favorite concerts of 2014

holy shit you guys i went to a lot of great concerts in 2014. i'm gonna recap some of my favorites b/c i haven't finished my "favorite songs of 2014" playlist yet. concerts are listed in chronological order, primarily because i'm taking the coward's way out and not choosing an absolute favorite.

april 11 - sharon jones and the dap-kings at the vic
i'd heard that sharon jones & the dap-kings put on a helluva show, but i didn't learn that for myself until april. holy shitballs this show kinda melted my face. sharon reminded me of a lot of women i know from church, in that she was singing and having fun one minute and then took us to church the next minute. i might have ugly cried during this show. knowing sharon was back on tour after kicking cancer in the throat was just...yeah, i cried during this show. i regret absolutely nothing.

april 18 - mavis staples & regina carter at symphony center
one of my friends wound up joining me for this show. luckily she was sitting behind me so she couldn't see the tears i wept during mavis' set. i love me some auntie mavis, dammit. fight me. i saw auntie mavis (b/c she really is one of my play aunties in my head) on the kennedy center honors last night and damn near wept with joy. i love her that much.

june 3 - frankie knuckles tribute at millennium park
it doesn't take much for me to fall back in love with chicago, especially during the past few years when i wasn't sure if i was gonna make it back here on a full-time basis. that said, this tribute to frankie knuckles was everything i needed it to be - lots of dancing, lots of diversity, all of us vowing to keep loving and living and dancing in spite of everything.

june 7 - the prince experience at untitled
ok, seriously? if the prince experience is in your town and you're a fan of prince and/or morris day and the time and tickets aren't $100 like they are tonight, you should check them out. much dancing. so wow.

august 29 - michael mcdonald and toto at ravinia
that should really sum it up. i wrote about this previously in case you need a refresher.

november 14 - stevie wonder at united center
news about this tour and i immediately adjusted my budget accordingly. so what if i'd seen (ok, heard) stevie wonder for free at the taste? no matter. i needed to be at this show for REASONS, dammit, and i made it happen. so what if my phone bricked the afternoon of the show and i gave myself a migraine while trying to restore my contacts and apps and figuring out my #alphet for the show (for the record, i wore a dress and some knee-high boots, for those who like to play along)? i was there, and it was amazing. i could've done without india.aire and her 5-6 costume changes, but i wasn't there to see india.aire. i was there to see/hear/experience stevie, and it was worth every penny i paid. i managed to keep the ugly cry in check, but damned if it wasn't close there during a few songs.

38

i would post a "this is what 38 looks like" picture, but i'm still in bed and my hair's a mess. also, if you've seen me recently, you pretty much have a clue as to what 38 looks like. not much has changed. :-)

and this is where i quote myself from last year's b-day post:

"today - and really, the whole month of december so far - is about celebrating myself. i'm alive. i'm relatively well. i'm safe. i may not have my own place but i have somewhere to sleep that doesn't involve a shelter or a cta train. i have a part-time job that doesn't completely suck. my friends win all of the awards for being wonderful. i am loved. there is obviously a metric fuck-ton that i can be upset about, and trust me, i am totally upset about a lot of things a lot of the time, but for right now, in this moment? happy."

i stand by all of that. if anything, the list of things i'm upset about has grown (america, fuck yeah?), but i  have so much more to be thankful for, also. like friends who cue up the jukebox with prince, rick james, and stevie wonder and order shots of whiskey right at midnight so i can start my actual birthday off right. i'm thankful for this year's b-day staycation. hell, i'm thankful for the ability to recognize how many things i have to be thankful for. not everyone can do that.

here's to 38 being a spectacular year. i have no idea what's in store, but i'm glad y'all are along for the ride.

happy birthday to me!

on: difficulty with generosity

why is it sometimes so challenging for me to accept generosity from others? (sorta kinda related: why is it so challenging for me to spell "generosity" correctly on the first try? thank god for spell check.)

a friend from college emailed me to say they'd be in town this week for work, and wanted to know if we could hang out one evening. calendars were consulted and a date was made. i asked if my friend wanted something specific for dinner, since they haven't lived here full-time in forever. not really, they said - this was more of a pre-birthday celebration dinner for me anyway, so i could pick the restaurant (within reason, of course).

