why we live in Chicago

This winter has been the harshest, most inconvenient, most SAD-inducing winter I have ever experienced out of all of my 6 Chicago winters. And we are only about 7 days into winter proper. Within the past week it has: snowed heavily; been -35 with the windchill; melted a little bit, but just enough to form a layer of ice on top of the snow; snowed more; sleeted; rained; refroze; and finally, thawed–which in some outlying counties, caused flooding. My grandparents' driveway and porch was completely covered with 1-2 inches of solid ice over Christmas.  Each step from the door to the car had to be taken with the utmost care in order to not fall backwards and split your head open. And imagine how hard it was for my 80-something grandparents! REDICKULESS. 

It is the time, like every winter, Mark and I wonder why the fuck we live here. We spent hours one night drunkenly arguing about moving to LA. Mark was adamant about picking up and moving to LA ASAP. I was almost convinced, but really do not like LA enough to live there. I tried to keep reminding Mark that it's full of douches, way more than there are in Chicago, it's so plastic, and Mark pretty much has complete zero tolerance for yuppies or anyone into "superficial" things. He kept saying so what, and that it's so romantic: the land of broken dreams, blah blah, beach. Ok yes, beach, it has that.  But is it really worth it to be around so many annoying people? I must admit, that when I visited the people weren't that bad (although the designer screen printed t-shirt, relaxed fit jeans, and designer tennis shoes look of 95% of the guys– GAG) and it was very pretty and nice, and we did feel a certain kind of freedom I think is only felt on the west coast… but why, are like 9 out of 10 people I've met from LA (or people that have moved to LA) the most intolerable brand of asshole: unintelligent, usually reg, floaty featherdusters, image over substance, yet somehow stuck up. And possibly a pathological liar (to go along with image).  So I don't think I would be happy there, and Mark said to me that no, I would not fit in, ok fine.

I said that I would rather move to New York. Even though New York does have a winter, but not as biting as Chicago's. Mark does not want to live in New York because he thinks it is too businessy and corporate, a rat race compared to the abstract sort of "freedom" that is in LA. But I have friends in NY and people in NY are so much sharper. There's so much going on and so much to do. Still, I am not convinced I want to live there–the price, too many rich people, also too many assholes thinking they're someone, too many people period. There is like, a paradoxically profound lack of specialness.

 

We've thought about the other smaller acceptable US cities but can find so many things wrong with them. On the west coast San Francisco seems like it could be alright besides being really expensive but Mark is convinced it is completely full of rich yuppies (isn't that the truth). I guess I'd have to visit to get a better feel; I haven't been there since I was like 9 years old. But California is supposed to break off into the ocean soon, so maybe we shouldn't! Portland is kind of cool, but as I've often said about it, there are too many hippies and too many nature loving people that wear brown and gray, which I don't want to be around. It lacks the edge that bigger cities have, there is no rhythmic driving force vibrating in the air on the streets. It's almost as if the whole city is stoned. Seattle I haven't been to, but feel it is probably a lot like Portland? Also, probs too gray.

We considered Austin, which could be alright. Hot weather! Mexican food! I already understand Texas and have weird inherent Texas pride for no reason! I would be near my parents. And it's in Texas! But, con: it's in Texas. Also, I don't like being that close to other people I know in Texas...I like to think of my high school/early college years as locked in a little box and buried in Texas where I don't have to access it ever again, really. Mark is not into living where they have SXSW since it is so big and brings in too many annoying people. I think this is still a vague possibility (though I doubt Mark would really want to live in Texas).

There are really no other cities I'm interested in. We considered somewhere smaller, or somewhere in the middle of the desert, but I don't think I'm ready for that kind of isolation. Or what about Memphis? I've never been there but it seems kind of cool, but too country and too "red" I think. Other big US cities I'm not interested in: Las Vegas, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Diego…

Sadly I think I am just an inferior Midwestern at heart and (this pains me greatly) probably rather conservative in my tastes, and I cannot live anywhere else. I overquote Nelson Algren about loving Chicago like "loving a woman with a broken nose. You may well find lovlier lovlies, but never a love so real." Agh! 

Oh, the Chicago winter IS frightful, but the summer is so delightful! This is why we live here in this shitty, horrible, get dark at 4:30, scrape ice off your car in the morning, 4 layers of clothes wet feet winter. A city where you are unable to wear heels or stand outside comfortably for half the year, a sprawled out city with shitty public transportation and horrible government, 10% sales tax, and parking tickets that are both unavoidable and frequent! And then in the summer we'll see the sun, and filled with hopes and dreams, we drive to Indiana to boldly swim in the e. coli infested Lake Michigan. Guess I'm in love!

my job is crushing my soul, I think

Hello! Today is a gray and rainy September day, and I am feeling nauseous thinking about the future. This week has been rather difficult in a mental sense. Why? I don't know! It's been difficult to maintain my sanity at work and get anything at all done. I have been wanting to bang Borah's head between two large cymbals and knock her unconscious with a loud CLASH! And then I kind of want to kick her or something. As for the rest, I would like to just leave them to live their lives, undisturbed– they have already dug their own graves.

