Surprise Help

Last night I stopped at the Ashland Dominick's to pick up some groceries, got more than I had planned, and walked out with three bags hanging off each arm. While my half dozen blue Dominick's bags and I were waiting in the bus shelter south of Popeye's, a red minivan pulled up and a smiling young man inquired if I needed a ride.

"Hey, Sam!" I said. "How are you?" I met Sam a year ago in December at the Holy Cross rectory, at the inaugural meeting of the group for neighborhood college students. Sam hasn't been back to the meetings much, but I've run into him once or twice around the neighborhood. I remember best riding the Ashland bus with him early one morning (maybe 6:30 a.m.). He was surprised to see someone like me on the bus so early in the morning.

But now here he is in a shiny minivan, and I'm waiting for a bus that's not coming. I bundled up my bags and got in. Sam wanted to know how my writing was going, all about my latest stories, etc. I asked where he was coming from and he said Juarez High in Pilsen, where he had hoped to get in a swim, but they had a meet that night and the pool was closed. "Lucky for you," he said.

"Yeah."

Sam thought I lived at 55th, but I directed him to my place, which is a little north. "You have the nicest house on the block," he noted.

"Yeah, I do."

I asked him what he was up to. He just started his first job out of college, as a social worker helping people get public aid in Humboldt Park. He's only been at it about a month. "It's overwhelming, you know, and if you're a nice person, people will try to take advantage of you."

I asked what he really wants to do, and he said, "I want to write. Like you."

"Well, let's figure out how to get you some writing exposure," I said. I was going to talk with him a little more about this, but...

Yup-yup arrived on the scene, weaving down the street and rather jumpy, apparently high or hurting for a high, and certainly desperate for cash. "Oh, I can carry your groceries!" he offered/demanded.

Sam smiled. "OK,"I told Yup-yup. "Sam, I'll talk to you later." We agreed we'd connect through church.

Yup-yup got himself a couple of bucks and a bowl of Wolfgang Puck's chicken soup with wild rice for his trouble. His review of the soup: "Scrump-diddly-umptious!"

Current Weather

Thanks to everybody, especially roommates past, who has offered me an ear while I vent and reflect on having taken on a roommate. Alberto was the first one home last night, got his shower done at a reasonable hour and we were both in our respective bedrooms by 10:30 or so after chatting over a cup of hot chocolate. And I got a decent night's sleep, for perhaps the first time since he moved in. This is more like what I was hoping for. So, signs of progress.

One thing that I didn't fully realize when I decided to give this a try is that it's really different when someone rents a room in a home you own versus when you share the rent on an apartment. There's a disparity of investment and ultimately a power differential here that I didn't really consider and I think he didn't either, since both of us have shared rentals with other people before, but I haven't had a renter in a space I owned and set up, and he hasn't ever been the renter in that kind of situation either. As a former roommate of mine pointed out to me, it's hard when a new roommate arrives and established routines have been set by the old one. The new one can feel like, hey, I live here too, and I split rent, don't I get some say in how routines work? The old one feels like, hey, this is how it's done around here.

I'm sure I feel that even more strongly in this situation than in a roommate transition, since I set up the house by myself and have always been the only one living here. Plus, we're not splitting equal amounts of rent--he's putting in less than 20 percent of my mortgage. I still think I could be in this house for 30 years; he might be here anywhere from three months to three years max. It really creates a different mindset for me in terms of what say he gets about what the common areas look like, especially since I just spent $1000 decorating the first floor. I'm not at all used to this in myself, which probably doesn't make it easier for me to set ground rules and expectations.

To his credit, Alberto is really rolling with this, probably better than I would if I were in his shoes. Yesterday morning at 7 a.m. (about 20 minutes after he woke me up playing the downstairs radio--he didn't have it on that loud, I'm just a really light sleeper and the house carries sound), I informed him that the carpets he had put down last week to provide a runner all the way to the back door were ugly and would have to go as soon as I had time to get a runner that matches what I have already. Perhaps it was a moment when he didn't understand exactly what I said, but he got the point. I got home last night and the rugs had disappeared. During the day I had been thinking OK, they can stay there and wipe up snow until spring, but I felt so much better when I saw they were gone I've decided not to say anything but thank you for moving them.

Hurricane drops to tropical storm

The National Weather Service is pleased to report that Hurricane Alberto's rating has been reduced to Tropical Storm Alberto, now that his stuff has been somewhat contained.

