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The last day of my summer semester at UIC was one of those days when you should really just go back to bed so nothing worse will happen to you, except there’s a mass murderer in your bedroom that thirsts for your blood so the bed isn’t safe, either. And there’s probably a monster underneath the bed.
Just one final exam and finishing two essays, that’s all I had to do. There was plenty of time in my 2-hour commute to get in one last study session, finish outlining essay 2 and put the final glowing editorial touches on essay 1.
Cue the scary monster-movie announcer voice:
“What Angela didn’t know was that it was Lollapalooza time, the Chicago festival for boozy suburbanites crowding onto trains and converging in Chicago to see top-billed bands and consume over-priced beer and food on a stick. Angela thought she could finish her school work, but what Angela thought was wrong…terribly wrong. AHAHAHAHAHA!”
I believe studies have been done that indicate drunken suburbanites speak at the same decibel level as jet engines and it is just as meaningful to listen to their train conversations as it is to stick your head directly into a jet engine. The noise level was occasionally punctuated by the shrieks of young children of hipsters who were also on their way to Lollapalooza, with or without the booze. I was horribly distracted, and our train was horribly delayed due to people unclear about basic train-boarding procedures.
I had planned ahead. I took an earlier train because my usual run had been arriving late. I was prepared. But now, the extra hour of essay-writing time had to be used for another run-through of my Media class notes. No problem; I had been pulling A’s all semester in this class.
Crypt Keeper:
“Angela was soon to learn that her teacher had devised a plan so diabolical, so unheard-of in the annals of UIC testing history: the cumulative multiple choice and essay exam. One hundred and thirty questions that would twist any scholar’s mind into sweaty knots of pure despair.”
That may be a slight exaggeration. But it was in fact a 130 question test, and even though I had studied all my notes, I expected my final to take 45 minutes (based on previous exams) and it actually took 105 minutes. Leaving me MUCH less time than I expected to work on my essays and then drop them off in my professor’s office before getting home in time to go to worship band rehearsal.
Around this time I got hungry. Joe had packed me a PB & J sandwich with the crusts cut off, and spread with cherry preserves – one of my absolute favorites. On my second bite, my front teeth clamped down on what I later realized was a fragment of cherry pit, one that broke off two little chips on my incisors and cracked one from bottom to top. I am still surprised about how much this can hurt. It took a bit of time for me to get back to my essays, but forge on is what I did.
Believe me, the novel pages flipped and the keyboard started to self-ignite. My laptop overheated so I moved into the computer lab in the Richard Daley library and finished them there. ETA Updates to Joe were increasingly desperate, until finally I conceded defeat at 6:15. My essays were works of art, but there was no way I could get home by 7:30.
Crypt Keeper:
“As Angela made her way across the deserted campus to hand-deliver her work to her professor, she had no idea that her efforts were doomed to failure – in fact, her entire future was about to change…”
The Ivory Tower (aka University Hall) where all the professors had their offices, was locked. Every door. I vaguely remember someone coming out of the building – a savior, who could have let me in if only I had known. But I didn’t know. And that meant I was going to have to spend $12 on a round-trip ticket on my first day off, and take 4 hours out of my day, to deliver that manuscript. I considered giving a total stranger $12 to deliver the manuscripts the next day, but then dismissed that thought as foolish. With a heavy heart I got on a bus that took me back to the train station.
Crypt Keeper:
“And this is where the final horror awaited Angela. A horror that had been incubating in the bowels of a complete stranger, one that would culminate in a moment so vile that neither woman could prevent and neither woman could ever forget.”
I took the escalator down to the train level, as usual. I stepped off the escalator and just then, a passing woman doubled over like a rag doll and vomited right on my foot. Warm, orange vomit.
Dimly, I could hear her apologizing, but I just kept squish-walking around the corner and up the ramp into the bathroom. The line of women parted for me. I stuck my right foot into the sink (thanks for the ballet lessons, Mom!) and washed my foot for at least an hour. Maybe two. Then I coated my foot and my sandal in a protective layer of antibacterial gel, the stuff I usually abhor, and got on my train. Then I texted Joe my current ETA and my final misadventure.