needless to say that i was excited about this prospect, not only for #alldecembereverything reasons, but also b/c i hadn't seen this friend in a while and we always have fun when we catch up.

and then another friend, who'd already said they were plotting a celebratory surprise of sorts for my b-day, sent me a note with some of the particulars for our outing. i might have done a little dance of joy while i was at work reading my email. ok, i totally did a little dance of joy while i was at work reading that email, but then i remembered i was at work and therefore i should keep the dancing to a minimum.

obviously i have no issues accepting generosity during the month of december and, depending on how my annual celebration plays out, sometimes into january. it's the ordinary (read: non-celebratory) acts of kindness that i have issues accepting at times.

i alluded to this back in october (also i just realized i spelled "engagement" wrong in that title and fixed it before i started writing this, dammit) and i found myself wrestling with it again last night. y'know how some people have trouble accepting compliments? i have trouble occasionally with people being nice to me. it's not that i feel that i'm unworthy of such kindness b/c, as we all know, i love myself to the moon and back and beyond. i think it's more of a residual superwoman complex - deluding myself into thinking i have to do every gotdamn thing myself and then feeling guilty when someone offers to do something that will make me feel better, even if it's fleeting.

i know i'm not the only person who struggles with this, even though the rationale behind it may be completely different. i am trying to be better about this, i swear. i do not want to be that guy picking a fight or starting an argument when someone does me a unsolicited favor.

question of the day

do you know anyone who grew up wanting to be a cop?

i know people who wanted to be teachers, or lawyers (self included), or doctors, or firefighters, or astronauts, or veterinarians, or a slew of other things, but i can't think of anyone who wanted to be a cop.

yes, these are things i think about when i wake up at 4am and can't go back to sleep right away. given recent events, i don't think i can be blamed for this line of questioning. sigh.

#alldecembereverything: the 2014 edition

guess what time it is? no, it's not peanut butter jelly time, but i completely understand if that's your first answer.

it's #alldecembereverything time! yes, ladies and gentlemen, my absolute favorite time of year is here! yes, i know december doesn't start until monday, but since quasi-landlord is taking me out for an early b-day dinner celebration on sunday, i figured i'd might as well post the celebration list in its current form so y'all can pick and choose which (if any) activities you want to participate in.

tuesday, december 2: "porgy and bess" at lyric opera. goldstar has discounted tickets available.

thursday, december 4: bears vs. dallas. thursday night football. #anyonebutdallas. it's entirely possible that i will end up watching this game at home, but on the off chance that a game watch gets organized, i'm putting it out there.

friday, december 5: i'm going to the one of a kind show at merchandise mart. discounted tickets available via goldstar, or you can try to find freebies via some of the participating artists. if you want to go on friday, let me know b/c i have an extra free ticket. first come first serve.

saturday, december 6: karaoke at third coast comics at 7pm-ish. i'll be there after i get off work. byob.

sunday, december 7: sweet honey in the rock at symphony center in the afternoon. also short rib dinner that evening with the fine folks at sunday dinner club. if you want in on the nomz, let me know & i'll forward the details to you.

wednesday, december 10: women employed event with roxane gay. if you haven't read "bad feminist" or "an untamed state" yet, you should do that. both books are amazeballs.

sunday, december 14: ladybrunch at angelina. 11am-ish, depending on when i can get a reservation. you should rsvp if you haven't already. if you didn't get an invite and feel that you should have b/c we're cool like that, please let me know so i can rectify this oversight.

monday, december 15: bears vs. saints monday night football. depending on the weather and my budget and other factors, i will either be at soldier field or at a bar for this game. stay tuned for updates as i get this one figured out.

tuesday, december 16: blackhawks vs. wild. i am hoping against hope that i will be at the united center for this game. if that falls through, i'll likely watch it at burger bar b/c $5 wings on tuesdays are delicious.

wednesday, december 17: happy birthday to me! lunch at primehouse as per my usual, then the david bowie exhibit at the mca (squee!) at 1:30. dinner and/or drinking later that evening tbd.