What a sense of karmic revenge we have here. To all the people who have lived with me over the last 20 years or so, thanks for all your patience with my lack of spatial organization, awkwardness with mechanical objects and inability to control my stuff. It is so ironic to see all these traits in another human being and to be irritated by them even as I empathize and recognize them in myself. I never thought I'd be the Felix in the Odd Couple, but here's my big chance to be as anal-retentive as I want to be. Whoo-hoo!

So, my cortisol levels dropped Saturday night after Alberto and his former roommate got the godawful bookcase out of the front entry and upstairs into his room. Sunday afternoon, Alberto got almost everything that didn't belong in the kitchen and dining area into appropriate storage and, at my request, moved my baking ingredients out of one pair of cabinets and into an almost empty one, so he would have a place to store dry food, spices, etc. I had to reorganize my own stuff afterwards and just shook my head in amazement at how he couldn't get it all to fit--a few turns of the boxes would have solved most of the problem (thanks, Carol, for teaching me better spatial organization by example!), but it wasn't too hard to pick up the pieces. And I even cleaned the refrigerator, a chore I hadn't ever done in the year and a half I've lived in my house. (Truly, I am no saint as a housekeeper and there is a plus to having another human being around--it's a great prod to tackle those long-undone chores.)

As the chore-fest wound down and Alberto prepared to leave and take a few more excess items away to be donated, I said, more to myself than anything else, "Man, I just swept the floor and I'm still stepping on stuff! I guess next weekend's task will be mopping the kitchen floor." I went out later with a friend and got back around 11 p.m. When I walked in the house I smelled cleaner. "Did he clean the bathroom?" I wondered, and then went back to the kitchen. He had mopped the floor.

We still have to get his ugly carpets out of the dining room and a few other things like that, and I'm not sure he's totally clear that he doesn't get to put his stuff anywhere he thinks it should go, but we have made great strides. And he's on a month-to-month lease. I made it very clear that I'm not sure I'm ready for a roommate (sort of the "it's not you it's me speech" in roommate-speak) and that I'll be checking in with him at a couple of points to let him know whether it's working for me. So, God bless him, he's still trying to impress me, even if it means he mops the floor but fails to empty the compost bucket I told him we wouldn't be able to use until spring, when I get the lead out of the back yard.

As the Weather Channel says, stay tuned for more updates on Tropical Storm Alberto.

Hurricane Alberto hits my house

...OK, how did my house get hit by a hurricane in February? When it's a metaphorical hurricane, silly.

I just looked up the top 30 worst tropical storms of the last century to hit the United States. Hurricane Alberto was at or near the bottom of the list. Alberto struck in 1994.

"Alberto" is the code name I will use for my new roommate, who moved in Wednesday afternoon. He's a grad student at one of the innumerable seminaries sprinkled around Hyde Park, and he comes from one of those Latin American countries where political strife sent thousands fleeing some years ago. I was putting the word out at my holiday party that I needed a roommate, and he informed me he needed to get out of student housing. We originally met through Su Casa.

Well, he showed up a week earlier than expected--we said "the middle of February" and he was a week early. Plus, he has a *lot* more stuff than I expected. I discovered large chunks of it littering my first floor when I got home way too late on Wednesday night, and frankly was furious. I realize he's just moving in, but he does not get to invade my house with his crap! ;-)

Fortunately, I was staying overnight with a friend Thursday, so I left a note saying "you really need to get the stuff out of the living room and away from the front door before I get back Friday night." When I arrived last night, everything was gone except the bookcase right by the light switches at the front door, which was the thing I most wanted out of there. Alberto tells me he's going to move the bookcase today with a friend. Let's hope it's gone by the time I get home today, or there will be hell to pay.

Really, I'm much more mellow about this in person. It even made me laugh when he showed up at 11:30 p.m. carrying a couple of boxes of stuff on Wednesday night, except for the fact I had to get up at six the next morning for work. Tomorrow afternoon I'll have to lay down the law. I told someone yesterday I think this is going to be like dog training. There's a reason I don't have a dog.

Home Depot Outing

Sunday afternoon I arrived at Su Casa just as three of the workers were headed out to the Home Depot at 72nd and Cicero. So I jumped in the car and went out there with them. They had a gift certificate or something that was only good at that location, so we couldn't go to our local one at 47th and Western. I expect to be checking it out very soon.

