18 Jan 2015

Le Smoking.

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Insert brand here. Photo: Kiwiev, 2014.
You’ve come a long way, baby. Photo: Kiwiev, 2014.

I used to smoke. A little.

Smokers gauge the personal investment in their habit by the number of packs they smoke per day. Even when I did smoke cigarettes, the idea that I would smoke an entire pack in the course of one day was enough to make me queasy. But I counted as a smoker, and I know this because I would roll my eyes at non-smokers at house parties who would bum a smoke the minute they got tipsy. It’s incredible how the most health-conscious among us will crave a cigarette after enough vodka.

The most I ever smoked was probably three cigarettes a day, on average. This habit — and, relatively mild as it was, it was a habit to be sure — started in high school. I did it so my sister’s older friends and my best friend Annie would think I was cool. I didn’t need to try and impress Annie once we truly bonded, but she continued to impress me for a number of reasons, including her commitment to smoking about a pack a day of Marlboro Reds. Reds! By sophomore year! The last time I saw Annie was in Oklahoma, and we hit up a Kum n’ Go to buy a couple packs of smokes. We smoked a couple, guiltily. The older you get, the less cute smoking becomes. Annie has kids. I’m at high risk for cancer in my intestines due to my health history. Put ’em down, girls.

In college, though, that was when I smoked for keeps. Smoking was cute when I was twenty and besides, it was strategic. I was studying theater and everyone knew that auditions were essential, but the real casting happened on the stoop of the theater building between rehearsals and classes. If you wanted to date or go to parties, you flirted and got invites whilst puffing away on your American Spirits. The smokers were the cool kids and I was desperate to be cool by the time I got to Iowa City. In high school I was only grudgingly accepted. I wasn’t a social leper but in the galaxy of Popular Kids, I was a distant, dwarf star. I remember being at the legendary senior party at the end of senior year; just being there engendered love for my fellow classmates, even the ones who would never talk to me. Ben Radish* and a bunch of other people were in the kitchen of the house where the party was and Radish squinted his eyes and regarded me from across the room. He lowered his can of Natty Ice and nodded his head, barely.

“You know, Mary Fons? I guess you’re pretty cool.”

It was like a blessing from the Pope. It’s amazing how much I craved validation from a high school wrestler in a HyperColor shirt whose last name was Radish.

Anyway, the whole cool kid thing, the strategy thing with smoking, it kept going after college because I continued to make theater in Chicago and I was a waitress. Same cultures. Same five-minute break structure in a person’s day. You smoke, therefore you have friends; you smoke, therefore you have something to do between the early morning rush and the mid-morning rush.

But I bagged smoking some time ago. Years ago, with occasional “Let me just see if this still works for me” transgressions. It does not. The more you are not a person who smokes, the more revolting the stink of cigarette smoke becomes, at least for me. I like the way a cigar smells when it’s being actively smoked twenty feet away from me; I do not like the way my shirt smells even after simply holding a cigarette for someone while they button their jacket.

I walk the cities where I live and see people lighting up. I get it. I used to really love smoking. It was a habit and I’m a fan of habits, especially ones that relieve anxiety (e.g., patchwork, chewing my cuticles, rocking ever-so-slightly during intense conversations, etc.) But smoking is for the birds. And the birds don’t even smoke. So probably no one should.

Of course, we could all vape. 

*Name changed.

 

15 Jan 2015

A Tale of Two (More) Rats.

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Hello ratness, my old friend.
Hello ratness, my old friend.

The quilters of Washington, D.C. are making me feel so at home. I had dim sum with Jan last week; she’s a dynamo at work and fearless in the sewing studio and now she’s invited me to a Burns Supper! You gotta google that! And she doesn’t even know I’m Scottish! I cannot wait for this and will give a full report!

This week, I had my second blind date: I met fabulous quilter Carissa. We had tapas, threw back a few sidecars, dished about life, and went to a show. Carissa is very smart, very beautiful, and confessed to me that when she read about my rat problem, she died inside because she once had a rat problem, too. I had second thoughts about leaving the old place; I thought maybe I had been a weenie, that I should’ve just gone on the road for a few weeks and made the management company deal with it before I paid rent. The tale Carissa told me on Tuesday night wiped every molecule of doubt that I had or will ever have about getting the [beep] out of that rental.

Carissa told me that they moved into this house in Dupont Circle years ago. And they started hearing scratching in the walls. She told me that my description of the smell in my former home (“almost sweet” and “sewage-y”) was hard to read because it was dead on and she’d never forget it. Over a few months, the smell and the scratching had stopped being sorta weird and had become Serious Problems. Exterminators were called in. A hole was chopped in the wall. Traps. Estimates.

WARNING: What I’m about to tell you is true and it is so revolting and horrible, you might not be able to handle it. You will probably scream, so make sure that’s not going to scare anyone in the room, especially if they are at a hot stove or putting together a model airplane.

One night, Carissa was up with her newborn baby. She heard splashing. Splashing in the bathroom. Carissa got up, holding sweet little Milo in her arms and, confused as a person would be, hearing splashing in the bathroom in the middle of the night, she went to the bathroom and turned on the light.

There was a rat in the toilet. The rat was in the toilet because it had crawled up through the sewage pipes and was now in the toilet, attempting to claw its way to freedom. I assume “freedom” would have meant Carissa’s bathroom floor.

We were in a taxi when Carissa told me this and I had my mittens over my mouth going, “Ugghgghhh! Ughhhghhhh!” and rocking the way a severely autistic person might rock for comfort. The taxi guy was alarmed. I repeated over and over, “No. No. No. Carissa. No. No, Carissa, no. No.” My new friend told me they did not stay in that house very long after that.

And, real quick, because I can’t believe this happened today, a second rat story:

I turned a street corner and saw one of those two-story inflatable rats that union workers use when they’re striking. The huge rat was outside a hotel and the union guys were blowing whistles and shouting; cars were honking in solidarity. I had to meet someone in the lobby so I crossed the picket line (is that what I did?) and the man working the front door opened the door for me.

“That rat’s for you guys, eh?” I asked. It was possible it was a construction job the union was protesting, not the hotel itself.

“Is that what that is?” the guy said.

I blinked. “Sorry, what?”

“It’s a rat, okay. I thought it was a bear.”

I looked at him. He appeared to be a fully-functioning person. He had a job, obviously. I did not understand, however, how he could spend his entire day in the shadow of the biggest rat in the city (we hope) and though he had to actually step over the creature’s inflated pink tail to go hail taxis for people, he did not register the species of this animal. Forget the cultural context he should know by his age; did the six-foot wide pair of rodent teeth not give this away??

There will be no more rat stories on PaperGirl for a long, long time. This is my promise.

12 Jan 2015

Make It Work: How To Spruce Up A Bad Apartment

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My living room. It wasn't finished at this point, but it was getting there.
My living room. It wasn’t finished at this point, but it was getting there.

It’s true that I had a moment of real despair when I moved into my new apartment. When the door shut behind me, I saw, as if for the first time, the unit for which I had just signed a six-month lease.

The flat screen TV was gargantuan. Its tyrannical throne was a clear glass table that was long and rectangular, too short and shallow to use as my sewing table, far too big to stash in a closet. The cords for the TV, the DVD player, the cable box, the router, the other router and several extension cords were in tangled hell on the floor and because the table was glass, the tangle was practically the centerpiece for the room. The cream-colored sectional had at least eight slightly dingy cream-colored pillows and a couple ratty light blue ones; a weak afterthought. There were several fake plants. Ugly, mass-produced “art” adorned the walls and my heart just sank. The drapes were heavy and blue. In every kitchen cupboard I found dozens upon dozens of glasses meant for alcohol: plastic martini glasses, plastic margarita glasses, shot glasses, drinking glasses, juice glasses. There were Dollar Store tzchokes everywhere, and for some inexplicable reason, more tupperware containers in a lower kitchen cupboard than I have ever seen in one place in my life. This apartment was a revolving door. It put the “corporate” and “temporary” in “corporate temporary housing.”

Something had to be done. A lot of somethings. I sat like Rodin’s Thinker and thought and thought. Then I dove in.