Joe was at the “prayer concerns” part of the worship rehearsal, so he shared my nauseating story with the team. I believe one comment was, “If she has puke on her foot, maybe she shouldn’t come to rehearsal!”
I didn’t.
Now that summer has finally come to Illinois, I’m ready for a campfire. After digging up some trash trees and pruning others, you’d think we would have plenty to burn, but in the erratic and nonsensical civil codes of our suburb, it is illegal to burn your own yard waste. Basically, you can burn imported lumber but you can’t burn your homegrown lumber. Village officials apparently can tell the difference based on the kind of smoke it produces.
So the process is that we cut our trees and bundle the sticks and put them in yardwaste bags at the curb and pay someone to take them away, then they make them into Matchlight logs which we buy and are then legally authorized to burn.
Which reminds me.
It has taken me most of my life to learn that what was normal in my family was not necessarily normal for the rest of the world, and vice versa. Every once in a while a completely new revelation changes my definition of normal. Like last time I went to visit my sister and my nephew wanted to light the dinner candles. She said, “Oh, he’s such a pyro. Just like you!”
Blink blink.
I had forgotten that when I was a child my family called me, among many other names, a pyromaniac. I think this was because I liked to take a long stick and position logs in the campfire, and poke around in it all night, hold my stick in the air, make smoke rings, etc. After many teen beach parties and adult camping trips, I have found an equal number of other people who enjoy such things, and have realized that this is a completely normal human reaction to fire, probably since the first humans made a campfire.
Not in my family. The word “pyro” was not an affectionate term.
Okay, there was that one time when I accidentally set a chair on fire when I lit a piece of paper and then my mom walked into the room. I did what any normal seven year old would do – hide the evidence. Under a fluffy armchair with a fringe around the seat that burst dramatically into flames just as she got close to me.
The chair was fine, even with the fringe gone. We used it for years afterward. But “pyro” is still among my collection of personality disorders, according to my family.
I had glorious plans for winter break. I realized I had been too harsh on my kids when they would rejoice on sleeping in during their school breaks. I imagined a vast month of no deadlines, train schedules, or essays. But here’s the reality of my winter break so far:
Day 1: I slept a lot. My mom got me involved in the game “Farmville” on Facebook, which diverts me from Lit Crit philosophers like Zizek and Foucault, who won’t leave me alone after I read them this semester.
Day 2: I slept a lot. I went through my school papers and tossed out a bunch of things and organized the rest into a “Fall 2010″ folder in my file cabinet. I assembled my textbooks on the bookshelf. I will need another bookshelf soon.
Day 3: I haven’t read anything new in 3 days. I go to the local library and marvel at its smallness, after continually getting lost in the stacks at the Daley Library.
A big snag at checkout. It seems the Williams-Duea name has gotten me into trouble again. Angela WILLIAMS has a library card with $51 of library fines on it. Angela DUEA has a card with $9 of fines (which is the fault of my dear husband, not only for the name but also for not returning some books when I asked him to). Even though I am in favor of Angela Duea, who is clearly my new identity, I am responsible for $60 in fines, and no, they do not take debit cards. However they will save my two armloads of books.
I return with Jenn and we get another pile of books. At the checkout, the lady takes my money and re-integrates my identity into Angela Williams Duea.
“How many books can you check out at once?” I ask.
She smiles. “Fifty. I think you’ll be ok.”
“Maybe not,” I say, “I have another stack waiting for me behind you.”
Day 4: I seem to be spending a lot of time on the farm. My husband gave me his login info so I could create a farm on his profile, thereby running both a farm and a dairy ranch (aren’t those little calves CUTE?). I try not to notice that his friends send him more gifts on Farmville than mine do.
Day 5: Illness strikes. My tonsils, as usual, grow to the size of strawberries. I spend the day in my pajamas. I stagger to the PC to harvest my Farmville crops and finish Carson McCuller’s “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”. It is indeed a lonely hunter. If you are very sick and it’s below zero and you’re generally feeling down, this is not the book to cheer you up.
Day 6: Still sick. Changed my pajamas. First Born came up from Chicago, since we were supposed to go Christmas shopping before I got sick. I sleep during most of her visit and my throat is too sore to talk, so I watch reality TV and listen to her talk. She’s good company. Too sick for band rehearsal, but Joe brings home my annotated music.
