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I swear. True story.Two Years
Posted on January 19, 2012The Viking and I have been living together for two years as of yesterday. I didn’t post yesterday because my site was dark for SOPA/PIPA protest reasons. We moved in much earlier in our relationship than would probably be advised, but it’s been working. Working quite well.
We lived for nearly a year in San Francisco and now for just over a year in Chicago. It’s all been pretty damn nice.
I get worried sometimes that things will go shitty but the Viking told me to stop being fatalistic. Of course he’s right.
So it’s been two years of happy times, two years of great sex, two years of fun outings (restaurants and museums and such). And two years of gooshy love stuff to which I wouldn’t subject you readers. Suffice it to say that we say things to each other that, if said by another couple, would make me nauseous.
I’m really happy and I hope the Viking and I continue to be happy together.
I swear. True story.
One Year
Posted on December 18, 2011For one year the Viking and I have lived in Chicago. In one year we’ve gotten to know, just a bit, our new city. In one year we’ve endured what we’ve been told were the worst and wettest winters and summers, respectively.
It’s been a good year for the most part. Sure, there have been some downs, but nothing that was insurmountable. Mostly, it’s been really great.
I’m trying really hard to like our neighborhood, which has a reputation for being snobby. I fear I may be living in the Marina of Chicago. With many more young coeds and sports bars. But we’re in a good location close to lots of buses and three different L lines and any kind of store one could want. Oh, except for the Lego store, which is near the John Hancock Center.
I have found the bar that’s going to be my go-to place for dates and such. It’s not a dive bar so the Viking likes it as much as I do, which may lead to issues of scheduling if we both have dates with other people on the same night (which we often do). It serves classic cocktails, punches, and such, and the bartenders are “mixologists.” It also has a menu of snacky food from another era including a pâté of the day, deviled eggs, and various spreads for grilled bread; classic influence but modern. Since it’s not a dive bar, the guys are going to have to spend a little more on me to see if they can get in my pants, but all the other bars within walking distance always have sports on their many televisions.
The tv on in the bar or restaurant seems to be a Chicago thing. I was in a Thai restaurant that had a tv tuned to a show about kids dying of cancer and just in case it wasn’t obvious by the sickly bald kids and their crying parents, the restaurant had been nice enough to turn on the closed captioning. Is it Chicago or the Midwest in general? I will probably never know since I don’t have much interest in visiting any other Midwest cities.
The animals seem to like Chicago, though they don’t have a clue where the fuck they are. Joaquin stays inside for the most part. Isis likes snow but isn’t keen on ice, and I worry about her slipping and falling and breaking a hip like the old lady she is.
I’ve gotten to take a lot of art classes. Some just proved that I’m not artistically gifted while others were a lot of fun. I had more fun in my sewing class than I thought I would but I don’t know if I’ll take more advanced classes. The one class I took allowed me to hem curtains, something we hadn’t had in our front windows for many months. Now that we do have curtains, which are dark brown, it’s like we live in a cave.
The cave look is counteracted by some very cute lamps and an area rug, and the other normal stuff North Americans have in their living rooms. Only we have a tapestry from somewhere in Africa, a bunch of buddahs from Thailand, and an assemblage of leggy bones from who the fuck knows where. Our living room is pretty damn cool.
Sure, I miss San Francisco sometimes. I miss the hills a lot. I miss the weather sometimes, but the fall here in Chicago really was quite nice. I miss having friends within walking or public transport distance. But I’m happy to be in such an interesting city with someone who wants to explore it with me.
I swear. True story.
Happy Fucking Anniversary
Posted on December 08, 2011On my fifth wedding anniversary my then-husband and I went to a very fancy restaurant for dinner. The restaurant’s chef had been lauded in all the local and national food magazines and by word-of-mouth. Part of that word-of-mouth was from a friend of ours (Well, mine now that we’re out the other end.) who had recently completed culinary school and who was working as a pastry chef in said fancy restaurant. The meal wasn’t going to be inexpensive but it was our anniversary so we decided to go for not only the chef’s tasting menu but also the wine parings with each of the eight or so courses.
We dressed up. I wore a vintage dress that was figure-flattering. The Ex wore a button-down shirt and a tie and jacket – the same combination thereof he had worn to our wedding. The jacket was still somewhat ill fitting, but not much can be expected from the young men’s equivalent of Express when pressed for time and money.