Curtains: down and folded and into the utility closet. All but six glasses — for water drinking and juice — were stored in a cupboard with 98% of the tupperware. All tzchokes stowed. All art (except this one really cool framed cloth Guatemalan thing, which I love) replaced with the few pieces I brought on my journey this year. I wrastled with the couch cushion covers until I got them all off and into the washing machine they went. I salvaged exactly three white bowls in the kitchen’s dish cupboard and stowed every other dark blue plate and bowl. Because ew.

I completely dismantled the “entertainment station.” None of it survived. My new home might be on life support, soul-wise, but it didn’t stand a chance with a TV. I unscrewed the cable box, unplugged everything, untangled all the cords, organized everything and into a box in the (pleasingly spacious) bedroom closet they went. The 1,000 plastic hangers I found went into bags and into the utility closet and I unpacked my wooden hangers and lovingly hung my wardrobe. The glass table I swapped for the lean-to desk that was weirdly in the bedroom and the tall, boxy, glass IKEA storage shelves I moved together and set them at an angle for my fabric. Tablecloth on the glass “dining” table which is now my sewing studio. Design wall, up. I ordered dimmer switches for the track lighting in the kitchen and living room. Down came the depressing brown shower curtain and I found a very cool, very bright white one on Amazon and promptly ordered that, too. And a gorgeous, Lucite lamp for my sewing table.

And I was reminded, once again, that if you put enough quilts and enough books in a room, you cannot fail.

Every scrap of linen was washed in practically boiling water and I turned the easy chair at an angle toward the window so that I could look out at the tops of the buildings in the morning as I write and have my tea.

And now? I love it here. My surface remodeling worked and, dare I say, it’s darned cozy in here. I could almost feel the space going, “Where have you been all my life?”

Uh, Iowa, Chicago, New York and many points in between. I pick up a few things.

10 Jan 2015

The Postal Museum: Must See

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The famous "Inverted Jenny" stamp, circa 1918.
The famous “Inverted Jenny” stamp, circa 1918.

As I get more familiar with Washington, DC, the more I absolutely love it here. Stinky rats? Gross. Relocation? A real pain in the neck. But it’s a testament to the city that we both keep rising to the top of the poo bucket. And another thing: it’s so fantastic when you trust yourself and what you trusted yourself about — in this case, truly disliking living in New York and believing a move to Washington was a wise decision — is validated. It’s so hard to put the breaks on a relationship, to dive headfirst into pain like that. But what’s left of my guts is reliable; I trusted my insides and so far my situation seems to be okay. Better.

Yesterday I had an errand to run next door to The Postal Museum. Writing letters is a joyful activity for me and I love stationery and stamps. I love envelopes and office supplies. Clearly, I am the demographic for a museum of this kind.

Sometimes, one’s true nerdiness cannot be hidden by any veneer of coolness or hipness that has been constructed over time. My squeals of delight in that museum yesterday elicited alarmed looks from my fellow museumgoers but there was nothing I could do. Here is what is in that museum in the first room of the whole place: 

A Stamp Act stamp —  A STAMP FROM THE FREAKING STAMP ACT!!!
The first stamp in America ever — EVER!!!!!
A letter from the Pony Express — THE BLINKIN’ PONY EXPRESS!!!!!
An Inverted Jenny — I was less amazed by this but it’s the most expensive stamp in the world
Fumigated and perforated letters from the time of cholera — CHOLERA!
Other things that were amazing — OTHER THINGS!!!!

And they had so many interactive stations, too. There’s this huge screen where hundreds of stamps are cataloged and you use the touch screen to scroll and scroll through all these stamps and you can select your ten favorite to put in a virtual stamp collection! And then you can email it to yourself!

And there was a kiosk where you could put your face on a stamp! And work on the design and even give it the rate you wanted! (I did a couple versions, but my finest work was the 10-cent stamp.) And you can email that to yourself, too! My 10-cent stamp never came through my email, though, so I guess I’ll have to go and play on it again. Oh, darn.

To me, the mail is like airplanes: I can’t believe we made this stuff. That these systems work. It’s just the coolest thing in the world that you can send a piece of paper to me and I will get it at my house and it’s very cheap to do this.

I leave you with the exquisitely beautiful, unofficial creed of the USPS. It was a line Herodotus wrote a long time ago, translated by a Harvard professor named George Herbert Palmer. If you don’t get chills reading it, you must be in a very warm room:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Send a piece of paper today, won’t you?

8 Jan 2015

Differently Abled.

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The Gallaudet Cheerleaders, 2013. Photo: Gallaudet University.
The Gallaudet Cheerleaders, 2013. Photo: Gallaudet University.

 

I’ve returned to my Bikram yoga practice and it feels great, except that the first time I walked into the Capitol Hill studio on New Year’s Eve day, a real cruddy memory came flooding back.

In 2009, I was here in D.C. with the Neo-Futurists, performing for a month at Woolly Mammoth theater — which is just a few blocks from my new home, incidentally. It was that trip that caused me to fall in love with D.C. At the time, I was extremely committed to my yoga practice and would get up at five in the morning to walk to the Capitol Hill studio to take the six a.m. class so that I could be showered, fed, watered and at the theater by nine o’clock rehearsal. I kinda can’t believe I did that.

I had an ostomy bag for many years. I had my first bag for about a year and then the surgeons poked my intestine back into my body. I got sick again right away, so I had to get an ostomy again. The second time, I had it about two years. When I was well enough during both periods, I kept practicing yoga. Bikram yoga is 90 minutes inside a room heated to 105 degrees. An ostomy bag is attached to the body with a wax seal and a sticker. Before every class over those years, I would have to tape up my bag with athletic tape so it wouldn’t fall off, then empty it, and then explain to the teacher before class that in between the standing series and the floor series, I would probably have to go empty it again. I usually did; the second half of a Bikram class is done largely on your belly. A bag full of… Well, you can imagine. Typically, it’s not cool to leave a Bikram class at all, so it was my responsibility to apprise teachers of my special case.

The only time any Bikram teacher ever made me feel bad about my ostomy bag was at the Capitol Hill studio, and I’ve practiced in Bikram studios coast to coast.

“Hey, hi,” I said to the teacher with a smile. “I just wanted to let you know, I have an ostomy bag, and I usually have to go to the bathroom between the standing and floor series, so if that’s cool with y—”

The teacher looked at me like there was a bug crawling across my face. “Oh. Well… Is it…visible?” she asked me, her lip kind of up by her nose.

I blinked. No one had ever asked me that before.

“Uh… No, not… No. I mean, you can see a little bit of the appliance and the tape, I guess, poking up over my shorts…” I trailed off. I felt so lousy. It’s amazing how the differences we have become our “normal” until someone makes them bizarre and therefore wrong.

The other day in the changing room, I heard some very unusual sounds. Two girls were making the sounds, which were kind of breathless squeaks. I turned to see two young ladies smiling and jumping up and down and signing to each other like crazy. Either they hadn’t seen each other in awhile or one of the girls was having a really great day and telling the other about it. One of the girls had a Gallaudet sweatshirt on and I remembered that the prestigious college for the deaf, Gallaudet University, is here in D.C.

Bikram yoga is a class that is taught by one teacher who has a 90-minute “dialogue” that he or she recites. It’s the same every class. You listen to the words, you do the poses. Those girls come to yoga, but they can’t hear the words the teacher is saying. But Bikram yoga is also — and always — taught in a room with a floor-to-ceiling mirror in the front of the room. So you don’t really have to hear the dialogue, I realized; you can just watch what the class is doing and keep perfect pace.

I understand why “disabled” is a term that a lot of people don’t like. “Differently abled” is a far better choice of words.

6 Jan 2015

Maps The Clock Puts There.

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Bed illustration, 1869. Photo: Ward, Lock, & Tyler of London, via Wikicommons.
Bed illustration, 1869. Photo: Ward, Lock, & Tyler of London, via Wikicommons.

Dangerous things include:

Alligator hunting
Necking in the 1950s
Taking a job as a logger
Quoting your own poetry

The last thing could be the most dangerous of them all, but I’m going to do it, as I feel a kind of heady, delirious courage at the moment. I have been packing and moving boxes since dawn — right about when it began to snow. All the possessions have been transferred. I am in a new home. I no longer have keys to my little Capitol Hill treehouse.