Getting there was a bit of a challenge. We went out 71st but it dead-ends into an industrial park at Pulaski, so we turned around and went south to 76th, just south of Daley College. That takes you to the back of the Ford City Mall shopping superplex, which never fails to astonish me in its size and complexity. I used to teach out that way, and Ford City was just an ordinary sort of mall then. Nowadays it's expanded and other retail has grown up around it to the point where I see how easily you could get lost in the consumerist shuffle. We took a parking lot safari to get to Cicero Avenue. Fortunately we could see the Costco from the parking lot and even got a glimpse of that nasty orange logo before we had to decide which way to turn. So, we made it, despite our best efforts to get lost.

I got my window screen fixing materials and Aaron got light bulbs, a cool screwdriver, and some other household goodies. He says he will help me replace the wire netting in the screen. (Yes, I am totally incomptent in all matters mechanical.) I looked into window treatments for my upstairs front bedroom but they all seem quite expensive. We'll see.

Su Casa is tracking their mileage on the car. Aaron said he'd check into helping me with the four-hundred-dollar brake job. I was hoping it would only be half that much. Let's hope those brake hold up for a good long while. But they are all so happy to have a functioning car it's pretty well worth it. And it got me to do an errand I'd put off for more than three months. Victory all around.

Su Casa Gets a Car

Yesterday morning we got the Su Casa Car back from Castro and Sons auto repair. The brake job cost $400. This is why I don't want to own a car, but I said I'd pay for insurance and repairs on their Ford Escort in exchange for occasional use of it.

The Castro son who runs the place now is a good guy. He had surgery last week and was supposed to be at home, but he can't stand lying around the house so he went to work. He showed us the nasty worn-out brake pads they replaced. Whew! Now the pedal doesn't go all the way to the floor when you push on it. That made for an interesting trip getting it over there, the morning after our last snowfall. Well, nobody got killed or even scratched in the process.

I'll be taking the car to Home Depot on Sunday to get a screen to replace the one that got cut up in the burglary attempt. Now you all know I'm not quick on the draw when it comes to some aspects of house maintenance.

Learning Spanish

I haven't written much about this here, but most of you reading this have heard me discuss my efforts to learn Spanish over the past year and a half. They have certainly been interesting.

First, a little background. I took a few months of Italian in junior high, then two years of Latin, then a lot of German in high school and college, to the point where I was really starting to get it. I even took a literature class for a semester beyond the language requirement. But then I got busy and that was the end of that. No further language study until I ran off to France in 1994 (a long story best saved for another time), with virtually no French. In six months of living there and taking a community college class I went from nothing to an introvert at a dinner party. It was where I learned how to function when you don't have much command of the language, which is at least as important as learning the target language itself.

When I came back to the states I tried to hold on to my French and to be bolder about speaking the little Spanish I did know. The French faded fast but teaching in Humboldt Park helped me get a little braver about saying basic things in Spanish. Later I took a beginner class in hopes it would push me to learn, but still to no avail.

Part of the reason I moved to this neighborhood was that I've learned I won't internalize a language unless I'm forced to. I do feel more pressure to learn Spanish than I ever have, but it's still easy to wimp out and let the kids translate. I read a lot--the papers, the local literary journal (a bit--it's a little advanced in its language for my understanding)--but I'm still pretty shy about speaking.

From April through December I was getting lessons with a tutor, which helped a great deal, but that got very complicated and I decided it was time to take a real live class. So now I'm studying downtown after work, at the extension campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. They think I'm a genius because I can talk, however halfassedly. And they see I have a head for grammar. So they've put me in a class that is pretty advanced, and in the first two weeks I've been hit with two new verb tenses I'm having trouble assimilating. Whew!


Here's the university's web site. Its Spanish acronym is UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico): http://www.cepechicago.unam.mx/information.html (in English, about their Chicago campus)

In Spanish--main site:
http://www.unam.mx/

More later...back to work...

Callate en la iglesia/shush in church

I went with Dawn, Joey, their big brother Julian and his friend, and Dawn's buddy Gloria to St. Joe's 5:30 Mass on Sunday. Fr. Ed was up there playing a kazoo during the homily, but that wasn't enough to keep Dawn and Gloria from yammering. Gloria is pretty loud, too.