First we had a drink at the bar and then we were shown to our table in the plushly carpeted, heavy curtained, dimly lit room. Once we settled into our seats we were brought a bottle of champagne along with a note. The friend who worked at the restaurant – who was off that night – and his partner – with whom I’d gone to law school – had arranged for the champagne as an anniversary present, which was incredibly sweet.
With champagne flutes in hand our wait staff went to work telling us about our meals. Though we had both ordered the chef’s tasting menu, our meals would be different from one another’s, as would our wine, since it was paired with our particular dishes. I was very exited, and I liked that we would have the opportunity to taste twice as many dishes and wines since we could share.
I’m not sure exactly when it happened – if it was before the first course or between the first and second courses – but at the time there was no food on the table. We were sipping our champagne. We toasted. We smiled. He got a serious look on his face.
I don’t know what I expected. I know I hoped for something along the lines of, “I hope we have five more wonderful years together,” or some other clichè bullshit. If we weren’t blissfully married – and we were not, after all we’d been married for five years – then I thought the reason for the extravagant anniversary dinner was to acknowledge that there had been some good and some bad in the prior five years and to move forward in a positive fashion.
My then-husband and I had very different ideas of what it was to move forward in a positive fashion. His idea was not to start anew with hope. Or maybe he did think he was being hopeful when he said, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” Then he said some other things that probably related to having once been so happy to be with me and those feelings fading over the years and wanting a fresh start, or something like that.
Truthfully, I didn’t hear much of anything beyond, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” and I’m not sure who at the receiving end of that sentence would. I calmly placed my napkin on the table, got up, and walked away.
I went to the bathroom where I thought about how fucking much the meal was costing us – a meal that we couldn’t afford and that we wouldn’t have planned except for the “special” occasion that he ruined with his shitty timing – and how I wasn’t about to let the insensitive idiot put that money to waste. I freshened up and returned to the table.
He told me he thought I had left. Suddenly he was concerned about my feelings. The rest of the several courses were tasty but icy, at least on my part. We did not taste each other’s courses – I had no interest in sharing with him nor in asking him to share with me.
Since we had wine with each course, by the end of the meal I felt almost happy. Well, my belly was full and my mind was intoxicated, both things that can feel like “happy” to someone who had no clue what she was feeling. Was I supposed to “make” my husband fall in love with me again? Life isn’t some fucking lame romantic comedy about how a couple can find love again.
So because I felt “happy” and because my then-husband didn’t want to be alone with me and hadn’t for some time – when we were home there was television and, except for that dinner, when we were out it was with a group – I agreed to go with him to meet up with some friends. At a dive bar. In the Tenderloin.
We had just dropped over $500 on what was supposed to be a romantic anniversary dinner but instead of spending some quality time together, he wanted to be around other people. Even after we broke up he wouldn’t fucking admit that we did so much socializing for the last few years of our relationship so we didn’t have to deal one-on-one with each other.
Sure, we were close to the Tenderloin so it would be easy to take a walk, or to be fancy and hop in a cab considering our attire, to hang out with some mutual friends. (“Friends” with whom I’ve had little to no contact since the final breakup.) And it was our anniversary so I didn’t want to go home alone, something I would have had to do since he was set on going out. So we went to the kind of Tenderloin dive bar that opens at 6am and has the kind of regulars that show up upon opening – daily.
I honestly don’t remember if it was that anniversary or the next one, or the next one, that a group of us ended up at our place after hours. I remember anniversary toasts from our friends. I remember a lot of drinking. I remember a lot of years of avoiding any difficult conversations by being too busy, by there being too many people around, by drinking too much, by wanting to enjoy a fucking anniversary meal (which is not the place or time for a difficult conversation, something my dolt of an ex-husband probably still doesn’t realize).
I swear. True story.
Baby’s First Chicago Thanksgiving (1)
Posted on November 22, 2011I had been planning for days. Weeks, really. I went through several recipe databases, did some tweaking, and decided on a menu. It would have a southwest theme so there’d be a lot of chilies.