Here’s the quote, from a poem called “A Cake/For The Fall”:

“The lines on our faces are maps the clock puts there/the forehead shows that path of the first worry/the cheek charts the hardest years/laugh lines are easy landmarks/but beware fatigue at the corner of the eye, my son/it belies the optimist’s gaze/I can spot a broken heart in a happy man a mile away”

The poem was written many years ago and when I wrote it I thought I was writing about a boy, but now I think I was writing about time. Days like these — periods of time like these — put lines on our faces. Today I picked up the third? fourth? duffel bag of fabric (Pendennis tucked into one of them for safe keeping) and I fumbled for the new set of keys for the apartment that is ugly and cramped compared to my darling little rat-infested house. I stomped snow off my shoes. I looked out at the view that I have; I saw not the grand dome of the Capitol Building but square, squat buildings that look like boxes, and a highway, and an empty lot. The apartment itself is a box inside a building that looks just like the others out there. Only the snowfall was familiar as I pressed my nose to the glass.

It’s not so bad. It has its charms. But oh, I cried.

And I thought about my poem because I remember when I was a kid and I’d look up at adults and think, “They look so weird and different from me.” It’s the lines. Adults have lines in our faces, and even if they’re not wrinkles yet, kids do not have even a whisper of these. They don’t have lines because they haven’t moved twice in a month, in winter, after love faltered in a different apartment in Manhattan. They haven’t forwarded their mail. Again. Of course, I don’t want any of that to happen to any kid, but it will. It’s the law of nature, little dude, little miss, and you, too, will grow up (and grow old) under the law. But it gets better after it sucks for awhile. That’s a law, too.

Tomorrow, my sister and her fiance are returning home from their 10-day trip to India. What stopped me blubbering on like a dweeb today was remembering that I want so many, many things, but most of all, I want them home safe and sound.

4 Jan 2015

On Limbo and Luck.

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Good luck, I think? Image: Wikipedia.

Last night, I wrapped a fluffy robe around myself and sank back into the pillows of my hotel room bed. I’ll do the same tonight. I still don’t have a home, but tomorrow I may. The management company has been working with me and though we may not invite each other to any Christmas parties anytime soon, I think we’re going to find a solution soon.

As I looked at company’s available properties that could potentially work until I leave D.C., I thought about luck. Many well-intentioned folk commented yesterday that I “couldn’t catch a break” or said that “bad luck is following you!” I am in no way criticizing these comments; every single person meant the absolute best and I’m mentally bear hugging everyone, here. But I disagree about the bad luck part.

Well, mostly. Renting an apartment with rat infestation and a bunch of other problems that seemed to be problems before I moved in is pretty bad luck. But I had to think hard what other events people were citing as such. The breakup wasn’t bad luck; it was a breakup. Heartbreaking and deeply disappointing, of course. But I don’t think falling in love and then needing to step back and go, “Hang on, is this right, right now, like this” is a stroke of bad luck. It’s just the way love goes, sometimes, and we heal and scar and do it again, usually.

And intensely disliking living in New York City wasn’t bad luck; I just didn’t like living there. And remember, I knew New York. I anticipated loving it there, and tried to, but it didn’t take. Now, if I had closed my eyes, plunked my finger down on a map and said, “Ah-HA! That’s it. I’m moving to Reno!” and once in Reno I drove my car into a cactus, got shingles, lost all my money in pinochle and got married to a dude that turned out to be a convict on the lam, that would be lousy luck. But taking a chance and then being honest about the dead-end of the chance, I don’t see it as bad luck so much as Stuff That Happens To A Person. Does this make sense?

Losing my Kindle could count as bad luck, but I should’ve been paying attention.

Today was really hard. It’s pouring rain and I have to walk to my hotel; I came back to the house to get a few more things. But I maintain am a wildly lucky person and have always considered myself as such. The mere fact I was born in America in the latter half of the 20th century is a lot that is far luckier than the vast majority of the billions of humans on this planet. That I have brains to figure this apartment thing out as an independent woman with decent credit and a cell phone, that I have a roof over my head at all is pretty good. I absolutely adore Washington, DC. The architecture, the sky over the city, the fact that I live in the same county the Lincoln Memorial are all reasons to be crazy happy. And it’s not New York. Man, I really hated it there.

My housing situation is beyond lousy and okay, a little on the unlucky side. But I will have a roof over my head and that is never to be taken for granted. Heck, with all the luck I have in my life, perhaps it was time to balance those scales.

I can take it.

1 Jan 2015

Me And George.

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Portrait of George by Gilbert Stuart Williamstown. Not another town! Gah!
Portrait of George by Gilbert Stuart Williamstown. Not another town! Gah!

Moving to a new city means relinquishing your card to the People Who Know Where They’re Going club. Because you don’t. Know where you’re going. Even with Google Maps, sometimes.

And now, a quick history lesson with creepy details:

Several hundred years ago, America’s forefathers formed a more perfect union. Around the same time, the urban planners of Washington, DC drew a circle around all that hot, democratic action and built a city around it. Washington is organized into four quadrants (NE, NW, SE, SW). To have a city divided like that, you have to have a central locus point. Are you ready to freak out?

The central locus of DC is a crypt.

Did you know that?! Turns out, to properly navigate your way through DC, you gotta pivot on a skeleton. Well, sort of. Here’s the deal: the Capitol Building has a rotunda, which is the inside of the big, beautiful Capitol dome (currently covered in scaffolding because it’s having some work done.) The Capitol crypt is located directly below the rotunda and was made to be the entrance to George Washington’s tomb, two levels down. I know!

George Washington politely declined to be entombed in the Capitol Building, however. Since he was dead when he expressed his wishes, he got whatever he wanted. (Just kidding; his wishes were in his last will.) Washington is actually buried in Mount Vernon, VA, on the family’s estate. But the crypt and tomb are still the smack-dab middle of DC and you can tour the place, which I’m going to do as soon as The Great Holiday Goof-Off officially ends. (I love The Great Holiday Goof-Off but it’s cutting into my DC museum time.)

From the crypt, the streets in DC are numbered going east, from 1st to 2nd, to 3rd, and so on. They are also numbered the same as they go west: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on, but these numbers are claimed by different quadrants. The same system goes for the north and south, but the city planners used letters instead of numbers or names. To go north of the crypt, you hit A, B, C, etc.; heading south, you do the same thing, but — and I know you’re getting this, students — you’re in a different quadrant. To go to 4th and F Street, you need to know which 4th and which F Street you need. Because there are two of those.

This system makes a lot of sense as long as know which way is north. If you get turned around, you’ll end up on the other side of town pretty quickly. (Ask me how I know.) Then there’s the matter of all the state-named diagonals that cut through the grid. Thinking of those right now gives me a headache. I slightly hate Massachusetts Avenue; it has foiled several of my expeditions. It goes down but it heads west! It’s… I can’t talk about it.

One of my favorite writers died of cancer a few years ago. He made the comment that the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is a bromide with essentially zero truth behind it. If you’re in a car accident and walk away without a scratch, you might have a little swagger. If you learn from mistakes that were painful, you may become wiser. But chemotherapy, round after round, doesn’t make anyone stronger: it makes you weaker. If you have surgery after surgery on your abdomen (ahem) your abdomen is not stronger, suddenly; it’s fragile. It’s delicate. It’s at risk.

I’ve been wondering if that thinking might apply to having to frequently figure out the layouts of new cities. It’s something that I’ve had to do a lot in the past eight months. Does it help my sense of direction to be constantly thrown into a new place? Or are my navigational skills compromised because, for example, I just figured out which streets in Manhattan have bike lanes and no longer need that information but I must learn quickly whether the Glenmont Red Line train heads to the NE quadrant of town or the NW quadrant. Am I strengthening my brain or scrambling it?

Have map, will use brain cells. Because I need groceries.

 

27 Dec 2014

“Missy! Missy! Coffee!”

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Waitress taking a breakfast order at Kahala Hilton Hotel, Hawaii, USA, 1989. Photo: Wikipedia.
Waitress taking a breakfast order at Kahala Hilton Hotel, Hawaii, USA, 1989. Photo: Wikipedia.

After I had been in Chicago a few years and worked a few (very) odd jobs, I returned to my roots as a waitress. I knew how to wait tables. The first job I ever had in life was waiting tables at the Northside Cafe in Winterset, IA, right up on the town square. As soon as I was fourteen I marched through the cafe’s front door and asked for a job. The concept that I could do things and be paid for them was exciting. Far as I figured, I’d be doing things anyway; why not get paid for it?