Sunday's gospel was one of the ones where Jesus expels an "unclean spirit." In this particular story, the spirit taunts Jesus and he tells it to be quiet. In Spanish, the command to be quiet translates as "callate." (There should be an accent on the first a, but I still have to learn how to make all those interesting marks using my keypad, sorry.)

So when I got really exasperated with Gloria, I whispered urgently, "Callate!" and she got a laugh out of it. BUt she and I both laughed at the antics of various chiquitos (little ones) playing hide and seek in the pew or trying to put their little brothers in headlocks, etc.

Joey was so bored he actually tried to read the Spanish version of the Eucharistic prayer for a while. He wanted to know where we were in the book a couple of times, maybe just to see how much longer it would go on.

Julian and his pal were too cool to sit with us. They stood in the back.

One thing I love about St. Joe is if I show up broke (which is likely to happen on Sunday afternoon, post Saturday night), it's no shame to put change in the collection basket. "Is there such a thing as a spinster's mite?" I asked myself while dumping the remains of my change in the second collection.

I have finally memorized more than half of the Our Father in Spanish. For a while I couldn't get past the third line. Now I've got seven lines down, just two or three more to go. Don't even ask me to attempt the Hail Mary yet. Guess I'll have to go to a novena to Guadalupe next December. That ought to be enough to pound it in for good.

We thought Dawn's parents, or at least her mom, would show up to church late or be in the back when it was over, but they weren't there. Dawn and Joey got their catechism cards signed by their CCD teachers and then we went home for dinner. Gloria wanted me to call her mom and tell her it was my birthday so she would let Gloria come with us, but I said no.

Dawn's mom made enchiladas. Two kinds: chicken and cheese. The cheese ones had salsa verde and the chicken ones had a kind of creamy yellow sauce. Usually I think enchiladas are OK, not great, but these were possibly the best enchiladas I have ever eaten.

While we were waiting for dinner, I was talking with Dawn's dad. He was telling me he only went to school through third grade in Mexico, and then started learning various trades: carpentry, plumbing, metalworking. He likes metalworking, which is what he does now. I can't remember how he said it in Spanish but it came through as clearly as English in my ears, "In Mexico we couldn't stay in school, and now that these kids can, they don't want to study."

The Gunman on the Ashland Bus

About 9:45 a.m. I was reading Hoy on the Ashland bus, like I do many a morning. We were passing the Riverside Square shopping center, just south of Archer Avenue, when someone hollered and shook the back door to get off. I looked up at the noise, and there was a man at the back exit pointing a gun at the guy in the back corner of the bus!

The bus stopped and the gunman got off. The man in the back corner hollered, "I'm bleeding!" He went to the front of the bus, borrowed a cell phone and called the cops. "Yes, I was shot," he said into the phone. "I was shot. I'm bleeding." Apparently he'd been grazed in the head by the bullet.

The gunman must have been using a silencer because there was no noise. It was bizarre! I kept looking in the back for a bullet hole but couldn't see one.

"I wasn't even talking to him," the victim declared.

The bus driver, a middle aged black lady, handled the situation very professionally. She pulled over underneath the Stevenson, just before the Orange Line, and handed out cards so people could write up their eyewitness accounts. I had nothing to say--I couldn't even give a description of the shooter except maybe he had on a red and white jacket. I remember red and white, and a guy, and a gun. That's it.

"I don't know him, but I recognize him," the driver said. "He rides this bus all the time. Don't worry. He'll get caught."

Yeah, maybe, but I think I'll stay off the Ashland bus for a few days, anyway. Whew!

La Cantina

Sunday night I finally went to the cantina with three of the guys from Su Casa. I had heard about the cantina a couple of times before from the workers at Su Casa, but I hadn't had the chance to join an outing.

La cantina is on 47th, east of Ashland. It's one of those joints you don't know it's a bar unless you know somebody. It has a plain brick exterior, no neon beer lights or signage, and a door you have to be buzzed through. Inside there's a pool table, a bar and a couple of TVs hanging in the corners of the ceiling, plus an amazingly loud jukebox. There are some fun Mexican movie stills tacked up behind the bar, plus the usual cheesecake blondes advertising beer. Unsurprisingly, there probably weren't a dozen people in the joint around 10 on a Sunday night.

It was the first time I had set foot in a bar in the neighborhood, except for El Tio, which is really a restaurant that serves drinks. I've never gone to El Tio on a weekend night, when they have music for dancing or show fights or other sporting events on TV. This is the kind of thing where the language and cultural barriers look pretty intimidating, especially when considering going alone.