Day 7: Feeling better. Farmville is flourishing. Joe has a new calf and I have a foal, and WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME, how can CLICKING on things be so diverting, what is this Farmville obsession? I even thought about looking up the Gurnee ordinances to see if they allow chicken coops but I’m sure they don’t. This is ultra-suburbia and nothing is allowed except buying things and raising children.
Joe’s securities license is bestowed and he is officially a securities and insurance agent with Thrivent, and I find that a steak dinner helps an illness immensely.
Day 8: Still sick, made worse by an inhaled piece of spaghetti that will soon destroy my left lung. Dickens’ “Bleak House” is indeed bleak. There’s nothing to eat in this house because I was supposed to go shopping. Going on Saturday’s trip to Chicago with the teen group is now in question. Ditto the couples’ Christmas party and the church teens’ Christmas party. All is bleak.
I think it is time to make a list of the things I intended to do with my break.
The black lady next to me keeps poking me and asking me questions. I’m fascinated with her silver fillings and the little clips that hold her teeth bridges to the rest of her mouth. She says, “I’m deaf, and my hearing aid battery just died.” She enunciates carefully. “Can you let me know if they call my number?” I realize that every time I turn away while answering her, it’s as if I had completely ignored her.
My doctor’s appointment at the county health clinic was scheduled for 1pm. When I check in at 12:58, there are already five people waiting to see the same doctor, and all of them have 1pm appointments. It’s not so bad for me, with my own car, but the folks using public transportation get pretty nervous as the afternoon wears on.
We’re now visiting our doctors at the brand-spankin-new county clinic, a theoretically wonderful change from the abandoned hospital building we used to visit. At this new facility, the carpet and new seats are the same brilliant epilepsy-inducing colors you find in a movie theater or a cruise ship. No more crumbling plaster walls and mismatched waiting room furniture that smells like a dumpster in July, no more chipped linoleum from 1972.
Instead of checking in with an armed security guard, you talk to a receptionist through about three inches of bullet-proof glass. I take that back. You YELL through the three inches, and everyone in the room gets to hear all your private business. There’s a lot of private business going on, too, since the county has now pulled together the medical doctors, mental health professionals, and the Medicaid dentists. If I can’t identify each patient’s problems by their conversations, I try to imagine who is here to see which doctor. We all seem to look a little disheveled and crazy in this brightly-painted vault of a waiting room.
As the people are called, their crabby overworked doctors start asking about their health as they pass through the security doors, and the rest of us generally try to give them the privacy of pretending not to listen. The guy behind me is so jumpy that as his leg wiggles, my whole chair bounces around. Three patients know each other from some kind of treatment program and they’re talking about medications with as much intelligence as the doctor I’m about to see.
The black lady has given another patient a dollar to use her cell phone. This call is painful to everyone in the room. She turns on the speaker and shouts at the guy who answers the phone.
“Bill there?”
“No, Bill ain’t here. He arrested.”
“What?”
“He in jail.”
“Jail! What for?”
“I have no idea.”
“What?”
The guy on the other end sighs. “I DON’T KNOW.”
“Where he at?”
“What?”
“Which jail he at?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“What?”
“I DON’T KNOW.”
“He was supposed to give me a ride. You know where his mom at?”
“No.”
“Oh.” I can tell she’s lost, now, without anything left to say. “OK then, take care.”
Two hours later I’m called, and endure my doctor’s scolding because I haven’t gone down to the ghetto clinic for my thyroid and arthritis blood tests. He gives me the free medication that my beloved Sanofi-Adventis company is sending me for my arthritis, and I’m a happy girl. As I leave, I see a whole new crop of mentals checking in – they must be the ones with the 3pm appointments.
As I walk out to my car, I look down and realize I’m wearing my husband’s t-shirt, not my own. In fact, I happen to be wearing my husband t-shirt inside out. It was right decent of my doctor not to mention this while he examined me. When I get to the parking garage, I take off the shirt and turn it right-side in, then put it on again. Surely, it takes a certain amount of mental health to not give a damn.