Two women, Vicki and Betty, trained me at Northside. “Training me” meant they showed me how to make coffee and how to write out a ticket for the kitchen. That was basically the extent of their guidance. Vicki would’ve shown me how to smoke cigarettes if I asked, but I didn’t. I learned the front of the cafe first; a few months later I was allowed to take a section in the back room where the Lion’s Club had meetings. You could still smoke back then and I emptied a lot of ashtrays when I wasn’t making pot after pot of Folger’s.

I would work myself to death at that place. The Northside was packed on the weekends: farmer’s needed biscuits and gravy at 6am, the pre-church crowd was there from 7-9am, the late-risers came in from 9-noon, and then it was after-church folks and the typical lunch crowd. When the cafe closed at 3pm, we had to sweep, mop, scour, marry (ketchup), and lock it all down. It’s easy to mythologize about the past; the fish we catch get bigger and bigger every time we remember catching them. But my mom and sisters could attest to my exhaustion after a busy weekend at Northside. I’d drag myself through the back door of our house, throw my apron on the dining room table, kick off my sneakers and sink into the couch. I’d pull out my wad of tips and recount them while my feet went “whomp-whomp-whomp” with achiness.

Because good, god-fearin’ waitressin’ was programmed into me early, I never lost the knack. In Chicago, I took a job at a new brunch restaurant called Tweet. (This was pre-Twitter, by at least five years, I’ll have you know.) A friend of a friend recommended me for one of three waiter positions and I got hired. The owner, a brassy (brilliant) businesswoman asked me several questions in the interview but the two I remember were: “What’s your sign?” and “Are you on drugs?” I replied with “Leo” and “No.” My first day would be that weekend.

Chicagoans love their brunch. We love it. I’m sure there will be a brunch tax at some point. For two years of the three I worked there, Tweet was one of the hottest brunch tickets in town. The restaurant was only open on the weekend, which made it exclusive, in a way. The neighborhood around it was fairly crappy at the time (Uptown East), and the food was really, really good. There was also a bar next door where you could drink if you had to wait for a table and everyone had to wait for a table. On our busiest days, a three-hour wait was not that weird. And people did wait that long. (I’m telling you: brunch tax.)

If I had been tired after a day at Northside, I was a dead woman walking after a shift at Tweet. I made a lot more money, though. A lot more. Upwardly mobile white people from Lincoln Park tip better than sixty-year-old men who ride combines most of the day. Who knew?

I was thinking about my life in aprons the past few days as I encountered hotel staff and waiters working through the holiday. I feel you. I don’t work those shifts now, but I did for years. Working on Christmas, say, ain’t that bad — but it’s not that great. Having fun with the people you work with is the best thing for it, so try to do that.

And cheer up. All around you are members of the Secret Order of Former Service Industry Providers. I carry the card, myself, and we’re fantastic tippers.

21 Dec 2014

The Invisible Time: On Aging

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Fashion, Food, New York City, Story | 1
Publicity still from "Advanced Style," a documentary by Ari Seth Cohen, 2014.
Publicity still from “Advanced Style,” a documentary by Ari Seth Cohen, 2014.

Yesterday in New York City, before I had to go to the airport for my flight home to D.C., I had lunch with my friend Anita at Fred’s, the restaurant inside Barneys on the Upper West Side. I’ve been to the Fred’s in Chicago several times and hard as it is to admit, New York Fred’s is better. And by “better” I mean the people-watching is better. The black-clad waiters weaved through the place like a pack of minks, slipping in and around everything that was moving, which was everything inside the restaurant: people, trays, wine bottles, large amounts of money, etc. There were sets of friends having wine and gourmet snacks, small and large families eating lunch. There can be no doubt: Fred’s is a restaurant for the well-heeled (or spies like me) and there’s a lot to observe. The accessories alone!

It was a good place to have lunch, what with my extremely good news yesterday. I wore my fur coat. Anita looked smart, as usual. She’s been a New Yorker for many decades and she is of that city in all sorts of ways: artistic, shrewd, streetwise, and honestly slightly weary (in a charming way, of course.) We were seated and I ordered a glass of pinot noir and a hamburger; it’s a zeroed-out choice, as the cholesterol in the meat is zapped by the red wine’s flavonoids or whatever they are for lord’s sake.

Somehow the conversation turned to age. At thirty-five, I look at age quite differently than when I was twenty-five, obviously. Anita, being sixty or so, looks at it in her way, and what she had to say about her age was fascinating and depressing, though it ends well. Sort of.

“I’ve come through the period of time when I was invisible,” Anita said, cutting a piece of her omelette. “It’s strange, because as a woman, you’re invisible for a long time and then suddenly you’re an old lady.”

“Woah,” I said, and the rest of my life flashed before my eyes. There may have been a purple hat involved.

“See, when you’re in your fifties, more or less, you become invisible in society. It was amazing how no men would hold the door for me for a long time. Women would push past me. I was a persona non grata, really. Doors would literally close in my face. But then I turned sixty and now everything is much better. Because people see me as an old lady and the courtesy is back. Doors are held for me every time. People smile. It’s great.”

A forkful of salad was frozen halfway to my open mouth. In my peripheral vision, I saw a girl of seven or so in a black velvet holiday dress with a big red bow in her hair. She had the most beautiful, milk-and rose-colored skin of any child I had ever seen. The best soap, the best lotion, the best bath in the world is money.

“Oh, Anita. That’s…fascinating,” I said. “I’m glad the invisible period is over. How long did it last?”

“About nine years.”

When I turned thirty-three, I played around with saying I was thirty-two. I just liked thirty-two better. But I cut it out pretty quickly. It’s lying, for one thing, which is not okay. And for another thing, I earned thirty-three. The year before that was hard and great and hard and great and why on earth would I erase it.

It ought not to be invisible.

9 Dec 2014

Point A, Meet Point B.

by | posted in: D.C., Day In The Life, New York City | 0
The kitchen and dining room of my new home.
The kitchen and dining room of my new home.

NEW YORK

“The moving gods giveth, the moving gods taketh away.”
–– A cold, wet me @ 6:08am

Several weeks ago, when I moved out of the apartment Yuri and I shared, my sister and I loaded and re-loaded a hand-truck with boxes and hoisted duffel bags over our shoulders. We schlepped my stuff six blocks or so, from the sad and quickly emptying unit at 2nd Ave. and St. Mark’s to Nan’s place at Ave. A and E. 11th. Back and forth, back and forth we went till the job was done, sister pack mules. Every time I move (and I seem to have a knack for doing it all the time lately) I am reminded why some people find a place to settle and commence growing moss. Moving is like… Well, imagine if you had to put all the things in your house into boxes — absolutely everything. Then imagine you had to carry all those (heavy) boxes out of your house, and load them into a vehicle. And then imagine you have to take those (heavy) boxes out of the vehicle, carry them into a new house, and then unpack everything! Ha! It’s like, “No way! That would never happen!” and “That doesn’t even make sense! All your belongings?? In boxes?? Please. How would you know where anything was?”

Moving is kinda like that.

When we moved my things to Nan’s, we had good weather and were grateful for it. But the moving gods are fickle. Around 5:00 this morning, a cold, hard rain began to pelt Manhattan. This was unfortunate, as our plan was to load everything into the kidnapper van at 6:00 sharp. Nan had jury duty today and had a limited window to help me. Moving quickly, pre-dawn, we got the van loaded in about 40 minutes. Just as we were finishing up and I was wondering what to do with the van until it was time to leave several hours later, a parking spot opened up and I successfully parallel parked the beast for the second time in two days.

It rained all the way till the New Jersey Turnpike; a driving, hard rain, washing the roads in water that was clearly trying to be ice. In New York, even the rain is a hustler.

D.C.

When I got to Washington, D.C., I swear, the sun broke through the clouds for the first time all day. The rain stopped. I found my street. I got the keys from the lockbox. I stepped inside…and positively squealed with delight. There’s an upstairs and a downstairs! There’s a fireplace! There’s a big, long table in the dining room that has already been converted to my sewing table! Sure, the upstairs is just the bedroom, the fireplace isn’t functional, and my dining room is small now that I have appropriated it as my sewing studio, but I couldn’t possibly be happier.

I unloaded the entire kidnapper van all by myself in about an hour. Pure adrenaline.

There is nothing easy about ruthlessly, relentlessly dedicating yourself to the pursuit of happiness. You will cut your dry fingers on cardboard boxes, you will get mud on your boots and your jeans, you will say goodbye to people at airports and, over time, you will misplace or break everything that is possible to break or misplace.

When you sit down, though — when it’s finally time to sit down and you make a cup of tea with honey — that’s when, just for a minute, it stops being so damned hard.

8 Dec 2014

My Life In Definitions.

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Word Nerd | 1
The only thing harder than defining "existential crisis" is doing it in Pictionary.
The only thing harder than defining “existential crisis” is doing it in Pictionary.

Define “reality.” Define “said.” Define “jump.” So hard, right?

Defining object nouns is easier. “Mozzarella” isn’t too bad; “Denmark” is doable. But the verbs and the gerunds and past participles are crazy-making. By the way, one of the five definitions of “jump” is “to push oneself off a surface and into the air by using the muscles in one’s legs and feet.” The definition of “said” as an adjective is “used in legal language or humorously to refer to someone or something already mentioned or named.”

Definitions are so hard to do (for me, anyway) that looking them up for even common words is one of my favorite activities. And now, I present to you definitions that are shaping my life these days, each edited for length. All definitions from the New Oxford American Dictionary, except where noted.

peripatetic (adj.): traveling from place to place, esp. working or based in various places for relatively short periods

breakup (n): an end to a relationship, typically a marriage

moving (adj.): relating to the process of changing one’s residence

existential (adj): of or relating to existence

crisis (n): a time when a difficult or important decision must be made

work (n): activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result; mental or physical activity as a means of earning income; employment

yo (exclam.): a slang way of saying hello, usually friendly and casual [Urban Dictionary]

hustler (n.): an aggressively enterprising person; a go-getter

26 Nov 2014

The Thanksgiving Bowl.

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Family, Sicky, Travel | 0
A cheerful greeting from the Apple Valley Lanes website.
A cheerful greeting from the Apple Valley Lanes website.

Thanksgiving is on WiWi this year, and I am presently nestled in a nook.

The nook is the cozy, upstairs reading room at our island cottage; the nestling is due to me sitting in an over-stuffed chair (replete with ottoman), a well-worn quilt wrapped around me so that I am a quilt burrito. It would be great to have armholes in this quilt burrito but it’s bad for my reputation to go around cutting armholes into quilts. I adjust.

We couldn’t get from Chicago to the last ferry boat last night, so we had to stay on the mainland; “we” is me, my younger sister Rebecca, and her fiance (and my friend), Jack. We have a favorite little motel in Sturgeon Bay but it was too early when we got there to turn in for the night. The options for movies were lackluster at best, and I have no idea what possessed me, but when my sister said, “Well, what should we do tonight?” I blurted out, “Let’s go bowling!”

Rebecca and I both took bowling in high school. At Winterset Senior High, bowling, square-dancing, line-dancing, and tinikling for some incomprehensible reason. I remember being pretty good at bowling and liking it, but I have not kept my game up since.

We found a wonderful bowling alley very close to our hotel. The Apple Valley Lanes in Sturgeon Bay gets two thumbs way up. The proprietor was friendly, the onion rings were scalding hot, the shoes were sufficiently deodorized and Lysol-ed, and best of all, there was room for the three of us to have our own lane, our own computer to keep score, and a table for our drinks.

Jack was excellent; Rebecca was quite good, once she warmed up. I was excellent to begin with but in the second of three games, an evil spirit entered my bowling ball. My last game, I bowled a twenty-seven. Twenty-seven! I can hardly admit it.

My body has been absolutely in agony the past week. The stress of the move, the upheaval, the changes in work — the ol’ girl’s run ragged, I’m afraid. Terrible nights turn into excruciating mornings and I beg for sleep only to wake again, run to the bathroom, weep, bathe, and do it all again 30 minutes later. I say this because a) writing it out here it makes it not feel like a nightmare that only I see; and b) it makes three hours at a Sturgeon Bay bowling alley not just fun but fundamental.

Twenty-seven?!

25 Nov 2014

Quilt Now: A Day In the Life of Mary Fons (Feature)

by | posted in: Day In The Life | 0
A screenshot of the article because I have not the skills to post the piece as a PDF.
A screenshot of the article because I have not the skills to post the piece as a PDF.

As editor of Quilty, I schedule, select, and edit a great number of features about the quilters of today. But this summer, friend and colleague Katy Jones, editor of the UK magazine Quilt Now, featured me. I was flattered and wrote a “Day In the Life” piece for her. Here is the text from that piece. It’s great until the part where I talk about how great it is to be in love. I forgot I wrote that part.

Anyhow, thank you, Katy! And everyone, if you can get your hands on a copy of an issue of Quilt Now, do it. It’s a great magazine and I’m honored to have been able to write for it.

A Day In The Life of Mary Fons
by Mary Fons

“Whether I’m traveling or at home, I wake early. Usually very early. Pre-dawn. When I was a kid, it was so hard get out of bed. I remember thinking how weird it was — weird and enviable — the way adults like my mom just naturally got up in the morning with minimal fuss. Of course, I would learn that plenty of adults would like to sleep in, but for most of us, getting up in the morning does get easier as we get older. This is likely due to the fear of responding in an at least somewhat timely manner to the crushing pressure of daily living.

If I’m home, I rise and immediately made a large pot of tea. If I’m on the road, I rise and immediately make hotel room coffee. Either way, there is lots of milk and sugar involved. I can do exactly nothing until I’ve got hot tea or coffee in my hand in the morning, and that’s that. The morning tea or coffee time is for me to write in my journal or read. Sometimes, when I’ve got a big event coming up or I’m under deadline, I’ll use that tea time to work. But I prefer to have my tea or coffee for an hour with just personal pursuits that involve both reading and writing.

Then it’s time to produce. I edit Quilty magazine, and plan and host the Quilty show online. I speak and teach across the land, host a webinar each month, I’m working on a new book, and I do numerous other projects at any given time, so there is always slightly too much to do. I do not, at press time, have an assistant. That would be amazing.** So I’m on my own to write copy, tweak copy, book travel, send bios and teaching plans, stitch, and otherwise coordinate All The Things. I also blog (nearly) every day and I see my blog, PaperGirl, as an integral part of the Mary Fons “thing,” so that is most certainly a priority, even though it makes me zero income.

I’m a freelancer, a contractor. It’s kind of an odd set-up, since I do the vast majority of my work for one company (F+W) but I’ve been a freelancer since ‘05 and I’m stayin’ alive. I like the freedom that comes with it, even though there are frequently invoicing headaches, checks to track down, and of course I have no employee benefits and have to do my own taxes. Still, for a creative person such as myself, I can see no other way to live. I can work at 6am or 6pm, on the road or at home, and there are no clocks to punch. (I would probably actually punch a clock if I had to “check in” for work at this point.)

There is a downside to working this way: I work almost constantly. It’s not the working I mind, but there are times when I wish a janitor would like, shut the lights off in the office and tell me to go home. There is no janitor. I do have a partner now, which is very good; he can tell me to stop working or not take on another project. When I was just a single gal, living for the city, there was no reason to not take another road gig. No one needed me at home to make dinner or, you know, just be home because that feels good. I’m not suggesting my existence was bleak — I rather enjoy being a career gal — but it’s been wonderful to have someone sort of put their hand on my shoulder and tell me to chill out for two seconds and sleep in once in awhile.

I do have my fun. I’m a Bikram yogini, so I go sweat it out in the hot yoga room. I just moved to Manhattan from Chicago, so now I have NYC as a playground and I do intend to start playing asap. I like to dance. I love to read and write. And I really, really love to design and make big scrap quilts. So that’s fun for me. And I mentioned the partner thing: I am wildly in love with someone who fascinates and delights me and teaches me all kinds of new and wonderful things. That’s my fun, too, just being with Yuri.

I think a lot about how short life is and how I, Mary Fons, have to do something extraordinary with my time here. I don’t have a choice. I don’t know when I go to bed. When I’m tired, I lay down. I suppose it’s usually around midnight. And I dream, dream, dream. And then I do it all again.”

23 Nov 2014

Electric Memory: Electric Youth Perfume

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Luv, Story | 0
The fragrance. The woman. The legacy.
The fragrance. The woman. The legacy.