I recently picked up The People's Guide to Mexico, which informs me that in Mexico, women don't ever set foot in cantinas. If they do, either they are prostitutes or don't mind being mistaken for prostitutes. However, it's OK to work behind the bar if you're a woman, especially if you're in the family that owns the place. But it's not cool just to go for a drink.

However, the great fun of being a gringa in a Mexican neighborhood in the U.S. is you can set foot in a cantina, as long as you have lots of company, preferably male. Three guys was probably the fewest escorts I'd go with, and usually Su Casa shows up in greater force than that. Which the owner, Cesario, appreciates. He bought us a round (our second, we got our own first round.)

One of the guys in our group was chatting in Spanish with the guy at the end of the bar, who invited us to a strip club. Steve bowed out for himself but checked in with us pro forma just to get some backup on the refusal. The guy at the end of the bar had assured him the women at the club "were really fine." I wondered if he'd even noticed me--I was a couple of yards away and probably hidden by two of the guys.

Our bartender was female and bilingual. She asked for all our IDs and I told her I was old enough to be flattered she asked. She laughed. Later she started telling me all about how she's been going to biker bars since she was young, since her friend's brother had a bike and would take her sister and friends along. She's friends with the owner and was just helping out by tending bar for the weekend. She tells me they do tai chi in the park at 30th and Halsted in the mornings. I'll have to go by there sometime.

We ordered Tecates and a Corona (me), and looked down the bar at some point and saw all the regulars drinking Bud and Miller Lite. Very funny. The bartender says Corona doesn't taste the same up here as it does in Mexico. "That's like Guinness," I said, at which she smiled. She grew up in Bridgeport.

This week's roundup

Simply starts school: Word last night is that he didn't hit any snags at orientation and started classes yesterday. Still no word on his aid award, and he did get a bill for like eleven grand, but I told him to go see his financial aid counselor ASAP and explain that he hasn't seen his aid package yet. Apparently Loyola thinks it will be able to house him on campus after his parents sell their house in Chicago, and they will pro-rate the housing costs for this semester and not charge him until he starts living on campus. So far, so good.

Blockbuster Bust: The Blockbuster at 48th and Ashland closed its doors sometime between Christmas and New Year's. Since I don't even have a TV, I didn't notice until "the other white lady" made the point to me on the phone last night. She views this as a bad sign. I'm surprised they folded just as the condos across the street are actually selling.

City Services Blitz--There was a crew picking up trash not just along Ashland this morning, but along some of the adjacent blocks. I was taking this morning's accumulation of yard junk to the alley when one of the fluorescent-vested guys spotted me and said, "Keep that up and you can get a job with us!" He said they had started at 47th and were working their way "all the way down" Ashland. The street cleaner came by northbound while I was waiting for the bus. I don't think I've seen that much city effort on cleaning, ever.

Mexico meets Ireland

Last week I forgot to mention a particular favorite moment hanging with my little friends, because it happened post-pizza, pre-park. Somehow we got talking and they wanted to know what my grandmother looked like. I have photos of my mother's mother in the same album with my photos from Ireland in 2002, when I went to visit her sisters and other family for the first time ever. So I dragged out the album and showed them.

The album opens with a shot of the small house where my grandmother was born and where her sisters still live. You can see the roof used to be thatch--they updated to slate in the 1970s, I'm told. The house is at least 200 years old. My great aunts still use a turf fireplace as their main source of heat, supplemented these days with an electric space heater in the bedroom. It was chilly and damp there in May.

One of my great-aunts looks especially like Grandmom, and they saw a lot of pictures of her and her sister. We were at the lake, we were in the country hills, we were at the church at Knock Shrine, we were at the Famine Museum. Then they got to see my grandmother visiting her daughter's family in Delaware in the early 1970s, about the time they were taking the thatch off the roof back in Ireland and maybe before the space heater. We have pictures of Grandmom and Granddad with my mom, me and my sister and brother in the driveway with our two cars and our two-story suburban house, built @1965. The boys liked seeing the pictures of me as a little kid. They said I looked like some girl they saw in a movie but I don't know who they meant.

The last half of the album is pictures of the island of Inishmaan, the least touristed of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay. It's shockingly quiet there and the birds fly right at you, completely unafraid. The few hundred locals who live there mostly speak Irish as their first language.

