P.S., Grand Rapids, I Love You

I live in Chicago. And I love it. But I miss Grand Rapids so much. I miss all of my friends and the bright red autumn leaves and living within walking distance of Nantucket Bakery and The Sparrows coffee shop. I even miss the stupid drunk frat boys playing their guitars on the hoods of their cars at 3am. And the "resident" homeless man who shuffled around on the street outside of our apartment building. Summer is officially over only when he has changed from his cut-off jean shorts into his sweat pants. His name is Mark. He wants to fly south for the winter.

Grand Rapids will always hold some great memories for me. I recently was able to breeze through on my way from a wedding in Clare back to Chicago and I took about a million pictures and almost cried because I think autumn in Grand Rapids may be more beautiful than autumn anywhere else that I've ever been. And it's my favorite season. Here are a few photos from that trip to peruse before the snow starts to fall (ugh).

Winter Edges In

It is not yet winter. But I can feel its fingers wrapping around the city, preparing to overtake it. The air outside smells like a box of hats and scarves.

Every year when the weather turned cold my mother would pull the box of winter wear from the back of the closet and it always smelled the same. A mix of old dryer sheets and crumbled leaves, and the dust that settled from the wood stove. Unknowingly, this smell has become a tell-tale sign of winter for me. And maybe for everyone else in the city because I think they all pulled out their dusty coats on the same day and filled the air with the smell of the coming winter.

Most of the leaves have left the tree branches and been swallowed up by the street sweepers. (The street sweepers which are responsible for my first Chicago ticket because they failed to have the signs up in time for me to move my car! But this post is supposed to be calm and contemplative...so I'll save the ticket rant for another day.)

Snowflake decorations are up on the streetlights, candy canes in the neighbor's garden, Christmas music at the grocery store... And I'm trying to roll with the punches. I am generally an avid believer that Christmas does not exist until after Thanksgiving. But as I sit here sipping my eggnog latte (that I got for half price due to a holiday sale) I am starting to soften to the idea of Thanksgiving and Christmas going hand-in-hand. After all, it is "the holiday season." And yesterday I realized that we only have a month to get through the list of 30 Christmas movies--and yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie--so we are going to have to get started!

But I am still reluctant to pack away my pumpkins and autumn leaves. It feels like admitting defeat. Admitting that soon my beautiful crunchy leaves will be rotting under a frigid blanket of ice and snow. Maybe I'll just put Santa hats on the scarecrows and lobby for a holiday merger...

Love Affair with Humanity

Today, I realized that I am in love the human race. Or maybe today I admitted it to myself. Those of you who know me probably already know this about me. So, I suppose you can read the rest of this just to say "I told you so."

I like to pretend that I can't stand people and that they make me crazy and I don't want to have anything to do with their dysfunctional selves. But, the truth is, I need them. I need to remember that I'm not the only dysfunctional disaster. I need to remember that, though I may feel poor and disadvantaged, I have it relatively easy. I need to see the softness in an old man's eyes, or the ferocity in the face of a frustrated teenager. And I need to remember that we each have a little of all of that within ourselves.

For the past few weeks I have been working from home, writing for a website and I realized that I feel a little isolated. (It doesn't help that my apartment is half underground so it feels like I'm hunkering down in a bomb shelter.) I have been craving human interaction. The three dogs that live upstairs just don't quite cut it.

I need to look at faces that are not my own. Strange or familiar. Friendly or otherwise. Humanity is all at once heartwarming and infuriating. And it's hard for me to find it anything but beautiful. At least right now. I know I will have my moments and days when I am gloomy about the state of the world and getting down on this mess of humanity that I'm a part of. But for the record, humanity, I love you.

Brand new backdrop

I have been in Chicago for two full months now. It's high time I wrote something about it. Nothing too insightful today. Just a bit of love for Ukrainian Village, my wonderful neighbors, and the cat. Her name is Lucy. The cat and the neighbor. But only one of them circles my feet and rolls over so I can scratch her belly. Human-Lucy lives two doors down and cat-Lucy lives next to us with Mary/Maria. We have never been formally introduced and I think I hear her called something different every time. So I just say "Hello" and smile. There's also a Mary on the other side of us. Orientation was so confusing.

Our apartment is just about entirely put together and we have more space than we anticipated. I still feel like we're burrowing into a little mouse-nest but it is somehow cozier than it is cramped. And that's not just necessitated optimism talking. We have a working furnace now and the apartment seems to absorb all the things we need to find a place for. I just don't know if I'll ever find them again.

We rode our bike down to the lake shore a couple weeks ago and cruised around in the shadow of the Hancock building. I can see the Sears Tower while I'm getting groceries. Granted, it's four miles away...but, it's four miles away! I'm not sure if we'll ever get used to that. And I think that's ok. I'm counting on the excitement and charm of the new city to get me through the first winter.

Here are a few pictures of our neighborhood: