My Kind of Town, Not My Kind of Drugs

I've always been willing/happy to move to another city if there was some other city with a solid concentration of my friends. The more I look at condos, the more I realize that everybody isn't going to just magically congregate in one place and I need to keep chugging along towards stability and pretend adulthood and as long as there's nowhere else to go, buying a condo in Chicago makes a lot of sense. Hell, this one was my idea, not my parents'. And there's a lot of great stuff out there. So condo it is!

So la-dee-da, staying in Chicago for at least Obama's first term (roll your eyes at me because you always knew I'd be in Chicago forever anyway) and now a few of my favorite people may come to me.

One is applying for jobs post-masters degree graduation. He was like a less healthy (mainly because I was even less emotionally healthy) version of NBF back at Liberal Arts College. I do have a history of turning into an idiot around him, but the last few years I seem to be over the idiot thing (I'm not sure when and where he turned into a human being instead of a demigod, but as long as the glitch in my perception is fixed, it's a decided improvement) and we have much fun together in less-than-gigantic doses.

My friend who lives in Madison auditioned for Chicago Civic Orchestra, and I reeeeeally want him to get into that for next year because he'd have to come down here more often but could still stay living with his fabulous girlfriend in Madison while she finishes med school, and Civic is an excellent gateway to many other Chicago (ok, and other) orchestra opportunities and she's all Midwestern Cheesecurdy anyway and unlike some friends that I would just be trapping in a web of evil, I have a sense he could be perfectly happy as a Chicagoan. Mwahahaha.

Am I trying to justify planting my condo-buying roots here while NBF gets ready to move to his no longer certain or shiny future? And why do I cling to NBF most when he's fussy? I cling to a lot of people most when they're a certain level of fussy. Too fussy and they can go fuck themselves. But that familiar level of sad and self-hating and you are suddenly the magic little center of my existence. Case in point: my dog. Those of you who know my dog, stop laughing.

My health has been particularly frustrating. In the past 16 days I've gone from a daily dose of 225 mg of Effexor to 0 Effexor to 40 mg of Prozac to 60 mg of Prozac to now 10 mg of Prozac. Slap on top of that the 1 mg tabs of Lorazepam I get to bite in half as needed to keep me from jumping out of my skin and make sure I can still digest food and I'm a treat to be around. 900 mg a day of Neurontin, 100 of Topamax, and .05 of Synthroid feel like old friends now. The foundation. The sandy beach atop which I must build my castle. Oooh, cheesy metaphor.
At any rate, all the stomach troubles and the jumpiness was due to the Prozac. My psychiatrist thought by switching directly from the Effexor to the Prozac I could avoid the Effexor withdrawal and I'd take to the Prozac right away. Instead, I went through the full withdrawal thing and then all the batshit insanity was classic serotonin side effect crap, meaning my body did not adjust nicely to the Prozac and my psychiatrist added anxiety meds just to counteract the Prozac and dropped me waaaay down on the Prozac and I'm still feeling jumpy and useless and having trouble digesting things but in theory it will go away in a few days. In theory. And my head still hurts and my left eye is still twitching. You don't notice the eye thing unless I point it out and you look very carefully, but it's there and it's weird and I'm broke and I can't get anything done towards being a productive member of society and it's making me very fussy.

How many more years until you go to the doctor, they stick you with a needle and instantly know your exact body chemistry and what's wrong and how to fix it?

Back to happy thoughts, brain. Happy happy happy thoughts. Hot Dog Sam and her hubby are likely to move to Chicago in a few years, too. They would totally live in my neighborhood. We'll totally force our dogs to play together the way our parents used to force us to play with their friends' children of various ages and personalities, regardless of compatibility. It'll be awesome.

Cold Comfort Ferrari

NBF is back from his South American Christmas and New Years and I am very happy. I missed him way more than I expected to. I keep telling myself it was because I was sick for much of the time, battling the nastiest cold I've had in at least 10 years (I still have the remnants) and just wanting live human companionship that required minimal effort on my part. I have other friends who are zero effort, but they do not live in my neighborhood. I've been working on cultivating my other Chicago friends, and I have some great other Chicago friends, but they still require calls and plans and wearing pants, and when NBF moves, that's a big hole he will leave behind. I knew that already, but his three week absence made it clear how much it's going to hurt.

My car died again. No clue why this time. I was driving down Lake Shore Drive when it started feeling funny, like the acceleration was jerky even when I wasn't accelerating or something, but no lights were going on and we were almost to where we were going anyway and I pulled into the turn-off lane and started to break when all the lights came on at once and the car died right there and wouldn't start up again. The City of Chicago tow truck people came before I'd even found the phone number for AAA and towed me onto Lower Wacker so I'd be out of traffic (no tickets or impounding or anything, it's just their way of getting you off the highway so you don't cause more problems...very smart in my opinion and the woman who towed me was very nice) and I then got a four hour time window from AAA that they wanted me to spend in the freezing cold in the car waiting for the tow truck. NBF spent the first two hours with me, no truck. Called AAA back and they said I could wait in a cafe and they'd give me 15 minutes warning before the truck arrived so I could get back to my car. NBF went home to walk the dogs and I went into Descartes on Michigan Ave to drink hot chai late and knit until the tow truck came about half an hour later.
The driver of the AAA truck was probably in his 40s and while we drove through snowy rush hour traffic, he rambled and I coaxed his life story. He's a single dad who ended up raising his two daughters after his wife of 15 years turned out to be batshit. He didn't say batshit, but the woman flew off the handle and had multiple affairs and didn't really fight for custody or anything then tried to blame her older daughter for not just saying in court "I want to go with my mom." Mind you, I only heard his side of the story, but from his side, she sounds pretty batshit. He's also extremely happy and proud that his daughter made it through high school considering what a rough time she had with the divorce and everything and that she's not pregnant or into drugs, and while he hopes she will some day go to college or something, he's glad she's come this far. It was nice to hear. He just seemed like a really solid, decent guy trying to make the best possible lives for his two girls. It was a good story.

Now I have no car again. It would be easier if I really had no car and just lived my life carless and maybe belonged to iGo or something for the times I needed a car. It would be easiest if my car didn't randomly die on my every other month. I don't know what I do wrong. I take it for its regular oil changes. I feed it premium gas. I even got it exciting snow wipers this year. Still, it insists on hating me. Maybe I should blame the entire country of Sweden. Next time, I'm getting a hybrid Camry. The Camry gods are punishing me for straying.

My sister moved to Portland, Oregon. Portland is the new Brooklyn. I'm still looking at condos here in Chicago, even though it's freezing and I think I'm crazy and still can't really believe I'm looking at condos.

Now that it's 2009, my 10 year high school reunion is officially next year. If I don't do something awesome really soon, I'm going to have to make a baby so I have something to show for myself. I was so scarily driven in high school and the people who actually remember me probably expect me to be a Fulbright scholar or have a Pulitzer or something by now, instead of spending a good 8 years trying to figure out how to reconcile what I want with what I think I should want and how to make what I want happen without feeling guilty for not doing what I think I should want or do.

Warm sleepy dog on lap is a wonderful thing. Too bad I don't feel like that's enough to show off, and that I need something to show off, because warm sleepy dog makes me happy. I'm just still not strong enough in what makes me happy. Bah.