking plane I’m going to buy like forty tons of that Banana Boat green-gel aloe vera and put it in a big vat like how that Matthew Barney Cremaster Cyle guy (????? NO GOOGLE ON THE PLANE!) puts all the petroleum jelly into tubs on whale boats and then it coagulates into billion-dollar jiggly sculptures and I’m going to dive in so I’ll be green instead of red and cool instead of hot and even though it’s just my lower half that hurts I’m going to dunk my head down in it, too, so I WON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS FUCKING GUY BEHIND ME SNORT-SNORE ANYMORE!!! AND DID YOU NOTICE THAT RHYMED??!!!!

Posted by Megan at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’d forgotten the ocean. How it smelled, how it tasted, how it burned my eyes, the layer of sand on my skin like frosting, the thin cover of water across the beach at low tide and how hours after swimming, when the wind blew my hair in my face, I could still taste the salt.

Posted by Megan at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We’ve spent the past three lovely days in Austin doing the following:

Lounging with C.’s Uncle Raymond and Aunt Debbie at their lake house

Swimming in this pool

Eating Texas BBQ

Drinking much Shiner Boch

Reading books FOR PLEASURE! NOT BECAUSE I HAVE TO FOR WORK! (just finished The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits [on Holly’s rec, which seemed fair ‘cause I’ve made her read like fifty books over the last year so one was the least I could do] [but also the girl’s got stellar taste] [Thanks, Holly] and it was awesome, so much so that I just started it again because A. I slammed through it for the story, very consciously NOT allowing myself to study HOW it was written and it was really interestingly structured on top of being a super good read, which I determined because I started talking to the characters, as in, “No wonder you were such a little bitch, Mary Veal, look at your MOTHER,” or yelling speculations out loud such as, “I know who you are, K./the man! You are really _________” (I won’t say who I thought K./the man was in case y’all read it, which you really should, but also because I was wrong) and also B. there’s all sorts of little plot twists that are probably apparent in a really cool way if you read it a second time, like The Sixth Sense or Usual Suspects. I also just started Miranda July’s short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You ‘cause I read “The Swim Team” in Harpers and it was one of those stories that makes you go WHY DIDN’T I WRITE THAT!? and then you rush to the computer and write really fast and really well and ALSO her film Me and You and Everyone We Know is in my top five movies EVER and ALSO she made this website which made me nearly wet myself (Dear Miranda July Who I Love: I was thinking of starting a cheerleading team and was wondering if you’d be on it? And we could get good outfits and write cheers that went like this: Hooray for you and hooray for us and hooray for green grass and tiki bars especially that one outside of Chicago that’s sort of in the middle of nowhere at least not somewhere you’d expect to see a tiki bar!) AND Sarah Vowell’s Take the Cannolli.

Watching movies (Bobby [loved it] and Die Hard II which Christopher calls, “That movie where Bruce Willis is wet and running through steam for two hours,” and then I add, “And also he swears a lot,” and Christopher adds, “And why don’t the bad warlords just take off after they lock him in the cockpit of that airplane?” and I say, “SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF!" and Christopher says, “And it’s really cool when he ejects in the parachute in the middle of that explosion!” and I say, “Bruce Willis is AWESOME!” so then we rented Hostage which we’re watching as I type: the cute guy from Black Donnally’s is still really cute and the freaky guy from Six Feet Under is still really freaky.

Sleeping in

Renting a speedboat and racing around Lake Travis for two hours looking at all the beautiful homes (there’s this one that has a built-in waterslide from the house to the pool to the lake!) and playing the “If I ever have money I’ll live THERE” game

Wearing a LOT of SPF 45 (but we missed a spot in the middle of my back and now I can’t lean all the way back when I sit down because it BURNS LIKE FIRE)

Hanging out with Christopher’s good friend Tym. Who he’s known since high school. And I’ve heard all sorts of stories about him, like “Tym who drove me from Texas to Chicago in ONE DAY,” and “Tym who produced the play on the recyclable set and gave all the proceeds to charity,” and “Tym the painter,” and on and on and it’s such a wonderful moment in a relationship, I think, to finally meet the friend you’ve been hearing about for years and then, when you do, it feels like you’ve known them your whole life. We spent the evening talking, wandering around Tym’s neighborhood in Austin and doing this.

