Stir-Crazy a.k.a. Cabin Fever

A.K.A. if this winter were a wimpy fourth grader and I were a schoolyard bully, I’d totally beat him up and take his lunch money.

But, as it is, this winter is obviously the bully, and I’m the wimpy fourth grader. The wimpy fourth grader with Coke-bottle glasses. The wimpy fourth grader with Coke-bottle glasses who wears floods. The wimpy fourth grader with Coke-bottle glasses who wears floods and plays the oboe.

You get the point.

I told myself I wasn’t going to write about the cold – it’s so cliche, kind of the “how about them Reds?” of blog small talk. But we’re going a bit stir-crazy around here, and it’s all I can think about. Even my insane husband admitted that the cold was getting to him just a little. Not that he’s changed any of his crazy habits because of it. Chili and I, however, are shunning the outside, and we’re not talking to it until it promises to shape up. The silent treatment, that’s our modus operandi.

Unfortunately, our current stance has cut into my productivity. Lounging on the couch does not lend itself to getting stuff done. So, in case you didn’t notice, I went cold turkey  (HA! Get it? Cold turkey?!) on the blog to force myself at least to apply for one job, answer a couple emails, and go to the gym. (Yes, that did require going outside, but I did not talk to the outside while I was there – no sir, I am still slapping it with silence.) Next week I’m even planning to brave the treacherously icy back steps to the laundry room so that we have clean clothes again.

For all of this attempted increase in productivity, though, both Chili and I are still stir-crazy, with an emphasis on the crazy. I often have long conversations with Chili where she just cocks her head and stares at me with that “whatcha talkin’ ’bout, crazy lady?” look of hers. Or my brain will just shut itself off, and it takes me forever to realize I’ve just watched a full episode of the Real Housewives of Orange County or, worse yet, five minutes of FOX News.

Chili, well, she’s really going nuts. She’s started attacking her food, inanimate though it may be. And she’s taken to burying bones under blankets since the frozen ground refuses to yield to her claws.

It’s all a bit squirrelly around here. And as we all know, anything related to squirrels just terrifies me. Please send help.

VIDEO EVIDENCE #1: Fearing that it may surprise her by suddenly coming to life, Chili attacks her Jumbone.

VIDEO EVIDENCE #2: Now that she has successfully vanquished the foe, Chili buries her kill.

Scenes from a Treadmill: Inauguration Day 2009

Where were you when Barack Obama took the oath of office as the 44th President of the(se) United States? What were you doing when our country saw, for the first time ever, someone who is not a white man become our Commander-in-Chief?

My answer for all future generations: Attempting to run on a treadmill at the gym.

I thought it was a great plan. My gym has TVs on every treadmill; I had to go to the gym anyway to work off some of the weekend festivities; watching something will take my mind off how utterly out of shape I am. Right?

Honestly, what was I thinking? I’m unemployed. It’s not like I had important appointments to keep. I could have been anywhere. I mean, not D.C. – that would have been hard what with the no plane tickets and no place to stay – but at least downtown or at the DuSable Museum of African-American History. Somewhere other than at a stuffy gym surrounded by sweaty strangers.

But really, maybe it wasn’t that bad of an idea. I had the TV all to myself, with headphones so that the grunting bodybuilders posing and preening to my right wouldn’t bother me. That little ditty by John Williams had a pretty good beat to it, so that helped keep me on track for a few minutes. (How much do Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman rock? And I don’t normally like the clarinet, but I have to find more by Anthony McGill. Loved it!)

And, I realized at the end, I was not as alone in all this as I had thought. In the midst of sweaty strangers, I was able to share this moment in history with other people. As President Obama spoke, I noticed the three people surrounding me on the other treadmills were also watching. The woman to my right even clapped at one point. As Reverend Lowery shared the benediction, the man to my left laughed slightly.

And then, right at the end, when Rev. Lowery beseeched all those who do justice and love mercy to say “amen,” I found myself unconsciously saying amen out loud. The three people around me did the same. We all glanced around at each other and smiled, a little embarrassed but happy that we were not alone in this moment.

So, yes, it might seem silly and a bit cheesy – living through this historic moment while going nowhere on a treadmill – but I’ll never forget it.

For those of you who cannot read Hungarian, Chili's Obamaicon-me reads "Yes We Can." I wanted to put "Yes We Did," but Chili says we still have work to do and chided me for not listening more closely to Prez Obama's speech.