Trudging through Kmart yesterday, my sister and I both had the same disorienting experience at the exact same time: we both caught a whiff of Electric Youth perfume. Here’s what that moment looked like:

MARY: “Dude. I just smelled Electric Youth.”

NAN: “Dude. Me too.”

Electric Youth was a perfume (never a “parfum”) unleashed on the marketplace in 1989. The target demographic was the tween, though that term had not yet been coined. Back then, it was the mighty “teeny-bopper” dollar that the fragrance was trying to capture, and capture it it did. Those out to profit were the record executives who ran the career of pop sensation Debbie Gibson. Electric Youth was the first in a long, long line of celebrity-inspired fragrances and I, for one, had to have it. I loved Debbie Gibson and had a cassette of her album. I believe that album was called “Electric Youth.”

There were two dueling pop stars when I was in fourth grade: Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, whose last name was withheld in hopes Barbara and Judy would more quickly recognize her as one of their own. I was on the fence as to who I liked more and my neutrality came at great peril: it was expected by one’s elementary school peers in those days to choose sides. Debbie Gibson was the good girl. She was blonde, blue-eyed; kind of a white-tube-socks-with-white-Ked’s girl. She wore scrunchies and boxy vests printed with geometric shapes. Tiffany, on the other hand, was understood to have weaker moral fiber. Tiffany was a redhead, for one thing. Nothing but trouble there. And her first (only?) hit was a cover of the Shondell’s “I Think We’re Alone Now,” which contained the lyrics:

“We’re runnin’ just as fast as we can/holdin’ on to one another’s hands/tryin’ to get away/into the night/and then you put your arms around me and we tumble to the ground and then you say: “I think we’re alone now…”

Tiffany had a little curl to her lip when she sang her song and she put a little stank on the “into the niiiiight” part, which clearly meant she was having sex. She also wore acid washed denim jackets, so… Mothers did not like Tiffany.

They dug Debbie, though. Debbie’s first single was the docile, sweet “Only In My Dreams,” which pleased these mothers. With Debbie, their daughters’ sexual fantasies were happening exactly where and when they should be happening: while they were fast asleep, alone, locked in the house.

If Tiffany had had a perfume, it would’ve smelled musky, with notes of Aqua Net and a car dashboard. But Tiffany never had a fragrance; only Debbie signed that deal. Electric Youth perfume was a deeply synthetic, fruity floral with no “notes” of anything, no “low end” of wood or caille lily or moss. This was candy in a spritzer. The fluid itself was colored pink — an easy decision for the executives, I suspect. And inside the clear bottle was a pink plastic spring, clearly showing the exuberance — nay, the electricity — of youth. And we loved it. We sprayed it on with wild abandon and our parents’ headaches meant nothing. Nothing!

Electric Youth is not made anymore. You can find it on eBay and Amazon, but these are bottles of old perfume; as you can see by the picture above, the pink has faded and reviews are mixed as to whether the scent is still any good (or there at all, for that matter.) But in its prime, Electric Youth left its pink, sticky fingerprints all over the limbic systems of young American girls across the nation and when Nan and I smelled whatever we smelled in Kmart yesterday, it transported us back to a simpler, cheaper time.

19 Nov 2014

You Got Me.

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Luv | 0
These are clouds, but they could be ice floes; it could be winter, it might be fall. Photo: Ave Maria Moistlik.
These are clouds, but they could be ice floes; it could be winter, it might be fall. Photo: Ave Maria Moistlik.

On Monday morning, Yuri and I will board a plane and sail through freezing cold air above New York into the freezing cold air above Chicago. We’ll hold hands. It will be our last plane ride together for a while. When we land, he will make a connection and get on a second plane; I will go down an escalator, pull my luggage off the carousel, get into a taxi, and head into the city to meet with my sister so we can drive up to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving.

When my ex-husband and I separated, I remember not crying for awhile. I was intensely sad, of course, but I was also numb. Marriage counseling had not helped. Hours and hours and hours of conversation, fights, reconciliations, fights, and more conversation had not helped. We were both drained and angry; a bad combo on its own, made worse when doubled. The one-bedroom apartment I had secured across town was sparse, but I set up shop as best I could. My bed was an air mattress for awhile, but it was peaceful there. I could have my tea in the morning and think, which is what I needed to do.

It was when I went to the grocery store for the first time by myself that the new pain, the “this is really happening now” pain hit me in the chest. I went with my basket to the shelves and suddenly felt disoriented. I didn’t need grape Gatorade anymore; it was my husband’s favorite. I didn’t need to get a loaf of bread, now; only he ate bread in our house. I could buy soy milk without anyone making a face because the soy milk would be living in my refrigerator. My refrigerator, not our refrigerator. Though I was in a building that held anything a person could possibly want to eat or cook, my appetite vanished. I couldn’t actually make food for a long time. It was too painful to cook for just myself. So I ate cheese. I ate stuff someone else cooked. Anytime I saw grape Gatorade, I had to literally turn my head away so it wasn’t in my field of vision. The power of purple water.

The momentum of the upcoming adventure in Washington, the confession of disliking New York — while true and relevant, they are distractions. It’s impossible for me, right now, especially while Yuri and I are still under the same roof this last week, to understand love. I have been trying every day as I walk through New York City or travel for a gig or put my head on a pillow. I know how to express love. I know love when I feel it or see it.

After that, I got nothin’.

 

15 Nov 2014

Miss Fons Goes To Washington.

by | posted in: D.C., Day In The Life, Travel | 3
Yo, Mary Fons!
Hello, Beautiful.

My apartment is on Capitol Hill.

It has a fireplace, bookshelves, a stove, tall leaded windows, and, from what I can see from the pictures, a fluffy bed ready to be outfitted with a quilt. I have done the math. I have signed the lease. I won’t break even living in Washington, D.C. for the next few months, but it’s not going to be too bad; being a freelancer all these years has taught me something about saving. I have moved things mentally, financially, and physically and I am ready.

Austin was a good guess; Portland, too. I liked my friend Lance’s suggestion of Philly and I considered Pittsburgh after being pleasantly surprised by it while there for Spring Quilt Market. But early on in the troubles, I knew I’d go to our nation’s capital, a city I have long had great feeling for. In 2010, I spent a month performing with the Neos at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in D.C. I remember walking home from the theater so many frosty nights, stars twinkling, the light on the Washington Monument slicing the black glass sky. Being with friends was the best part of the trip; living in the seat of our democracy came a close second. What can I say? I’m a patriot.

In April, I have a Quilty shoot in Chicago and leave immediately after to film TV in Iowa. May brings my sister’s wedding up at the lake house. Depending on just how much I love or dislike D.C., I’ll be there for sure four months, possibly six. I doubt I would want to be away from my beloved Chicago any longer than I have to, but as I have come to learn, un-learn, and re-learn lately, anything’s possible.

The breakup has been awful. Awful because our emotions go through the spin cycle on a daily basis. I love you, it’s over, it’s not over, you’re selfish, you’re selfish, this is crazy, this hurts, we’re making a mistake, I’m leaving, leave, fine, fine, fine. No breakup is fun, but I have experienced only a couple of real gullywashers and this would be one of the two. (I do take a certain pride in the fact that an actual dish was broken during all this, and I assure you it was not because someone dropped it on the floor.)

Someone I told about my move was surprised. She said, “What?! Like Washington D.C. is less crowded or cheap than New York??” I was surprised right back. The National Mall is wide and clear as Lincoln’s Reflecting Pool and the apartment I found is far prettier and roomier than anything here for the price. It will be cold there, but I’m from Iowa. I can take it. D.C. exceeds all my criteria; I can bundle up for that.

Washington will be a pause. I plan to watch snow.

14 Nov 2014

Relocation Options: Option Three, “Variety Pack”

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Travel | 0
I wanted a picture that communicated "variety pack" and all I got was this terrifying picture of donuts emerging from cups of flavored coffee.
I wanted a picture that communicated “variety pack” and all I got was this terrifying picture of donuts emerging like Swamp Things from cups of flavored coffee. Also, nothing in this picture is anything you should accept into your mouth.