Hanging out with Christopher’s cousin Matt at the Austin Botanical Gardens

Hanging out with our friends Mike and Chrissy and their almost-four-years-old son, Simon, who is probably the coolest guy in the Universe. We met them in Chicago through our friend Tracy (Simon’s godmother) when Mike was at the Art Institute and Chrissy was working with the designer Amy Rigg, and selling her line, Freckle, at Penelope’s on Division (Dear Penelope’s on Division: you know those white leather heels I just spent so much money on? EVERYBODY asks me where I got them, they’ve inspired shoe envy across the masses) and then later, when Christopher and I were in Prague, Mike and Chrissy stayed with us for a week and we went to all sorts of museums and drank lots of absinthe and we love them tons. So ANYHOW, it was Chrissy’s birthday, and there was a big ‘ol party with cherry cobbler and whiskey and Scorpions (the album, not the bug [I just asked Christopher if a scorpion was a bug or an animal and he laughed at me. He said, “ALL BUGS ARE ANIMALS. THERE ARE PLANTS AND THERE ARE ANIMALS.” And I said, “Give me more coffee!”]) and silly string and good conversation and here is the best part: in Austin, there are houses. With yards. And screen doors. That aren’t locked. And when you have birthday parties, your friends come in the house without knocking, carrying cakes or six-packs or whatever, and everyone yells, “HEEY!” ‘cause they are so happy to see each other and it’s really nice—after Chicago’s intercoms and locks and gates—to have that kind of ease. Makes me wonder if I’ll be in the city forever. This whole trip makes me wonder—moving slowly, laughing more, relaxing … it’s just easier. Which doesn’t mean better by any means, just … different.

Probably it just means we need to go on vacation more than once every two years.

Posted by Megan at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Our first stop was Gainesville, where we surprised Christopher’s grandmother on Mother’s Day which was maybe the coolest thing in the Universe: to see her open her front door and there’s her Chicago grandson holding flowers! She was so happy and he was so happy and yaaaaay, mothers! HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MOM! AND GRANDMA! AND MARILYN AND ELSIE AND JUDITH! AND ALL THE OTHER MOTHERS I KNOW LIKE JULIE AND COURTNEY AND JEN AND ANNIE AND CHRISSY AND ALMOST WANDA AND MARGARET AND MANAO AND SUSAN AND ANYONE ELSE I’M FORGETTING! YOU ALL ARE SUPER-GREAT! We had yummy Texas breakfast (biscuits and gravy, eggs and bacon and sausage and coffee) with her and C’s Aunt and Uncle (he works for FEMA and showed us photos of some of the rebuilding efforts in Louisiana and Jackson Missippi—heartbreaking. Homes leveled. Cars smashed and thrown into living rooms, STILL. Years later. “You don’t see any of this stuff on TV anymore,” he said. “It’s a shame. It’s BEYOND shameful.”) and cousin Maegan who’s a really great photographer—hopefully she’ll visit us in Chicago this summer! and then, after breakfast, something very important happened:

Christopher’s grandmother taught me how to Pasties, proper Texas-style (which is a sort of pot pie with onions and cabbage and carrots and peppered pork and butter and potatoes and it is YUMMY).

This is Christopher’s favorite food in the Universe. I think my learning how to make it FROM HIS GRANDMOTHER is a sort of initiation, the same thing as Christopher going bow-hunting with my dad and Uncles AND! I think I passed! I stretched dough and layered vegetables and even, afterwards, I made apricot-oatmeal squares and she said I crumbled the dough JUST right and we talked about picking blueberries and Christopher’s grandfather and I felt so lucky to have that time with her.

Posted by Megan at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So we needed a vacation. In a big way.