The boys saw photos of potatoes growing and cows grazing and rocky cliffs and blue water. They liked the horses and ponies and dogs the best. They were telling me how their cousin sold her cows to raise the money to come to the U.S.

They were very enthusiastic about Ireland. "It's like Mexico!" said one.

"Yep," I agreed, "just colder and wetter."

Loyola Acceptance!

Simply, one of the basketball stars from last summer's face-off at St. Joe's, stopped by my house last night to inform me he was accepted to Loyola University two days ago!! Yahoo!!

However, it was quite a process getting him there. Last spring he intended to go to UIC but had a problem with financial aid and was unable to start in September. This fall he applied to Loyola, but it was quite a struggle to get the paperwork together, and the Loyola admissions office didn't come out sounding the most clueful about tracking information. Simply's test score sheet got lost in the office (he's dead certain it got into the sealed envelope before he went to the post office), so about two weeks after he submitted his application he got a note saying that information was missing. When he called, he told the secretary his test scores were on the second page of his transcript. She put him on hold to speak to a counselor, then came back and said she would call back in an hour or two.

Simply was in Indiana, sitting with his earpiece in his ear, his cellphone perched on the window (the only place in his parents' new house where he could get reception), for an hour before he decided to chance it and go eat a bowl of cereal. He was so stressed he thought he heard the phone ring, dropped his spoon and ran, but there was no call. After two and a half hours he called back to find out everything was OK. Sheesh.

He spoke with an admissions counselor two days ago. She told him, "You've been approved."

"Approved? Please say accepted."

"Accepted."

Now we just have to figure out whether they can house him on campus this semester and how much financial aid he's getting. Keep your fingers crossed. Simply had a 3.75 at Curie and wants to study psychology. He's too smart not to go to college.

Translation Exercise

Junior's mom called me last night. She came over with the boys and with two bottles of medicine for her ears. She got an antibiotic in eardrops from Cook County (where she waited like seven hours for it or something), and some over the counter earwax loosener. The directions on both were in English, so she needed a translator. I tried to explain them in Spanish on my own, complete with pantomime like tilting my head to the side to put the drops in. But it seemed to work better when I gave the instructions simply in English for Junior to translate. Oh, well. Maybe someday I will actually be able to speak intelligibly in this language.

They told me they pumped up the soccer ball. They want to play tonight. Maybe we will.

Saturday in the Park

Might as well keep up the string of bad song references, right? And hey, this one's even Chicago-related. ;-)

Saturday I had two of my little neighbor fellas over for a pizza party. This year's pizza was much more prefab than last year's. Since I knew these two guys had no interest in watching dough rise, I got pre-made pizza crusts at Dominick's, pre-shredded cheese and pre-cut pepperoni. Then I discovered I had to whip up tomato sauce, since all the sauce in my house was veggie-friendly and these guys aren't. I didn't think they were up for red pepper and pesto or spinach and cheese spaghetti sauce. I was out of sausage and mushroom or the burgundy/steak one. (Yes, I'm a yuppie, and proud of it!)

So I chopped an onion, opened a can of crushed tomatoes, and cooked up pizza sauce in 20 minutes. Then I called my fine young carnivore friends and we put the sauce on the pizza, laid the cheese on thick, and made smiley faces with the pepperoni slices.

Winter is hard. Their parents are broke. Christmas was "boring" this year, the older one told me. He got OK presents but not as good as last year. Their dad isn't working right now--he's seasonal--and their mom's boss is being mean and cheated her out of some money. She asked me for work. I hooked her up with a neighbor to clean the house. I'd have had her clean mine but somebody else asked me already.

The boys helped me take some old clothes to the Salvation Army around the corner, and then we went shopping. We found a glow-in-the-dark soccer ball for less than $2.50. I thought that was a worthy purchase, so we got it. After I paid, the littler one asked, "Are you mad at me?"

"No, why would I be mad at you?" I asked back.

"Cause it's 'spensive."

I told him it was OK and not to worry. We took the ball to Cornell Park and played on the tennis court, because the fields were too muddy. The ball needs air but we had fun kicking it around anyway, until the younger one tried to steal the ball from his brother. His foot slipped off the ball and he fell and banged his elbow.

"I didn't make him do it," big brother announced.

"I know."

We took him home and got some ice. His brother told me about the time he went swimming in the park pool and some of the black kids started messing with him and he got in a fight. Now he doesn't go to Cornell Park much.