Make a Difference Monday: International Justice Mission

As I stated in my New Year post, I want to try something a little different every so often with this blog. So, every Monday from here on out, rather than waxing philosophical about myself, I will use this space to share about an organization, subject or cause that I believe is important or worthy of note (and how apt to start on MLK Day – really did not do that on purpose and just realized it now). For those of you who have known me for a while, you probably will not be surprised to learn that I have decided to start this series with International Justice Mission (IJM).

Contrary to popular belief, International Justice Mission is not what Superman and his friends call their weekly brunch meet-up. (By the way, that is the Justice League of America - as the title insinuates, in no way international.) (Though when I was an intern for IJM way back when, a fellow intern created a t-shirt design for us that incorporated the Green Lantern with the IJM logo – needless to say, printing approval on that was a no-go.) Rather, as it says on the organization’s website:

International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local governments to ensure victim rescue, to prosecute perpetrators and to strengthen the community and civic factors that promote functioning public justice systems.

As some of you know, I have been involved in some way, shape or form with IJM for about ten years now. Back in 1998, this then-fledgling organization visited the church I attended in Boston for a full-day seminar on social justice. Being a college student at the time, I at first had no desire to go to a full-day seminar at church on a Saturday – after all, I had a boyfriend to see, Belgian waffles to eat in the cafeteria, repeats of The X-Files to watch and analyze, and one of those papers about which I continually threw tantrums on my friend’s floor to finish. But a friend pushed me to go saying that she thought I would enjoy it. And she was right – I did enjoy it and found a whole new direction for my life to boot (from international correspondent for The New York Times to human rights lawyer in 6.8 seconds!).

Since that day at Park Street Church, I have followed IJM, attending conferences, sharing with friends, even volunteering for a little while. And the organization continues to grow and grow and grow, rescuing people and fighting abuse in twelve countries at last count.

So, while the staff of IJM may not hang with Batman or fly in Wonder Woman’s invisible jet, every single IJM investigator, lawyer, aftercare worker, driver, admin person, etc. is still a superhero in my book. And the best part? They’re actually real.

Please check out International Justice Mission at its website www.ijm.org.

Tidying the Dirt

Show of hands – who is disappointed I didn’t post yesterday? Sorry about that. You see, I could not find my camera cord, and the only idea I had in my head required I also have a picture. But, without my camera cord, I couldn’t download my photos, and no photo would have ruined the whole post.

This dilemma has everything to do with my inability to stay uncluttered. Every two days or so I clean up the stacks of books, magazines, papers, clothes, etc. that have gathered on every horizontal surface in our apartment. I can’t really blame Mike because he is actually much better than I am at keeping his stuff in the right places. This fact became painfully clear when I was in India. While I often had to claw my way to my bedroom door through the piles of saris and salwar sets flooding my room, Mike’s life in Chicago was footloose and clutter free.

I am fully aware that one of the main reasons for this problem is that I have too much stuff and need to simplify my life. However, I think a bigger reason might be that I just don’t know how to stay clean. (Might have been a bigger problem if I had ever tried crack – good thing I dodged that bullet!) Sure, my mom tried to teach me, but when you have five people working against you, like she did, how much progress can you possibly make? After visiting over Christmas, I found that my parent’s house, except for D.A.D.’s office which clearly shows where I got my tendency toward clutter, was beautifully open and clear of extraneous piles of materials. Will I ever get there?

Last night a friend who just returned from Haiti and I were chatting about our overseas adventures. She noted that every morning she woke up to the unsettling crow of roosters outside her window and asked if I had the same experience. In India, not so much. Besides the occasional trumpet and drums, it was pretty much just car horns.

Then I remembered Zambia. Yes, roosters did crow every so often, but what I remember most is the woman who lived next door, just over the wall of my apartment complex, pretty much right under my bedroom window. Every morning around 6 a.m. she would come outside and sing a song while sweeping her dirt. Yes, dirt. It was too dry to have grass, so few people had lawns. Most houses and buildings were surrounded by dirt patches or concrete, and every day this woman would sweep the leaves and garbage from her patch. Every day. At 6 a.m.

At first, I found it pleasant, the swish-swish of the stiff broom bristles against the packed earth, playing in rhythm with her quiet song. Then, after two months, it became too much. I just wanted to sleep in on a Saturday. Because if I didn’t, and I was the first to get up, then I would also be the first one to realize we had no water, thereby becoming obligated to walk down to the tap in the courtyard and haul the buckets of water back to the flat.