(probably everyone reading this right now is thinking the same thing)

We needed OUT of the city, AWAY from the “Be Here, Do This, Hurry Up! You’re Late! Read That, Edit This, Build That Site, Make These Changes, Let me check my iCalendar! etc.” so what we did was book tickets to Texas where we’d spend a few days with Christopher’s family, visit our friends in Austin and then shoot down to the Gulf of Mexico for a little R&R that would include the following:

Laying in sand
Reading books
Writing in the journal
Sleeping in
Drinking frothy things in the sunshine
Seeing movies
Wandering around without having to be anywhere
Sleeping in
Sleeping in

Our flight was scheduled for SUNDAY morning. SATURDAY morning, as we drank coffee, we were planning out What We Had to Do Still: run errands, drop off Mojo, pack, 2nd Story, call cab for airport, etc. and in the middle of it all Christopher said, “Do you remember the last time we did anything SLOWLY?”

I had to think about that one. Then: “Prague,” I said, where we lived over TWO YEARS AGO and that, I thought, was really sad. That it had been TWO YEARS since we moved slowly and by that I mean taking your time between point A and point B—hell, who cares if it takes a couple hours or days or week to get to B so long as you’re enjoying yourself along the way? “But isn’t that why we’re going on vacation?” I asked. “To slow down? To slam on the breaks and then ease into a calmer pace once we get home?”

“Yes,” he said—and, FYI, while we’re having this conversation about slowing down, Christopher is cleaning the printer that we just sold on Craigslist and I’m organizing the piles of student work I have yet to read and our house is a mess and there are stacks of laundry everywhere and the dog is asking to go outside and it’s seven a.m. on a Saturday and why are we up this early? Anyone? Bueller?—“BUT,” he went on, “We’re already freaking out about how we’ll get to the airport and will we make it there on time and all this rushing rushing rushing and—”

Long story short: we canceled our flight and drove it. Yaaaay ROAD TRIP! Bad food, Big Gulps, slow and leisurely, get out when we want to (JESSE JAMES WAX MUSEUM!!) and remember how much bigger the world is than our little corner of the city.

We left at four a.m. (FYI: I’d been at 2nd Story the night before until midnight, so when I say “left at four a.m.” what I really mean is Christopher making me get up, me bitching up a storm, me picking up my pillow and blanket, going outside, into the backseat of the car and falling right back to sleep). I woke up in the middle of Missouri, a state which—so far as I could tell as it whizzed past on 44 W—goes like this: beautiful beautiful beautiful green green strip maaaaaaaall green green beautiful adult video store green green strip mall green (Oklahoma is similar. Except with more adult video stores).

Topics of conversation during the twelve-hour drive:

1. Finances

2. Family (re: Christopher quizzing me on who I was about to meet and how they’re related to whom)

3. Politics (re: when can we discuss politics with our family? and also how do they affect our finances?)

4. Politics (re: education, property taxes and where do our taxes go? and should we be pissed that they’re going so many places we DON’T want them to go? or just suck it up ‘cause lots of them go where we DO want them to go? and there’s many people in this country who DON’T want them to go where we DO want them to go and we expect THEM to suck it up. and vice versa. and also Obama)

5. Politics (re: the entirety of this country is MUCH different then just Chicago)

6. Politics (re: the This American Life episode “Godless America” about the separation of church and state [Christopher burned ten episodes of This American Life for the drive, which was so awesome because A. I love This American Life and B. to be trapped in a car for twelve hours can be murder—especially if you’re like me and can’t read in the car (headaches) or didn’t plan enough ahead to go to the library and get audio books—so it’s great to have something that gets your brain moving, like we listened to this episode called “Superpowers” which Oh My Gosh was so good, I mean, they’re all good, but this particular one just about killed me: it featured a REAL LIFE superwoman named Zora who, when she was a kid, made a list of all the skills she’d need to master in order to be a superhero (martial arts, hang-gliding, weapons, etc.) and she DID them all and now she’s a bounty hunter, how badass is THAT? And also it interviewed all these people about the whole Flying vrs. Invisibility thing])

7. Which would you prefer: to fly or be invisible? (C. and I both say Flying. Although the woman who said she’d be invisible to steal cashmere sweaters from Barneys is near to my heart)

8. Flowers. Christopher is trying to teach me: “The pink ones are called Indian Paintbrushes,” he says. “The grass is called Johnson Grass. The purple ones are Mexican Turks Caps … Turkscaps … or maybe they’re not Mexican, I can’t remember. The clumps low to the ground are Milkweed and you break off a leaf and this goo comes out that looks sorta like Elmer’s Glue and what you do is put the goo in a girl’s hair and then she has to marry you but sometimes she punches you in the face and that’s the beginning of true love.” (pause) “I’ll give you a demonstration later.” (pause) “Except you can’t punch me in the face.” (pause) “Because we’re already married.”