Later that night, after those two went home, Peter Pan from down the block brought a slightly different crew of Lost Boys to play soccer out back, including two black guys. First integrated soccer game in my yard-whoo-hoo!! The boys asked me to play to keep the teams even, so I played goalie. The neighbors were very nice about letting us jump the fence or run around to get the ball. Our team lost the first game and won the second 15-14.

After game two, I threw them out with lots of high-fives for my teammates. They left still high from all the running. Their post-game trash talk wafted back as they disappeared down the sidewalk. Sad to report, I was sore the next day. At least the old grey mare can still block a shot once in a while.

Streetlights II

The streetlights came back on Friday night, a week after they went out. That seems long to me, even with New Year's in the way.

Streetlights, People??

Yes, I am referencing the Journey song "Don't Stop Believing," because I don't want to stop believing the city might fix the streetlights on Marshfield, which have been out since New Year's Eve.

I ran into my neighbor who used to fly the Irish flag out of his window. He was walking his dog to the corner store as I was coming home from Su Casa last night. I could see a bunch of shadowy figures at the corner and decided to hang out and watch his dog for him rather than get hit up for money by some of my lowlife pals (or not such pals--I couldn't tell for sure who was over there). Anyway, Mr. Irish Flag told me he'd been calling 311 since Saturday night and asked if I had called. Mea culpa, but I hadn't--between New Year's revelry and trying to clean my house, it totally slipped my mind.

I went in the house (after a hi from my pet pimp pal, who was on the corner--he was eating something so he had the grace not to ask me for food or cash in that moment), and called right away. We'll see how long it takes. At least I believe we had garbage pickup this morning--the city took off yesterday.

Holiday Party

Sorry, all, for the long delay in posting. Sunday December 18 was my holiday party. It turned out to be a much larger bash than expected. Seventy people showed up over the course of seven or eight hours! Whew!

The most shocking thing was that some of them arrived early. Gracias a dios, I had unexpected backup from two nice neighbor ladies--one from the CAPS triumvirate that staged the unsuccessful coup, the other is on the NHS board with me--who arrived early to see if I needed help. I did. I was up til about one in the morning making turkey chili and had cleaned the house in the morning, but hadn't made much dent in setting up the food table. So they got to work on that. Five minutes later, 45 minutes ahead of official start time, three families from Su Casa showed up. Holy cow! Latino people arriving early for a party!! We were all joking about this later.

Ms. Ribs came and she didn't have to do anything, although she was having a good time bossing me around for hostess slip-ups like having a bag of ice cubes frozen together. I took it outside and dropped in on the front steps to break it up. She came early (but not too early) and stayed until the Bears came on around 7 p.m.

My north side friends mixed in nicely with my south side friends. One of them was learning Christmas carols in Spanish from my Su Casa pals. I was really happy to see lots of interaction across age, language and culture. There were plenty of babies and little kids around, which is always a great icebreaker.

There's one particularly cute and cuddly little boy that all the guys had to sit on their laps. I told him he was the king of the uncles, el rey de los tios. He had his Tio Alejandro, Tio Kevin and Tio Jorge, among others.

We ran out of turkey chili around 6 and I had to whip up some more out of cans in a hurry. Ms. Ribs was kidding me about that and reminding me to hide the evidence.

Dawn's family came late and were the last to leave. They helped me clean up. We were all joking about El Diastro hitting my house--it was Katrina without the water. Dawn's dad found my CD of music from Michoacan and was teaching Dawn how to dance to it.

Lots of people raved afterwards about what a good time they had. Peace on earth, on the block, for a few hours anyway.

Moonlight Serenade, of sorts

Last night I was walking back from Dawn's house to my house, around 8 p.m., in a gentle snow. Two boys were on our favorite corner, then just one. That kid had a lot to say to me, which I pretended not to hear.

"Hey, hey, como estas? Hey gringa, what's up? You know, George Bush doesn't like black people," the strong implication of which was that I don't like black people either. I thought about hollering, "You know, I don't like George Bush," but decided against it.

Then he started singing "Gasolina" at me. He probably knows the words better than I do.

I just kept walking, though he was loud enough I'm sure the whole neighborhood heard it. I looked down the street and there was a shovel parked against my fence. It was Tony. He had his back to me. "Hey, Tony, is that you?" I asked, not loudly.

He jumped, startled, then turned around. "Don't do that to me!"

"I'm sorry," I said.