After eliminating Iowa and Wisconsin from my list of relocation options, and knowing without question that I cannot stay in New York or return to Chicago before mid-June, I face a selection of further possibilities. For a woman with boundless curiosity, no children, and work she can do wherever there is an Internet connection, this list of options might be overwhelming. But I am not overwhelmed because I have very real limitations to consider:

1. I don’t have a car and really don’t want to get one. This rules out a number of extremely cool places, I realize. I’m sure there are folks who live in these places with no car, but for me, looking at this six-month chunk of time before me, I am desirous of a decent public transportation system. Without a metro pass in my wallet, I feel kinda naked.

2. I am a gimp. Several people have — wildly, imaginatively, fabulously — suggested Paris! Dublin! Rome! and these would be fantastic places to go for six months, but I can’t play fast and loose (or foreign) with my health situation. Trying to explain to a Parisian ER doctor that I don’t have a colon and that I might be dying would be difficult, as I do not speak French. It would also be frowned upon, I think, if I asked to Skype into my upcoming teaching gigs and lectures here in the States. Why aren’t people into that?

3. I do like a city. One offer came through for a cabin in Kansas that was so darling and serene-looking that I nearly wavered from my plan. (You do know that I have known for some time what I’m going to do and that I’m unspooling it day by day to torture you, right? Excellent.) But not only do conditions No. 1 & 2 prevent anything too remote, I need the action of a city, the hum of it. I am a person who writes things and likes the opportunity to occasionally read those things onstage. I like a selection of libraries and natural food stores. I like cracked pavement and a skyline. Yes, I could go full Annie Dillard or Thoreau and tap into the hum of nature (probably louder than any city, I realize) but I need to save Walden for my fifties.

So what do these restrictions cancel out? Places icluding, but not limited to:

Anywhere not in the continental U.S.
Most of California*
Walden Pond
Asheville
Nashville
Butte

Let’s recap. For the next six months, I need a U.S. city with a great public transportation system, good hospitals, a vibrant lit scene (including, for example: live lit events, book things, readings, lectures, libraries, etc.) cool architecture, interesting people to observe, and more space than New York City so that I do not bite anyone.

Can you guess where I’m going next month?

*San Francisco fits the criteria but its cost of living is equal to NYC. It pains me to eliminate it, but that’s out.

13 Nov 2014

Relocation Options: Option Two, Wisconsin

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Travel | 2
Me, showing off my quilt from the upper level of the Arnie J. Richter ferry boat, Washington Island, WI. It was about 10 degrees that day.
Me, showing off my quilt from the upper level of the Arnie J. Richter ferry boat, Washington Island, WI. It was about 10 degrees that day.

Picture me in barrister’s robes and one of those funny wigs, pacing back and forth on the wood floor as I offer for your review, ladies and gentlemen, a quick look at the facts:

1. Yuri and I have agreed that living together is not what we should do right now.
2. My condo in Chicago is unavailable, as I have tenants in the unit through mid-June.
3. I do not wish to stay in New York.

If you’d like to consider with me Option One, you’ll need to read the full post here. Now, in your mind, please take this wig off me and get me out of those barrister robes and into something sensible as I proceed with what, as I see it, is my second option:

Option No. 2: Sunrise Cottage — Washington Island, WI
My family has blood ties to an extraordinary place called Washington Island, a 23-square-mile island seven miles off the tip of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. My grandparents are buried there. My great-grandparents are buried there. My aunt and six cousins live there. My mother taught quilting at the fiber arts school up there; two summers ago, I taught quilting there, too. As children, my sisters and I would spend weeks of our summer vacation, splashing in the lake waters and lazing around watching VHS videos, trying to get MTV on some old TV set. Even through the divorce and on through all four years of college, every summer we were (and are) playing and relaxing and communing with WiWi. (W.I. = Washington Island, W.I. = Wisconsin, ergo, “WiWi.”)

About six years ago, my family finally made a home up there. We had been cabin renters through the years, but now we have a cottage — a cozy, beautiful, light-filled, perfect cottage on the lake. Because of this happy event, we can now have Thanksgivings, Christmases, and winter escapes up there, too. There’s a fireplace, a boathouse, and lots of board games and if heaven is real, it probably looks a lot like a snowy afternoon on WiWi while a pie bakes in the oven and you’re smack in the middle of an amazing book. Sounds brilliant, right? Why not go there, sink into the comfort and joy of this magical island?

What are you, nuts?!

I can’t be on an island in the middle of winter! I travel for work a good 40% of my time! It’s a good thing I love airports because I’m in them a lot. Getting to and from the airport, to and from a gig, to and from a shoot, etc. is always a bit of a schlep. Adding an icy ferry boat ride, a 2-hour drive to the nearest airport (Green Bay) and Wisconsin weather from October through about May is not my idea of a wise plan.

The other problem with WiWI is that it is a remote place in psychic terms as well as geographical ones. Just 660 people live there year-round. I wrote most of my book up there during a two-week stretch in the winter of ’13 and I got a little squirrelly. The frosty, starry sky is beautiful at night, but the land is plunged into pitch black starting around 5pm until the sun rises around 6am. Staring into a roaring fire is super over a four-day weekend up there; staring into the fire night after night and you start becoming the one-woman sequel to Altered States. Mom and Mark aren’t there year-round for this very reason. Six months on WiWi and I might end up curled up on the couch, listening to the all-Catholic talk radio station, eating jumbo marshmallows out of a wicker basket.

New York out. Chicago out. Iowa out. Wisconsin out. Tomorrow, Option Three.

*Note: I cannot believe all of the gracious offers I have had since yesterday from people offering me to stay in their home or come to their city. Thank you.

 

 

 

11 Nov 2014

My Funny Valentine.

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Luv, New York City | 5
On point, except that I'm not blonde.
That’s about right, except that I’m not blonde.

If I’ve ever had to handle anything delicately, it would be this.

With heavy hearts on both sides, Yuri and I are taking a break. I don’t know how long the break will be, I don’t know if the break will be a K.O. punch. It would be tacky (and weird) to go into specific details at this time as to why the split is occurring, so I’ll speak in general terms and hope that does it.

There’s not hostility between us. We’ve gone there, but neither of us are mean. We’re just sad, really. Lives sidle up next to each other and how sweet it is when they do. If those two lives start taking divergent paths, a decision must be made. Do you tie a cord to one another and charge one direction, tied, choosing which way seems best? Maybe you tie the cord and make it stretch, stretch, stretch to accommodate the two of you trekking in opposite directions. Or perhaps you cut it, figuring that’s the best way to head out into the world. Maybe it’s just pruning we’re doing. Maybe not.

I won’t go on about how marvelous this person is, how sweet he sleeps. I won’t dive deep into his singular style or how dearly I love him. If you read this blog with any regularity, you either know I do (love him) or have read that between the lines. Yuri loves me a lot, too, and he would tell you why, if you asked him. Going on and on about this mutual admiration would beg the question, “Well, what’s the problem, then?”

It’s that cord problem. It’s in the details.

The lump in my throat and this odd tightness in my chest and my eyes filling up with water dictate that I need to stop typing. I may need a doctor. Yuri and me, breaking. New York and me, never meant to be. What’s a girl to do?

Next up: The Options.

9 Nov 2014

I Shot A Gun Today, Oh Boy.

by | posted in: Chicago, Day In The Life | 0
I wish I could have been wearing this!
I wish I could have been wearing this!

A friend of mine who lives in Chicago picked me up after we wrapped the Quilty taping. Neither of us had much time, but a few hours was better than nothing. I was expecting a cup of coffee and a snack, but instead, we shot guns.

There’s a huge, down-to-the-studs remodeling project going on in the warehouse that is part of my friend’s business. And there’s a giant wall of insulation that is going to be torn out tomorrow. On Sunday, not a soul is in the warehouse and that wall of insulation is smack in the middle of that absolutely enormous, raw, space, and if a person had a Colt 45 and some wax bullets, why, it would be really fun to shoot a few of ’em through that big insulation wall, now wouldn’t it?

It’s just what we did.

My friend was in the armed forces years ago and respects every firearm safety measure there ever was or ever will be. He made sure the wax was placed correctly, that the chambers were loaded just so (there are six chambers but you only load five) and he had me stand far away so he could take the first few shots and ensure everything was okay to let me try.

The combination “BANG!” of the pistol and the essentially instantaneous “PAP!” of the wax slug as it shot through the insulation board was intoxicating. I cocked again: “BANG!” And again: “BANG!” and the holes appeared in that towering piece of two-inch thick pink insulation board. I was shooting a little high and brought the gun down, or so I thought. My shots kept hitting higher than I thought they would; it made me want to get the whole bag of wax and practice till I got good. Practice till it got dark. Practice till I didn’t feel like shooting anymore.