9. Dinner parties we’d like to have

10. How I need to write in my journal more ‘cause it makes me a better writer and reader and human and wife (re: less manic)

11. The Alphabet Game (in case you’ve lived your entire life in a barn [although I’d expect people who lived in barns would even know this game] The Alphabet Game is when you call out letters in alphabetical order off billboards and street signs and race to see who can reach Z first. There are many variations on this game depending on how long the trip is: forwards A to Z, backwards Z to A, forwards double letters [AA, BB, CC etc.] etc. Christopher and I play this all the time on trips to Michigan and were gearing up for some incredibly complex maneuverings on the way to Texas: odd letters down and even letters back up, every fifth letter, every letter MUST be the second letter in the word on the billboard—but what happened was we started somewhere in the middle of Oklahoma, both of us called out our A’s! and then we didn’t see another letter/word/sign/ANYTHING for nearly thirty miles and by that point we’d given up)

12. Poop (I’m not sure how this started, but people. Seriously. If you’re locked in a car for over ten hours—stopping only for gas, bathroom or beef jerky [Christopher. Not me]—you cannot be held responsible for the direction of conversation.

(this photo is blurry 'cause my footprints are all over the windshield from when I fell asleep with my feet on the dashboard)

(I made Christopher pull over so I could take pictures of these tall people, and a guy in the barn started yelling something at me which, being from Chicago, I assumed was something about Get the Hell Off His Property, but it turns out he was just asking if I wanted him to take a picture of me with the really tall people. Strangers are kind here in Texas, even strangers on whose property you are loitering while you photograph their lawn)

Posted by Megan at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I’m in Uncommon Ground drinking coffee and memorizing lines for 2nd Story tonight OHMIGOD 2ND STORY! HAVE YOU COME TO 2ND STORY?! PEOPLE TELL STORIES AND DRINK WINE AT 2ND STORY!! AND TONIGHT I’M TELLING A STORY WITH ADAM AND AMANDA ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE PERFECT AND, IN THIS STORY, THE THREE OF US FIGHT A LOT! AND DISCUSS CELLULITE! AND ANUSES! AND AMANDA’S DIRTY DISHES AND THE WOMAN ADAM AND I WOULD GET DOWN WITH WERE HE OR I EVER TO GET DOWN WITH A WOMAN WHICH IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY BUT WHATEVER! AND TOMORROW I’M TELLING A STORY ABOUT HOW I DATED INDIANA JONES FOR A REALLY LONG TIME AND CHRISTOPHER MADE ME BREAK UP WITH HIM BEFORE WE GOT MARREID! I’M SO HEALTHY MENTALLY! FOR REAL! ESPECIALLY WHEN I’M DRINKING WINE! YAAAAAY WINE!!! and there’s this part where Amanda’s saying the “perfect man” doesn’t exist and I say, “I don’t care if it’s true or not, the last thing you say to somebody single ‘cause all we really know about is WHERE THE HELL IS MY PERFECT PERSON I’M GROWING OLD HERE, PEOPLE,” and as I was yelling this line in my head, Amanda called.

“I’m having an argument with you in my brain right now,” I told her instead of hello.