I think this birth control is making me crazy!! Or maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the thought that I have to go to China next week for work and will spend 8 miserable days with the bosses, thinking about work with nobody besides strangers to have real conversation with (and the thought of making conversation with new people already feels exhausting). Also, there is the realization that I have been here for 2 years now, and I'm wondering why I have wasted 2 years of my life on this. I suppose they haven't all been WASTED, but I don't feel like I have grown or experienced much and hello, I am much better than this. Right????

Before the future used to seem far away and exciting, and I had no idea what direction life would take. Now it is going a direction, sort of, more like now I am just stuck in this stupid office making shit and looking for other jobs on the internet and they all sound annoying and seem to pay less than this shitty one. I don't even want to write about this anymore!

I kind of want to just recklessly quit like a more bold adventurous person would do, and just be forced to figure it out from there, but ho ho ho I'm already so broke and can't afford to pay my huge debts: my car is about to be booted, I have a credit card with like 20% interest or something, student loans, blah blah blah. Wow! I sound like Vanessa! Except she would not even attempt to pay her debts. She would spend all her money on scotch and cocaine and poppers and ignore all the bills and sincerely expect them to decide that they don't want her money after all. And then complain about it to everyone when they come after her like it's completely preposterous they'd want to garnish her wages.

Pretty much the only exciting thing going on is moving in with Mark and putting our apartment together, but even that annoys me when I look at how much crap Mark has and how much of it should be thrown away. He hasn't even sorted through it, because it is just TOO MUCH. I don't want to be bitchy and put strain on our relationship so I am trying to relax, which is hard since I am turning into a miserable depressed person who hates her life. He has done pretty well getting things organized considering the amount of stuff there is. We are having people over tonight and I wanted the apt to be more put together before we had people over, but I really just want to get kind of wasted and have fun, which I haven't done in a long time, even though it will be raining for our bbq. Wow, this is such a downer!

Sometimes I want to talk to Mark when I am depressed but it's hard because he doesn't really understand it fully, I don't think, and then he gets kind of worried about me and I end up feeling stupid when he asks me what is wrong and I only answer "everything" and can't stop crying. Then he thinks it has something to do with him, which it doesn't. Then I feel like I'm acting like a 14 year old who just read The Bell Jar. I don't even want to talk to anybody about it, actually. I feel stupid about feeling sad and would like to never be depressed again, which I have been trying so hard to do for the past few years. Depression seems like such a dumb loser thing. Now I feel superior to people who suffer from depression because I used to have it (much worse than now) and I think it was really a waste of time I could have had more control over. I think that I can think myself out of it now. I can't really stand to look at old diaries and I kind of want to burn them so that when I die nobody finds them. But now here I am again typing in an online space about it. This is quite possibly all caused by the birth control. But I don't want to quit because it gets rid of my cramps and helps with my acne!! WAAAAH. I think it's caused by this retarded job.

I miss the days of livejournal. I wrote such sloppy TMI posts and it felt good and nasty and stupid and embarrassing and relieving and Nancy would comment on them and we would see each other in real life and not talk about it.  

Now the internet is scarier and and more crowded and I have a harder time putting a proper sentence together, and also there is this whole "blogging revolution" thing happening. More people are talking about the implications of a generation of omg narcissistic bloggers and I kind of think it's funny. I remember first discovering diaryland in high school, thinking it was amazing, and creating my own diary, and it just made me happy to connect to similar strangers emotionally because I couldn't do it with anyone in real life. It's funny how the difference between "high schoo"l art and writing and "real life" art and writing is that when you're older you have to be smarter and comment on the world around you and not just yourself and your emotions and your small world, whatever. The former stage is still more exciting to me, and that feels ok but embarrassing. I don't know the point of this other than becoming a professional blogger seems very fun and exciting but the pressure is kind of retarded, and very sexist I feel. 

So I don't believe blogging is that narcissistic, and I think it is a good thing for people to do and read. So I guess what I am doing, like a nerd trying to ask you out, is trying to say that I would like to blog and have people read it but it's so embarrassing and I also don't want anyone to think I am stupid, which is why this blog is a secret and I don't know if anyone will read it, but all these other people write dumb blogs and get paid for it and I am jealous. 