The Viking went to San Francisco for a week so it was his job to get the dried chilies. He was also excited to bring back some decent avocados. Yes, we can get both right here in Chicago, but they’re more difficult to find and more expensive than they are in California. The Viking was staying in the Mission anyway, so it’d be easy for him to find anchos and chipotles.
While the Viking was in San Francisco I had to do my own shopping in Chicago. In all I took three trips to Whole Foods and one to Dominic’s. I couldn’t get too much on any one trip because I had only the jaunty shopping cart, the pulling of which took one of my hands. It was raining on one of my trips so I couldn’t get any more than would fit in the cart since my other hand was taken up with an umbrella.
I had to go to Dominic’s because Whole Foods is too snobby to carry canned creamed corn; I guess it’s too white trash, or college, which is why it was carried at the Dominic’s in the midst of the DePaul campus.
On the final trip I picked up the turkey I had ordered a couple of weeks prior. Yes, I really did plan for weeks.
The Viking came home with the chilies and some fine avocados. There were enough supplies in the house to make a fine Thanksgiving meal.
I had a list of things to do before Thursday. I had to vacuum, clean both bathrooms, change the linens on both beds, dust. I also had to make the achiote paste that would go in the butter that would go under the turkey’s skin; the cornbread that would go in the dressing; the brine that the turkey would swim in for about 12 hours. There was a lot to do, but I felt like I had everything under control.
Maybe I spent too much time cleaning, but I didn’t want people to walk into a dirty house. We had invited four people over; two couples. I didn’t want anyone to think we were pigs. The front bathroom I didn’t let the Viking use for a couple of days so I could be sure it stayed clean for our guests. I bought a special candle and a bunch of tulips to make the bathroom’s atmosphere pleasant. I vacuumed the couch and adjusted one of the cushion’s covers.
I put the Viking to work. He had to install our new home theater system. The system I had was not only sorely out of date but downright broken. I bought it with my then-husband in the early 2000s. It had surround sound and all, but the five disk CD/DVD player was no longer necessary. Besides, it was broken. The Viking and I had tried to watch a movie once and thereafter decided we’d use his desktop computer for DVDs. We watched AppleTV and Netflix on the big tv in the living room, and DVDs on the big monitor in the office. That was fine, but if we ever wanted to watch a DVD with anyone else the office it would be very cozy.
The new system had a CD/DVD player including Blu-ray, a connection for an iPod, and wireless internet so we could watch Netflix. We had been watching Netflix on the big tv, through the Wii, but it would often be uncooperative. I didn’t give a shit about the Blu-ray, but no new system comes without it and the Viking likes movies with explosions and I’ve heard Blu-ray is good for that.
Most importantly, the new system had sound. The old system’s sound had been bordering on bad for a while, and had recently become downright shitty. One speaker emitted only static. So not only could we not watch DVDs but we couldn’t hear all that well. We had been talking tentatively for some time about getting something new, but neither of us had begun the process of research or even looking.
To be continued ….
I swear. True story.
Hills
Posted on November 06, 2011There aren’t any hills anywhere around Chicago. When, well over a year ago, I told a friend I was planning to move to Chicago his response was that there weren’t any hills in the city. Yes, that was true, but what did it matter if there were hills in the city to which I was to move?
Now that I’ve been in Chicago almost a year I have to admit that my friend had a point. I didn’t know. I lived in California my whole life and didn’t realize how un-flat it was.
I spent a few months at a time in Bangkok, a city that isn’t particularly hilly – its streets were canals for most of its history – but I don’t recall feeling as though it was “too” flat. It could be that Bangkok wasn’t a walk-friendly city and/or that I wasn’t there long enough in a stretch to really miss the hills.
I have been in Chicago long enough to really miss the hills. It’s so fucking flat. I walk Isis for miles and miles and miles without breaking a sweat or raising my heart rate much above its resting rate. In San Francisco we’d take a short walks that were both hilly and satisfyingly blood pumping.
I’ve had dreams about hills. I’ve gone up to the Signature Lounge in the John Hancock Center more than necessary just to be able to feel like I’m on a very tall, very urban hill. I get excited to walk on footbridges and overpasses because they are slightly above sea level.