Amanda is the artistic director of 2nd Story, which means she and I spend a GREAT deal of time together juggling all sorts of balls—LOTS of people juggle for 2nd Story, actually. Nick and Heather and Adam and Daria and Misha and Miles and Tamara and everyone at Webster Wine Bar and fifty storytellers and twelve performance directors and seven writing developers and Aimee and Calliope and the entire Serendipity Theater Collective and a couple yummy vineyards and one SUPER-HOT web designer (I totally have the hots for 2nd Story’s web designer) and a super-great graphic design team and I can’t even keep track of it all. Luckily, it’s not my job to keep track of it all. It’s Amanda’s job. And whenever I try to figure out the million other things going on with 2nd Story she tells me to Go Get Your Sweater, which is code for “Please focus on issues of story development and leave the wine sponsorships alone because Nick’s got it covered and you have your own shit to worry about,” which I really like ‘cause I was that girl in class who, when the teacher assigned group projects, always did the whole project all by herself and never let anybody help and then complained that nobody helped and then realized years later, when blogging about it, that no one helped ‘cause she monopolized the whole project and subsequently felt really guilty sitting there in Uncommon Ground until she remembered that’s all in the past and now, in the present, she’s part of this big honking team and has learned to work collaboratively, both delegating and being delegated to (the Delegator and the Delegatee!!!]; IN SHORT: while I’m off getting my sweater there’s lots of really awesome people doing lots of really awesome stuff and WORKING WITH THEM ALL IS SUCH A JOY—and ANYHOW, since Amanda and I talk so much about the juggling we’ve completely ceased with all pleasantries and tend to begin conversations right where we ended the last one. As in:

MONDAY

MEGAN: and blah blah I wrote up text for the submission process
AMANDA: Great does it include the monthly as well as the festival
MEGAN: yes but not the audition—
AMANDA: I have to go. Rehearsal is starting right now for the other five shows I’m directing concurrently with 2nd Story
MEGAN: You are a crack-addicted masochist
AMANDA: Go get your sweater

TUESDAY

MEGAN: But not the performance requirements, just the writing on the page
AMANDA: Oh I need to come up with that stuff, how about—
MEGAN: I have to go to class. Tim O’Brien is coming
AMANDA: Don’t drool on him

WEDNESDAY

AMANDA: how about a performance resume and then we ask if they’re in any shows MEGAN: Sounds good I didn’t drool on him
AMANDA: Good girl did we schedule a post mortem
MEGAN: I KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! I SPEAK THEATER!
AMANDA: Sometimes you are cute and sometimes you’re an asshat

And THURSDAY.

Today.

MEGAN: I’m having an argument with you in my brain right now
AMANDA: Why are you doing it in your brain instead of out loud? You can come over here and yell at me if you need to

—and I open my mouth to explain that the argument I’m speaking of is the SCRIPTED one I’m memorizing for tonight, but stop when I realize how cool it is that she just invited me over so we could fight. I tend to make such a big deal out of arguments—I’m fairly non-confrontational, I get all stammer-y, usually I bite back what I’m thinking/feeling in the moment and then, later, bitch up a storm, or type very nastily in my journal, or hold it all in for fifteen years until someone forgets to fold the bathroom towels and then I spontaneously combust, but with Amanda—it’s just no big deal. We’re going to duke it out and somewhere during all that we’ll fix whatever we need to fix and just get the hell on with making art.

I’d like to be more like that.

MEGAN: No no no—the argument from the STORY. I’m running lines
AMANDA: Oh, good, I need to do that
MEGAN: I’m at Uncommon Ground
AMANDA: with the chopped salad
MEGAN: and the mimosas
AMANDA: I like mimosas
MEGAN: how’s about a mimosa meeting for the post mortem
AMANDA: how’s about the 29th
MEGAN: mimosas on the 29th, I’m call Nick and tell him
AMANDA: I’ll call Nick, you go get your sweater
MEGAN: I need to go shopping soon. I need clothes of the non-metaphorical persuasion
AMANDA: that’s cute
MEGAN: I'm a cute asshat