But also, is it weird that I would rather read most people's blogs than talk to them?

single white females?

I have never seen the movie Single White Female, but I have heard a lot about it, because for some reason, I seem to attract stalkers and imitators. To a few, this might sound as though I'm bragging, as I myself used to imagine being wonderful enough to be stalked. But once you are stalked, you learn that in fact, it does not boost your self-esteem, it LOWERS it! You feel stupid for being adored by a fucking loser. You start to wonder if you are just as lame as the people who want to be you. I mean, you are the dream prized possession of an absolute idiot! What does that say about you?

I won't go into the amount of stalkers and weirdos that have creeped around my life, but it's pretty high for me not being famous (or even semi-famous (or even popular)).Right now I have a couple suspicious things going on, but at first I only thought there was one. I don't want to give too much information on the INTERNET (HELLO STALKERS), but one single white female who cuts my hair likes to cut hers the exact same way right after she cuts mine! It pushed me to bleach my hair blonde, so we wouldn't look like dorky lesbians when people see us in public together! And, I actually am liking it. But OH, what is this? She lightened her hair from dark brown to medium brown the other day. IS she going to keep going lighter gradually, until we match once again? There will be no denying her creepiness at that point! 

The SECOND thing, just happened today. I was leaving the office and walking to my car, and I noticed a bloody pad right by my back tire. I'm almost sure it is a deliberate act against me. We are in the suburbs and our parking lot is always very clean. There was no evidence of a trash bag that got torn open. There are no homeless people in the upper class suburb where I work, and would anybody need to deposit their pad RIGHT AT THAT SECOND in the parking lot, if she wasn't homeless? It was so close to my car, that odds are, something would not fall there…it had to have been placed there. Oh, and guess what, my office mate is on her period; she told me so. I would normally consider her too much of a pussy to do something so vindictive, and well, OBVIOUS, but it's always the mouse-like ones that cause trouble right? I suspect she may secretly hate me, and if she actually did have the cojones to put a nasty bloody pad by my car, well, I almost like her 1/100 of a dot more, just for not being as boring and lame as I'd always perceived her to be. She doesn't just go home and fall asleep in front of the tv every night, but stays up late making disgusting schemes with her husband! And THAT'S why she's always tired! It's almost charming. 

But what is next? Is she going to continue to leave strange disgusting obstacles in my path? What if it was someone else from my building stalking me? Is SWF#1 going to keep lightening her hair? What does this all mean?!

what annoyed me today #1

Today I got a new Mac!!!!

I was really excited, but everybody at work talked about Macs like I was "converting". HELLO? I AM COOL -- THAT MEANS THAT I HAVE HAD A MAC FOR LONGER THAN THOSE COMMERCIALS. YES I KNOW APPLE CARE IS THE SHIT> I'm not a Miss Johnny-come-lately!!!!

That is all.

the ultimate

Hello, it's been awhile, and I'm a bit depressed. It's mostly the winter's gray skies and short days, and of course, my lousy stagnant suffocating job that isn't horrible enough for me to quit, blah blah. But something else just hit me right now. Since I'm mostly feeling ugnghhh and not UGGHHHRRGGHH, I thought, I just need a new vibrator to brighten my spirits. But then I thought, why bother. I already have the Ultimate.

The Hitachi Magic Wand is so wonderful, perfect, and dependable. You don't have to change it's batteries. It never acts up. Its humongous pillowy head is perfect, so that you don't have to cramp your hand maneuvering it around your genitals. It hits it all! I want to get excited about a new vibrator, but I just don't need one. I don't want to mess with pussy ass AA batteries. I don't want the shame I feel when I have to walk around the corner and fork over $8 for a pack of humongous C batteries. I don't need another big strong one that plugs into the wall. I have hit the glass ceiling of sex toys.

So I'm still longing for a new sex toy to brighten up this winter, maybe not a vibrator. I'm not that into dildos though. I feel like, as anti-feminist as this may sound, that's what boys are for. My penetration needs are fulfilled by boyfriend, my jackhammer strength vibrator needs are fulfilled by Hitachi. What about butt toys? meh...I have a good butt plug and we have a butt plug vibrator already that we never use. I think butt sex is more of a summer thing anyway. What else is there? Fetishy toys...beyond a flogger it's too corny. Strap on....not really into that idea lately. Maybe I should just shut up and go to Early to Bed.

what what what is there to buy....the only possible thing I think I could use for fun and novelty/humor purposes is the dildo that suction cups to the wall. So I could have a threesome with Mark and my wall. Or suction it onto the door and have Mark swing the door open and closed. Or put it on the refrigerator for decoration. The only thing, is that if I remember correctly, this thing was slightly expensive.

Oh, I am just so SAD.