Storm Tracker

Latest Alberto update: I got home in the wee hours of Sat night/Sun morning and went to the kitchen. The good news was Alberto had cleaned the stove and the kitchen floor. The bad news? I opened the freezer door to take out some chicken to thaw in the fridge, and discovered a bottle of lemon cleaner in there!!

Dude, what's up with that????? I did ask him this Sunday morning but frankly couldn't make a great deal of sense of the answer. (Not sure if this was because of a real language barrier or a convenient language barrier....hmmm...) I gathered from a mumbled answer that he was in a hurry and the floor was wet and he stuck it there for lack of a better idea and forgot about it. I suggested the utility closet, which is far from the kitchen and away from the wet floor, would be the best choice, and even the dining room table would be an improvement.

Meanwhile, poor Junior's mom was worried about me because she hadn't seen me in so long. She and the boys stopped by last night. Unfortunately I was actually on the phone with a work-related call and couldn't talk long, but it was nice to see them.

Gracias a Dios, Alberto had a workshop to go to overnight last night. I had a lovely evening at home by myself and got a decent night's sleep. I'm not sure if he's back tonight or Tuesday, but I'm pulling for a Tuesday arrival.

Fact or Fiction?

The doorbell rang at 5:30 this morning. At least three times, maybe four or five, while I was grabbing a bathrobe and debating whether to answer or not. Have to admit I was hoping Alberto might stick his head out the door. No such luck.

By the fourth or fifth ring I had decided to answer, with the phone in my bathrobe pocket to call 911 immediately if necessary. Guess who? Yup-yup, with a tale of two lovers, or a business transaction, unclear which.

"I saw a couple coming out of your back yard," he said excitedly. (He's almost always about that hyped-up. I assume it's crack.) "They were both black. I followed them." But he really had no further intelligence on them. Then he went on about how he was cold and he could really use a few bucks to get a spot in the house where the owner rents space by the night.

"If they're not burning down the house or trying to break in, wait until dawn to ring the bell," I suggested. But I paid him something, just to get him out of my hair. No, I didn't go back to sleep, but I kind of rested and didn't dwell too much on the whole thing until about 7, when I got up to take a shower.

I thought Alberto had left while I was showering, but he came downstairs while I was eating my oatmeal with pecans and blueberries. (It's only fair to have a special treat for breakfast after a rude awakening, right?) He hadn't heard anything, or maybe he had heard something but just assumed it was regular street noise. Yes, he's a heavy sleeper. I should have asked him about that before I let him move in. A heavy sleeper is useless as an additional night watch aide.

I even teased him about this. "I should have gotten a dog!" We both laughed at that.

Then I wasted some time speculating that Yup-yup had just made up the story to pick up a few bucks. If so, he certainly put some effort in it. I went out back on my way to the bus stop and found a used condom by the back stairs. More disturbingly, I also found a bunch of boards from the demolition going on next door, which made me nervous that someone might start a fire, on purpose or for additional warmth. So I did call the CAPS line and ask if they could send a squad car through the alley on late nights once in a while.

It's still entirely possible he made up the whole thing, or did his business himself back there and decided to tell me about in this fashion to pick up some cash. Great.

Haircut, etc.

Got home later than expected last night and decided to whip up some dinner. I could hear the whine of power tools from next door, so I called over to Julian, his dad and his uncle to see if they wanted something to eat. "Gracias," said Julian Sr.

So I made nachos for them and pasta for me (and Alberto, since it was still cooling on the counter when I left, I left a note saying "eat up if you're hungry.') I was late for my haircut appointment but Bella's niece was just leaving so I guess it all worked out OK.

Bella and I watched "Alborada," my favorite Mexican telenovela. Bella's husband Diego explained that the period is under Porfirio Diaz, so like 1915 or 1920. Diaz was a great admirer of France, which is why they are all running around in doublets and low-cut bodices. Diego thinks it's cheesy and "too emotional" but that's why Bella and Dawn and I like it!

After the show and the haircut I stayed around way too late watching television and chatting with them. There's another show, Ver para Creer, where they show all these believe it or not kind of things. Last night they showed a Peruvian girl who was born with both legs attached to each other, including the feet. She looked like she had a tail. Doctors were able to separate the legs up to above the knee, so she was able to walk. She's now 15 years old or something like that.

Diego told me a lot of the stereotypes about people from Monterrey, where my current Spanish teacher is from. They are supposedly very stingy. I'll have to tease him at class tonight. And I have to leave for class right now!!

p.s. the power of social networking--Bella and Diego say they know some friends who have 8th grade kids, so hopefully some application for the University of Chicago's new charter school will get into good hands.

Hope Under a Roof

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. --Barbara Kingsolver

Friday night Dawn and her family broke the big news. Dawn met me here at the office and told me she had a big surprise to tell me but she was saving it for the very end of the night. So I tried not to press too hard while we ate goat and chicken Puerto-Rican style at Casa Central and enjoyed a very funny play by Teatro Luna, an all-Latina ensemble, and even while we were freezing waiting for the train to get home. I only made a couple of guesses: you have a relative coming up from Mexico to live with you, did you buy a house??? She was very mysterious.

We were on the Ashland bus and I asked if she wanted to get off at 49th. "No, we can go to 50," she said. Hmmm... She got off and walked with me and we both took a left. I looked at the house next door to mine and all the lights were on.

"Did you guys buy...????"

They did. They bought the house for sale next door!! We went in and found them knocking down drywall and taking out walls to reconfigure the first floor. And yes, Dawn's mom is expecting. Wow, a house and a baby.

I drank a Bud with them to celebrate. "When you have a party, I'll call the cops," I teased.

"Then we won't invite you," her mom teased back.

"We're even!!"

They spent all day Sunday on demolition. Joey and his big brother came over covered in dust with some guy from down the street whose nephew was having an asthma attack. I got out a bag of ice and a friend who was over donated some Benadryl. As they were leaving Joey's brother said, "We're hungry."

So I made some more chicken (chicken breasts in lemon/brown sugar/rosemary sauce) and took over a big foil pan for them. "It's really good, Maritza," Dawn told me. I was teasing her and calling her an old lady since her hair was all grey with dust.

Yesterday you could hear them banging away. I've never been so happy to hear noise through the walls. This morning I found the Barbara Kingsolver quote among my emails and thought it was perfect.

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.