(no subject)

I'm back from Chicago, but not yet all the way back to San Francisco.

Tidbits from the last four days, as I remember them:

I finally told my mom that I have a tattoo. Showed it to her as well. She was somehwat put out to learn that she is the last in the immediate family to know, but I told her, "after five years, I figure all your concerns about doing something permanent like this to my body would be mitigated," and she acknowledged the point.

My aunt and cousin, however, were very excited to learn that I had a tattoo. "Only one?" they asked. Only one.

I also told them all that I've wanted a tattoo since I saw my grandfather's as a little kid. He had a Navy tattoo of two hearts on his bicep, with a banner of my grandmother's name encircling them. Yes, he could make it pulse when he flexed his muscles.

*

I need to eat some real food. An inventory of what I've had to eat since I arrived in Chicago:

White Castle's.
Pizza.
Dunkin' Donuts.
McDonald's.
Brown's Chicken, sloppy joes, and various hors'douvres of unknown origin and age (the Tollhouse crackers were palpably stale. More on Grandma's pantry later...).
Half a whole wheat bagel with parsley hummus, courtesy my cousins.
Roast turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy. (I passed on the cheesy green bean casserole and the cranberry sauces.)
Another half bagel and hummus.
A small piece of pumpkin pie.
A bowl of oatmeal, again courtesy my aunt and uncle and cousins.
Pizza.

Everybody is afraid to cook in my grandmother's kitchen, aside from the simplest of fare. Partly it's an equipment thing. The other part is that unlessyou bring your own supplies, there's no guarantee that the foodstuffs you may scrounge will be edible.

There is a jar of baby food in my grandmother's pantry. Nobody has dared to look at the label to see how old it is, but the youngest member of my family is my 13-year-old sister.

There are whispered tales of the corned beef my grandmother once tried to serve us that had been in the freezer for years, as in over five and perhaps up to ten.

My aunt reports that Grandma routinely brings home a doggie bag from restaurants, leaves them in the fridge for a few days, decides she isn't going to eat them right away and then freezes them for later.

There is pop in the basement that has passed its expiration date.

All of this might not be so bad if Grandma weren't constantly pushing food at everyone. Seconds aren't enough; if your plate is empty while others are eating, surely you want more? Now that I am a grownup, she is pushing the cocktails on me in the same way.

*

I have a cold. It is making my voice husky in that phone sex sort of way. I have been sucking down Robitussin and mint tea all week. Yes, this does count as getting sick over deadline season, but I hope it's pardoned by my greater susceptibility to bugs due to travel.

yesterday I thought I was going to lose my voice entirely, which would have been the first time ever such a thing would've happened to me. But no such luck for you, my friends.

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I feel like I am the gender police sometimes when I am interacting with my extended family. James, my sister Jill's boyfriend, declared The Princess Bride a "chick flick" today by way of dismissing it entirely. Last night we had a discussion of the Three Stooges, and of course Johnny, my uncle's brother, declared that their brand of humor was "male humor" and that's why women didn't like it. A common canard, but still.

It's only the peripheral family members that even bother with this stuff these days, though. (Astute readers will notice that no actual relatives said anything noted above.) Everyone else seems to know better. At least around me.

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Clothes are cheaper in the Midwest. From now on, all sweatshirts and other basic items will be bought while on vacation.

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My step-grandfather's family always helps remind me that there is indeed a class thing going on in my background. Talking about class is always hard, and so I'm having trouble explaining this. But Bob's family, in the aggregate, is very Chicago working class. Some of my friends might be appalled at the way they act as crude and unsophisticated. Heck, sometimes *my* family feels that way (I am thinking now of the sexual humor that always seems to go with the appearance of "Santa" at our Christmas Eve gatherings). But while I may not enjoy it or participate much in it at times, I recognize it -- it's familiar, and more importantly, I understand it.

*

Rum and coke is apparently the smell I associate with my childhood visits to Chicago. As a cocktail, it's not so bad. Even if my brother had to bring the rum; Bob has apparently precipitated a move to martinis on my grandmother's part.

(no subject)

...and I swear, every single person I talked to asked about the earthquake.

*

I liked my cousin Ginger's boyfriend, Raphael. He is from France, and thus we bonded over music and food (apparently where he grew up there was a large North African population).

You could tell that in his native language, he is a quick wit; even in English, he's sharp, but really at a disadvantage when it comes to my fast-talking, punnish, silly-ass family. Oh, but to his everlasting credit, he was always game.

My favorite Raphael moment of the holiday:

"Where do you live?"

"Oakland."

"That is here?"

"No, this is Oak Lawn. I live in Oakland, California."

"Ah!"

I hope she keeps him. He's cute, too, in a balding, tall, broad-shouldered and thin-hipped sort of Gallic way.

(no subject)

final note of the day:

I have discovered that writing nonfiction features uses the same parts of my brain as writing fiction does. I bolted awake a couple of nights ago with an insight into the article I'm working on at the moment and jotted it down in the bedside notebook before it could escape.

I am somehwat dismayed by this revalation. I really want it not to be true, because I worry that if they use the same part of the brain, they use the same energy store, too, and nonfiction will come to take over too much of my time. It's not what I want to be doing, it's just what pays.