No, I will not be taking any trips to hilly places in the Midwest. I’m not that into experiencing nature; I did plenty of that when I was a kid. I like my nature in the form of urban parks where I can let Isis off leash so she can frolic. A hilly park would be lovely, but I’m not going to get it in Chicago.
I swear. True story.
Love
Posted on October 09, 2011
Isn’t he the cutest thing ever? I love, love, love this picture. Clearly the Viking is fucking adorable. And my plants are in the background.
The Viking is still fucking adorable, but I no longer have plants. The moving company couldn’t guarantee our plants would be moved without being killed so they refused to move them at all; I just wish they had bothered to tell me they wouldn’t guarantee anything else so I wouldn’t have transported anything else valuable via other means. Allied sucks.
One of the many great things about this photo is that it was taken in my old place. We’ll never go there again – we have a great place in Chicago – but it’s nice to have some photographic evidence of a place I lived in for over seven years.
One of the other many great things about this photo is the couch the Viking is sitting upon – the same sofa on which I now sit because it’s comfortable, green, loved (by me) – is the couch I picked out years ago and the couch I’m still glad I “won” in my divorce. I got the animals and the couch and divorced from the passive aggressive shit so I win.
Mostly I love this photo because of the Viking’s cute smile, and because I know he loves me.
I swear. True story.
That’s a lot of Dick (2)
Posted on September 18, 2011[Continued from "That's a lot of Dick (1)."]
The conversation petered out after I assured him that I was not thin. No big loss considering I’d never met the guy and chances were slim there’s be chemistry between me and a group of huge-cocked guys.
My friend Viola and I were hanging out at Chez Shazam-Viking one night when I told her about my various online and real life adventures. Though I do write a lot here, there are things I leave out; my friends get to hear the whole truth.
I told her about the guy I had that date with. After I posted the story he responded. What he had to say wasn’t worth posting here, but that and his photo were shared with Viola. She, of course, agreed with me and thought I was completely in the right.
I told her about a guy who wanted to meet me, but decided not to when I couldn’t promise him sex. Yes, I did give him my usual line, “I don’t guarantee sex unless you guarantee cash.” I’ll be sure to write about him soon.
I told her about a great date I’d had. Well, I wasn’t sure he thought it was a date. He paid for everything and the subject of my breasts came up so I thought it was, but when I said we should see each other again, closer to his place, he thought I was interested in seeing the neighborhood. I was more interested in seeing his cock, which I suspected might be substantial.
I showed Viola Mr. 10″‘s picture on OkCupid as I got ready to tell her about our “encounter.” She recognized him immediately. I was used to San Francisco being a small town – where everyone knew everyone – but Chicago is a big city. At least that’s what I thought. I didn’t think one of the many, many guys I’d seen on OkCupid would have also been known by a friend I had in person.
Viola not only knew about Mr. 10″, she had seen him – via Skype. I doubted he really had a 10″ penis; she assured me that he did. She said they had a lengthy conversation about what he wanted to do with his big cock and huge – 6’6″ – fit body. Viola is a tall girl, which is why it’s hilarious that the Viking calls her my “little friend,” so finding a guy who can truly tower over her is rare. While his dick was big and his stature was tall, he still couldn’t handle truly being in charge, which I suppose comes with being only 25.
Viola and I talked about Mr. 10″ quite a bit. All of his stories together didn’t ring very true. If he was a medical resident how was he able to spend a significant amount of time online chatting with random women, since if he chatted with Viola and I – who knew each other – with whom how many other women who didn’t know each other must he have chatted? How could he afford to buy a house in Lincoln Park, a ritzy Chicago neighborhood? When did he have time to go to England or Italy to visit his family, which he claimed to do a couple times a year?
Alas, Viola hadn’t chatted with him in months and I hadn’t heard from him since our original chat. Both Viola and I had suggested to Mr. 10″ that we meet and he had either begged off – claiming he didn’t think he’d be able to handle a lady as tall as Viola – or simply faded away – apparently not able to handle all that is me. Either way, the guy had proved himself to be a wimp who couldn’t handle women who knew what they had to offer or what they wanted.
Neither Viola nor I had heard from Mr. 10″ for quite some time and neither of us ever expected to do so. Even if a guy has a giant cock he’s still likely to be an insecure idiot. That may be a lot of cock but neither of us are likely to find out.
I swear. True story.