Posted by Megan at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

On Tuesday I took my Novel in Stories class to a Q&A with Tim O’Brien (did everybody see how calmly I just wrote that sentence? No freak-outs, no all caps, no OHMIGOD I got to talk to Tim O’Brien who’s like totally my hero I’ve read all his books five thousand times cue screaming fans circa The Beatles with all the crying and passing out—NO. I kept my cool, people. I did not drool on him ONCE) and afterwards I called up Christopher at work and said, “I want to write,” and he said, “You write every day,” and I was like, “NO. I want to WRITE,” and I said the word WRITE with all sorts of reverence, like a choir of angels burst forth from the sky or something because listening to that man talk for an hour and a half took away all the craziness and the deadlines and the stacks of work to read and the inherent guilt that comes with not creating and the pressure to create some masterpiece and the effort it takes to help other people instead of doing your own stuff and the bills and the grades and the stress and all these other things that we have to do all the damn time that can sometimes kills the impulse and—BAM—suddenly all I wanted to do was rush over to Dollop and go to work. So that’s what I did. And I do not remember the last time I felt that good about my stuff, Holy shit.

Here’s where it came from: a student of mine, Holly, asked how he keeps writing even in those moments when he’s not excited about the work.

O’Brien said: “There’s a phrase from Conrad—” he paused, thinking, and then said: “I’m totally going to screw this up—” and FYI I love it when people can quote Shakespeare or Joyce or whoever, Conrad, and NOT sound pretentious about it—“It’s something about how THE SITTING DOWN IS ALL.” Then he talked about how you need to give the writing the chance to come, to not expect it to be perfect, to be open to failure (this is me quoting O’Brien quoting Conrad. I’m totally going to screw this up): “There’s a fear of failure we [writers] always face—we might not write a good sentence!” and I sat in that auditorium thinking of all the times I’ve walked away from the writing because it doesn’t come out perfect, or all the times my students are frustrated ‘cause they have these totally unrealistic expectations, as though we should judge our first drafts the same way we judge Joyce’s fifteenth rewrite (re: his published work), and how scary it can all be, and O’Brien stood up there with his baseball cap and his smoker’s voice and his years and years of experience and said, “The ones who DON’T fear it, I think, are the ones who end up writing episodes of Starsky and Hutch.”

When I got home, I looked up the Conrad line. It’s from a letter he wrote to a critic named Edward Garnett: “I sit down for eight hours every day—and the sitting down is all. In the course of that working day of eight hours I write three sentences which I erase before leaving the table in despair … I assure you—speaking soberly and on my word of honour—that sometimes it takes all my resolution and power of self control to refrain from butting my head against the wall … I would be thankful to be able to write anything, anything, any trash, any rotten thing.”

Tuesday I went to Dollop and I wrote and wrote and wrote. Today, I’m sitting here. I’m sitting.

We’ll see if anything comes.

Posted by Megan at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"I mean, I guess it's interestingly structured, but so's my ass."

Posted by Megan at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My twenty-year-old self had a dream. It went something like this: “I’m gonna like buy some old warehouse and fix it up and have a printing press on one floor and a theater on another and a studio/loft on another where like all kinds of artists splatter paint all over the place and then I’ll live on the top floor and have an organic garden on the roof so, like, we won’t have to buy FOOD and it’ll be really urban and gritty and arty and totally cheap and most importantly there’ll be floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a sliding ladder.”

My twenty-year-old self didn’t know anything about property taxes or zoning laws or the cost of historical restoration or even how much plants cost (Dear Gethsemene: I love you. This past weekend, I showed that love with cash) and just REALISM in general. My twenty-year-old self ate Ramen and drank Purple Passion (re: Everclear and Koolaid) and thought she was an ARTIST (Capital ARRR!) and, like, Bukowski’s life was like totally poetic. In fact, I think one time my twenty-year-old self went on a date with a twenty-nine-year old Indie Rock Boy (Capital ROCK!) at the Mutiny—which, if you haven’t had the pleasure, is a one-room dive bar on Western where I once got hit on as follows:

Note: after each of my responses, SUPER-DRUNK GUY spends a minute or two trying to formulate his next sentence before he actually speaks.

SUPER-DRUNK GUY: You want a PBR?
ME: No, thank you.
SDG: What’re you doing later?
ME: Homework.
SDG: What kind of homework?
ME: Writing.
SDG: What kind?
ME: Fiction.
SDG: Fiction is for pussies.
ME: ???????
SDG: Nonfiction has balls. If you can’t handle the truth, then you’re a pussy.