Many a day, it was all I could do to keep myself from shouting out my window, “Lady, it’s dirt! How clean do you think it’s gonna get?!” But I always stopped myself and not just because I didn’t know how to translate “gonna” into Nyanja. I stopped myself because, as I peered out the window and over the wall, it continually struck me how tidy that patch of dirt really was.

Then it dawned on me how clean most of the places in Zambia really were. No, it was definitely not immaculate by any stretch, but in comparison to, say, India or my bedroom, Lusaka was darn near spotless. And it was thanks to the many women with those stiff brooms who, like my neighbor, woke up every morning to sweep the streets (often standing in their bright orange vests inches away from the speeding cars), parking lots, porches, and even the patches of dirt.

Now that’s a work ethic I need to get behind. Because if they can clean a patch of dirt, I should be able to clean off my coffee table.

All I’m asking for is a little more respect perhaps

Yesterday I almost hit a guy with my car. And, for once, it wasn’t my fault – the guy just stepped into the street right in front of me. Thankfully, there was no one in the left lane, so I could swerve and not hit him, but it was really close. This has happened before, but what really gets me about this event is the way the guy looked at me. There was no shock or surprise in his face. No resignation that he was about to die. Not even an “oh s***” moment. Nope, his face clearly said, “How dare you drive on this road while I am walking? Don’t you know who I am?” It could only be described as self-righteous anger.

It really has struck me since I’ve been home how often this happens. How many times have I been driving down the road when a couple of teenagers step out from behind a parked car and saunter right into the middle of the street? Yes, I understand the adolescent belief in immortality – I’ve been there. But this is something beyond that. Like some kind of rite of passage. Like if you can make all the cars stop, it makes you a real man. But, as Mike commented the other day, “It does not make you tough because I choose not to kill you.”

Not that adults are all that much better. What is up with that move where you try to make it look like you’re running across the street by pumping your arms but really you’re still just walking? You’re not fooling anyone.

I hate to say it (actually, I don’t, but it makes me sound more patriotic if I say that), but we Americans could do with a little more of the Indian pedestrians’ healthy respect for motorized vehicles.

In Chennai, a definite hierarchy has developed on the roads. At the top stand the buses with the people hanging off the sides and those colorfully-painted lorries and somewhere near the bottom, just under street dogs, lay the pedestrians. This deference does not express itself with masses of walkers huddled on corners or hugging buildings, however. Rather, the pedestrians use their road savvy to cross a street. It requires weaving between cars and motorbikes while moving forward in a predictable way, and looking, always always looking. Because those auto-rickshaws can come from nowhere, and they don’t care about you. Take it from me, if you stop in the middle of the street or step out without being fully aware of what is coming in the ten lanes of traffic, you will not only be hit, but you will also be ruthlessly mocked by your Indian friends.

If you have ever driven down Devon Avenue in Chicago, you might think I’m crazy. Or lying. After all, it may seem that pedestrians on Devon are just as erratic as the teenagers I am vilifying above. After being in India, I politely disagree. When you’re driving, you might think that woman in the sari with the small child has a death wish as she steps from the market into the street and precariously close to your SUV. However, I think she knows exactly what she’s doing. As long as you keep moving in the way a person driving a large SUV who wants to get somewhere quickly is supposed to move, she’ll safely make it across the street. The method to this supposed madness is to assume that the cars will not stop for you, that the drivers do not care about you, and therefore, you need to fit yourself between the cars quickly and artfully. (I’m not saying it’s right for drivers to not care, and the drivers in India do care and will not hit you on purpose. They just expect the pedestrians to know the rules, and it just seems to work.)

Unfortunately, this approach does not work so well in the U.S. because drivers here do care and will stop for pedestrians (except for the drivers on Comm Ave near Boston University – you know who you are). I actually like this aspect of the U.S., the tendency toward NOT killing walkers. But, pedestrians, you have to do your part also. Sometimes those drivers, they can’t see you, especially when you’re stepping out from between other cars and not paying attention. And, until Detroit uses that bailout money to invent insta-brakes, flying cars, or turbo-jump, you’re going to have to give a driver time to stop that ton of metal coming at you.

I’m not saying we should embrace wholesale the insanity of Indian roads – no way, no sir. All I’m asking for, American pedestrians, is a little more respect. I plan to keep this all in mind as I work to hang up my keys and get out on my feet myself a bit more this year.

I’ll try if you will. I promise.