Young Punk on the corner continued his Gasolina serenade, then switched into some other tack that didn't sound any more pleasant. You couldn't quite make out the words from my house. I ignored it and started talking with Tony about snow, etc. Soon after, while Young Punk was still shouting, yet another lady who probably works the corner came by, trying to get 70 cents out of either Tony or me. I dug up some change. Like Tony and Young Punk, she too is black. The irony of my interactions with them while this young punk was hollering up and down the street about me did not escape me, shall we say. I would say, "yeah, i don't like black people, I don't like them so much I hire them to clear my snow and I give them money when they ask for it."

But Young Punk would see a different sort of irony--I suspect he would look at it as "that gringa chick is OK with black people as long as they work for her or beg from her." And he has no reason to think any different based on what he can see. I actually went to the next door neighbors' house and knocked on their door to invite them to my party, but they didn't answer, though there were lights on in the house and I saw someone inside. I don't blame them for not coming to the door. Probably I should just leave a note.

I'll have to get brave enough either to offer Young Punk a cookie or call him out for selling drugs to his own people. I'm frankly not sure I have the guts to do either, but I might be able to muster the courage to say, "I don't like guys who stand on the corner, whatever color they are."

Meanwhile, I think my suspicions of problems of another kind with Tony are probably correct. He did call me "sweetheart" to my face last night after clearing out the snow and ice, and he looked at me funny when I handed him a five-dollar bill.

"Everybody has to keep warm and dry," I said. He took it.

A Very Reggaton Christmas

Another big snow hit us Saturday night. Around six the snow was falling so hard cars were crawling. I thought I'd go home and have a quiet evening with a book, the radio and a cup of hot cocoa.

Well, the snow stopped, and I got the cocoa and the radio, but not a quiet evening. Dawn and Joey and their friends from down the block showed up asking if they could use my yard for a snowball fight. I said yes and called Junior and Oscar and Danny. They all came out. Tony was clearing my snow (since my shovel broke!) and I started making eight cups of cocoa out in the kitchen.

I need to get Swiss Miss or something easy--I have yuppie Droste cocoa which requires much more patience to make. The directions assume you are making one cup at a time and you have to get the cocoa and sugar just wet enough to make a paste, but not too wet or the paste won't work. With eight cups to practice on, I figured it out, but it was time-consuming.

Tony liked his cocoa. The little boys, most of the six of them, clamored for more, but I ran out of milk. Once they had their cocoa break, they asked if I would play. So I threw a few snowballs and let them knock me over in the snow once. I made a snow angel.

They ran loose in the street but there were so few cars I didn't really worry about it. The only bad thing that happened was Joey got knocked over hard and hit his leg. He was crying and I was trying to figure out if he broke anything. Of course he was fine five minutes later.

When Junior and Danny's moms came out looking for them, I sent everyone home except Dawn, Joey, and Dawn's friend, the big sister of most of the little scamps. We'll call her Carolina. Dawn and Carolina started stringing up the lights Junior's mom gave me (her cousins' old lights--some of them still work), while Joey played DJ. We had "Feliz Navidad" on for a little bit at Dawn's insistence, then switched over to reggaeton. Of course we heard Daddy Yankee and Joey cranked up the bass.

"I want to hear Daddy Yankee sing Christmas stuff," I kidded them. "Fe-liz Na-vi-dad," I said, grinding my hips slightly to a makeshift cumbia beat. The girls cracked up.

Yesterday I went out to the new Aldi's (yay-cheap stuff within walking distance!) and got a new shovel with a metal edge for seven bucks. I also got chocolate chips. We had another go at the snow with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, but this time Joey got in a fight with Carolina's little brother, whom I'll call Peter (since he leads the pack, it seems like). I have thought Peter was kind of trouble because the other kids talk about him behind his back, but he definitely has a gift for leadership. Plus, he won my heart yesterday when he agreed to push the shovel over the backyard sidewalk.

He and his brothers saw me give Junior and Oscar pairs of gloves. Oscar got a red knit hat with a baseball cap-style bill. He liked it. "You're really nice!" he exclaimed. I was really surprised.

I'll probably have to get some gloves for Peter and his brothers, too. Ho, ho, ho, Daddy Yankee sings reggaeton Christmas and Ms. Claus brings gloves for children who throw snowballs in her yard. We tried making a snowman but the snow is too powdery. Maybe in a couple of days it will pack down.