Note: while writing this, my thirty-year-old self wants my twenty-year-old self to deliver some genius soliloquy about truth in fiction but, frankly, my twenty-year-old self didn’t get it yet. She’d get it at twenty-three when someone first gave her a copy of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and she made all sorts of connections between her life and her work and it was super-exciting, but when she was twenty she just looked up at SUPER-DRUNK GUY and said—

ME: Are you seriously picking me up and insulting me at the same time?

—which my thirty-year-old self thinks is a pretty good comeback. My thirty-year-old self high-fives my twenty-year-old self while SUPER-DRUNK GUY sways and stumbles and tries to come up with a response, which ends up being—

SDG: So what’re you doing later?

Needless to say, The Mutiny wasn’t my twenty-year-old self’s favorite place in the Universe but she really wanted to get in that Indie ROCK Boy’s pants (hi, Dad!) so she went with him to see some Shit-Band from Milwaukee, four thirty-something guys on the elevated piece of plywood called “The Stage” playing to an audience of like four people and here—HERE—is the kicker: Indie ROCK Boy pointed at the lead singer and said, “That guy is like my hero. He’s got a wife and kids at home, but he believed so much in his music that he went on Welfare so he could tour. Like, anybody else might’ve like stayed with his kids or got a job or something but this guy—” he paused in reverence— “This guy knows what it’s all ABOUT.”

And you know what my twenty-year-old self did?

SHE NODDED.

I want to reach back in time and smack her upside the head.

But, of course, she just didn’t get it yet: that you don’t HAVE to give up everything for your art. You CAN make good art and also be financially independent and own your home and have a savings account and eat, like, FOOD and, frankly, my thirty-year-old self is RELEIVED that we don’t live in some abandoned warehouse with shitty plumbing and rodents and no heat. My thirty-year-old self LIKES running water and furnaces and Makers Mark and Marc Jacobs and, while I appreciate my old youthful exuberance, I’m happy the whole I’m Going to Live in a Warehouse has morphed into this: “My husband and I are going to buy a thousand-square-foot place in an historic building in Uptown and it’ll be a really beautiful, comfortable home where we have lots of dinner parties for our friends and I run writing workshops for 2nd Story and we’ll be a block away from the train so we can spend less time driving and the mortgage is comfortable enough so we can still enjoy our lives and also WE OWN IT but most importantly THERE’LL BE FLOOR-TO-CEILING BOOKSHELVES WITH A SLIDING LADDER!”

Cue symphony.

I’ve always wanted floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. ALWAYS. I dreamed about it when I was a kid, you know, with lots of old dusty books and women in pencil skirts and glasses on a chain around their necks up on the ladder, or old Tolstoy-looking guys with long white beards doing research all the damn time, and the thought that I could have that IN MY HOUSE was just insanity, people, INSANITY. An ENTIRE WALL OF BOOKS IN THE HOUSE!

When Christopher and I were talking about buying a place, he said, “blah blah mortgage financing neighborhoods property tax,” and I said, “FLOOR-TO- CEILING BOOKSHELVES,” and he said, “You are a very strange,” and I said, “YOU KNEW WHAT YOU WERE GETTING INTO,” and he said, “hahahahaha BEER,” and we haven’t really talked about it since we moved in because A. built-ins are expensive and B. we’re both too stinkin’ busy to follow through with anything right now but FINALLY, last month we decided to FULLFILL MY LIFELONG DREAM and get the bookshelves built, which maybe had something to do with the fact that my books have been in boxes since December and every time I need one—like if I have to teach the How-to form in class and I think, “I should read them that Junot Diaz story, that’s a really great example”—I have to UNPACK fourteen boxes to find the damn Diaz collection and I’m getting all SORTS of testy about that and, furthermore, all those boxes have been stacked in Christopher’s office and it’s getting to be oppressive (re: he can’t fucking move) because at a thousand square feet our house is not the biggest, especially for two people and one rowdy doggie and all their stuff (me: books, Christopher: electronics, Mojo: squeaky rubber things) although in all the design magazines it says that SMALLER IS SMARTER and gives all SORTS of practical storage solutions BLAH BLAH WE BUILT FLOOR-TO-CEILING BOOKSHELVES OVER THE WEEKEND! Actually, we didn’t build them. Wayne built them. We heart Wayne. Wayne can come build bookshelves for you, too!