I have no comment on the rightness or wrongness of guns. I can only comment on how good it was to see my friend, how thrilling it was to make a loud sound.

2 Nov 2014

If You Can, You Must.

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Paean | 3
Feathered Star Quilt. No other information available. Blame Pinterest.
Feathered Star Quilt. No other information available. Blame Pinterest.

Earlier today, I posted a picture on Facebook of the Feathered Star block I’m working on. The Feathered Star is to quilt blocks as the triple salchow is to figure skaters: complicated, with potential for bloodshed. I’m going about the beast using a paper-piecing method. There are triangles that measure an inch finished. There are set-in seams. I worked hours on my block and it’s still not quilte done (or correct.) The first block of any new quilt is the one that takes longest, but in the case of the Feathered Star, I highly doubt I will hit a “stride.”

So why do it? Why do anything that is hard? Why move to New York City? Why consider career changes? Why take a risk on love? Why get highlights? Who cares?

Because if you can, you must.

I maneuver through the world all too aware of the clear and present danger of death. I am arguably obsessed with death, obsessed with human life’s stunted growth; angry, really, that one day the janitor will turn out the lights and lock up. I think of death every day, sometimes several times a day. My thoughts of death are so woven into my consciousness, I’m sure most of the time, I don’t realize I’m thinking of it at all — but I am. Constantly. Death informs most of my decisions.

Let me be perfectly clear: it’s not fear of the other side. That’s not my problem. It’s the end of this. The end of the grand pageant. All the color, the pain, the love and lovemaking, the children, the travel, the failures — all the muck, mire, and glory of a life, however long or short, gets me every time. Every human life is full of suffering; I know about that. I’ve had needles stuck in to my abdomen while I was awake and I still love it here. I miss Chicago every day and I don’t know what the next few months will bring for my health, my heart, or my hair. I mean, I change my hair all the time. Anything could happen.

The love of being alive is concomitant with my fear of death. They are two sides pulling the same rope; we have a sick equilibrium, here. Adoring life leads to rage; rage that the experience I happen to love has to end. I’m like an eight-year old at the best slumber party ever and my mom just called to say she’s coming to get me in 30 minutes. Why? Because she said so, that’s why. I throw wild, hysterical fits but it does nothing. Mom’s on her way. Get your coat on.

So I have to make the Feathered Star. If I can, I must. And I have to come to New York. Because if I can, I must. I must fall in love. I must try. I must say yes, because if I can… You get the picture.

A friend of mine said recently, “I’m out of the advice business.” I never got into it, but I’ll stick my neck out this one time: If you can, you must. There is not another go-round. This is not a warm-up. Grab it. Make the hard quilt block. Kiss the boy. Finish the job.

It’s never too late until it is.

25 Oct 2014

Advice To Oneself.

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Tips | 0
Josephine Bonaparte Mixed Media Sculpture by George S. Stuart. Photo: Peter D'Aprix for the Historical Figure Foundation.
Josephine Bonaparte Mixed Media Sculpture by George S. Stuart. Photo: Peter D’Aprix for the Historical Figure Foundation.

At dinner last night with a number of F+W Mediennes et Mediassieurs, I spied one of my favorite people in the group and began to flap my hands and wave my arms at her. I looked like I was having some kind of episode, but I wanted to get Aly’s attention so that she would come sit by me. I was not having lunch at a junior high cafeteria, I realize, but I never get to see this girl for more than five minutes at a time and I wanted to visit with her. This was my chance.

Aly works with the Original Sewing and Quilt Expo (an arm of F+W) and I’m certain her title has the word “coordinator” or “manager” in it, but I think of Aly as a producer. Because producers make things go. Producers solve small problems before they become big problems. Producers are the people you never want to get sideways with because they will save your hienie. (Aly’s saved mine a few times.) Whether they are producing a film, a stage show, or a quilt extravaganza, no good production ever happened without someone like Aly involved. It’s also worth noting that she is a kind of protege of Marlene.

So I asked Aly, “How’s life?” and she had lots of interesting and intelligent things to share, of course. Aly is twenty-five. If you remember anything about being twenty-five, you will recall that it is not an easy age to be. Whether you’re settling down or just gearing up to not, the world is big and choices seem to have either Godzilla-level impact or be so inconsequential to the rest of humanity that you feel like a bat in an echo chamber full of bats. Drunk bats. Drunk bats in an echo chamber with Facebook. Drunk bats in an echo chamber with Facebook and the latest iPhone. It’s hard, is what I’m saying.

“Mary,” Aly said over cheesecake, “If you could give your twenty-five-year-old self advice, what would you tell her?”

This is why Aly is going to be just fine. That’s a great question. I thought it about it for a moment because I took the question very seriously, but I knew the answer right away.

“I would trust myself more,” I said. “I made a lot of decisions at twenty-five that were based on a fundamental belief that pretty much everyone but me knew what was good for me. I thought I had to listen to them. I thought I had to fix myself. But I’m not broken. I’m not a failed human who has to use life as one, long fixer-upper. My instincts are good. I’m smart. There’s no one on the planet just like me, so hang the blueprints. Be original.”

Aly nodded, and I think she was satisfied with that. But I forgot to tell her something really important, a sidenote to the sentiment above:

“The marvelous thing about accepting your own originality is that you get to avoid the pain of living other people’s perceptions of how you should be. This is beautiful. But you still have a lot of work cut out for you, because you have to defend yourself your entire life. You’ll have to defend your path, your way, your schtick, your ‘thing’ the whole time. People like blueprints. A lot. You don’t use one, you get freedom — but it ain’t free.”

Aly, the picture up top is a figurine of Josephine Bonaparte, Napoleon’s first wife. I put “quarter life” (as in “quarter-life crisis”) into WikiCommons and I got all these pictures of historical figurines by one George S. Stuart. You see, the artist makes “quarter life-size” sculptures. Get it? I thought this one was a good one for you. Josephine was a badass.

17 Oct 2014

Meet Mickey.

by | posted in: Day In The Life, New York City | 1
Keep smiling, mouse. Your time shall come. Photo: Wikipedia
Keep smiling, mouse. Your time shall come. Photo: Wikipedia

We have a mouse.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “No, Mary Fons. You live in New York City. What you have is a rat.” But I assure you, we have a mouse. If it were a rat, I would not be writing this from inside the apartment because I would be in Toledo.

About a month ago, I was here, minding my owns and zip! The ol’ peripheral vision registered a tiny off-black dot moving extremely fast across the parquet floor. When you see a mouse for the first time, you don’t think you have. Reason scolds fact into thinking it imagined something. I guess if you walked into a small, windowless room and flipped on a light switch, if there was a mouse in there, you’d see it. But when there are rugs, table legs, and adult-onset exhaustion in the mix — and you aren’t used to seeing mice — you just go back to your book.

“I think I saw a mouse,” I said to Yuri several days later. My peripheral vision had caught the fast-moving off-black blur again. Fool me once, mouse, shame on you. Fool me twice…well, you’re not gonna fool me again.

“Naw,” Yuri said.

A few days later, I came home from a business trip. With wide eyes, Yuri told me about the astonishingly nimble, light-footed mouse that had been keeping him company while I was gone.

“That little sucker moves fast,” he said, he told me how he was up and working into the wee hours several nights in a row and saw the mouse once each night, lasering from one side of the apartment to the other. I said we should get some traps or ask my sister if we could borrow her cat. My sister’s cat was born sometime during the Jurassic Period; we opted for traps.

And we named him Mickey, naturally. We’re tell ourselves we’re battling just Mickey, but sure, that’s naive. Where there is one mouse, there are many; where there is one critter that can steal the cheese from the trap without getting caught, there are legions of them, all in Cheese College, learning the trades while stupid humans ask each other if maybe chocolate will work, or peanut butter.

Earlier today, Yuri said, “Mickey. Just like a woman. Can’t live with ‘im, can’t live without ‘im.”

This made zero sense. In no way did this make sense on any level. Sometimes this man tries out idioms just for fun, just to say them. He’s curious and provocative and I smacked my forehead and shook my head, lamenting this.

But he sets the traps.

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