BEHOLD: The Wall.

BEHOLD: The Books.

BEHOLD: Wayne.

BEHOLD: The process.

Aren’t they BEAUTIFUL? They match the FLOORS (which was planned) and they match THE DOG (which was not) and Christopher and I sat on the floor and ate take-out Thai food and looked at them (sort of how when we first brought Mojo home all we did the first week is stare at him. Or when we first moved into this place we sat on the couch and said, “You see that light switch, we OWN that light switch,” [although technically we only own twenty percent of the light switch. You get my point]). And then—and if you’re not a book person you’re just NOT going to understand the sheer, raw joy of this next part—I ORGANIZED THE BOOKS.

AND IT WAS AWESOME.

So. Here, now, is the library (which is also the dining room. And the living room and the kitchen. SMALLER IS SMARTER!), and the shelves are so high (nearly TWELVE FEET!) that if I need something from the A’s in nonfiction, Christopher’s going to have to stand on the barstool. At some point we’ll get a ladder, although probably not a sliding one. The wall’s just not long enough.

But see, that’s okay. Because my forty-year-old self has a dream: “I’m going to buy a house in the country somewhere, like Michigan or Wisconsin, and there’ll be a big yard and a screened-in porch and maybe a lake and stars exploding across the sky every night. There’ll be a huge stone fireplace in the living room, and we’ll cook big dinners and have parties and read books and the room will be wall-to-wall bookshelves with a sliding ladder and I’ll have a pencil skirt and glasses on a chain and Christopher will have a long white beard and we’ll do weekends in the city in our little condo in Uptown. We’ll run over to the Uptown Theater and see a show. We’ll eat Lamb Vindaloo at Marigold. We’ll enjoy the Hell out of this life.”

Posted by Megan at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

(please listen to this song while reading the following)

The first week of the 2nd Story Festival was kick ass! There are still two more kick ass weeks! Come have stories and wine with us! Tickets are available here! On the 4th I’m telling a story about how Christopher and I got hit on by swingers! On the 5th I’m telling a story about how a gay man broke my heart! On the 11th I’m telling a story about how this online quiz says I’m not a perfectionist! On the 12th I’m telling a story about how Christopher made me break up with Indiana Jones!! Information is here!

2nd Story was featured on Chicago Public Radio’s Eight Forty-Eight this morning! Amanda and I were interviewed by Steve Edwards! We sounded fairly intelligent! Or at the very least we didn’t talk out of our asses!

We spent Saturday volunteering for Rebuilding Together! Which was amazing!

Look at what Christopher got for his birthday! From his super-cool wife!

Look at my dog!

ALSO, I got a speeding ticket! My very first EVER! In fact, my very first time getting pulled OVER! And the cop still didn’t let me off! I was going forty-one in a thirty zone and now I have to go to TRAFFIC SCHOOL! Which I plan on brining to you LIVE! LIVE from traffic school: Megan Really Pissed Off! And wondering what the world is coming to when there’s drug deals happening on her block but nobody much cares about that, oh NO, instead let’s pull over the girl in the Honda Civic and send her to TRAFFIC SCHOOL, not that she thinks she’s above the law or anything, she just thinks it’s kind of SILLY!

And ALSO, we’re really TIRED!! So on May 13th we’re GOING ON VACATION FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK OH MY GOD AND YOU KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO? I’M GOING TO READ A BOOK. A WHOLE BOOK. FOR PLEASURE. NOT FOR WORK, JUST FOR THE SHEER BEAUTIFUL ENJOYMENT OF A GOOD F’ING STORY!

And FINALLY: NATHAN PETRELLI FOR CONGRESS!

Posted by Megan at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)