thursday, january 1: bilal at city winery. i bought discounted tickets via goldstar and you should too, b/c saving money is awesome.

yes, i know that last event isn't in december, but if you know me, then you know that i'm likely to continue this celebration until MLK day, if not longer.

i will try to update this list as events warrant. happy almost #alldecembereverything! :-)

defining and pursuing happiness

i was up late last night watching the end of the blackhawks game (yay!) and the bulls game (boo!) and as midnight struck, my mind started racing just as i started yawning repeatedly. this, of course, meant that it took me some extra time to actually fall asleep b/c i couldn't stop mulling certain thoughts over and i was honestly too lazy to go get my laptop or pull out a notebook and start writing.

luckily, some of those same thoughts were still present when i woke up this morning, so here we are.

i think we all need the occasional reminder that we can not define anyone's happiness. that's not part of my job description as your friend. i can talk with you about how you'd like your own version of happiness to look, but i can't define it for you.

what i can do, though, is help you in the pursuit of your happiness. that is definitely in my job description as your friend. you figure out what makes you happy, you clue me in on it, and off we go in the pursuit of whatever that something or someone is.

like i said earlier this year - i'm all about supporting your dreams and your goals and, yes, the pursuit of your happiness. i may not be able to define that shit for you, but damned if i won't be supportive if/when you figure it out. everyone needs at least one person in their corner who's willing and able to back them up, even if it's just to play cheerleader. go pursue some happiness or at least have fun trying to figure it all out. :-)

a few rules of engagement

pay attention.

use your words.

when someone wants to be nice or do something nice for you, let them.

those sound simple as hell, and yet i find myself constantly reminding myself that these are just a few things i can do to not completely suck as a friend. obviously i do not have all of the answers for "how to be an awesome friend" b/c if i did there would be a book or at least another blog and i'd be making the rounds on the talk show circuit and making all of the monies. :-)

this week, i kept repeating "pay attention" and "use your words" to myself over and over, like a mantra. i will admit that part of it was due to the fact that i needed a few people to, well, pay attention and/or use their words and it wasn't happening the way i wanted it to. also i'm not a mind-reader and i have no idea what some folks are thinking if they don't actually verbalize that shit, but whatever.

letting people do nice things for me (well, outside of my birthday, i guess) should not be as difficult for me as it is. first i feel guilty and then i feel like i'm letting myself down for not doing whatever the nice thing in question is on my own and then the voices in my head just have a field day b/c it's fucking ridiculous to feel this way. so what if quasi-landlord offered to make dinner 2 nights in a row when i was perfectly capable of scrounging up my own sustenance? just say thank you and stfu already, self.

(i totally said that to myself this week, btw.)

pay attention.

use your words.

when someone wants to be nice or do something nice for you, let them.

any other rules for not being a sucktastic friend? please to discuss in the comments.

by all means, please send your finest cheese to go with this whine

(all of the whining and emo in this post, in case the title didn't tip you off already.)

i really didn't want to go to work yesterday. like, at ALL. not because it was monday, or because i thought i'd be walking into a shitshow, but because i just really wanted to sit at home and listen to music and eat and drink my feelings. i talked myself out of taking yesterday off b/c i knew i'd have today to sit at home and wallow in my feels if i so chose.

it was dicey for a while there, though. by the time i got to work, i was emotionally exhausted and felt like the smallest thing could send me over the edge. luckily, i made it home without falling apart. a friend asked how i was doing and all i could say was that i was tired. i couldn't get my shit together enough to articulate the hows and whys of my being tired, which, as i admitted to my friend, was frustrating for both of us - them because they were genuinely concerned about what was up with me, and me because i wasn't in a space where i felt like i could give voice to everything i wanted to say. i'm gonna try to give voice to it now.

here's what i think i know at the moment: i'm fucking exhausted. not physically, but more mentally/spiritually. i'm tired of feeling like all the work i've been putting into building and creating a sustainable life for myself has been for naught. i've been living with quasi-landlord for a little more than a year now and while yes for the love of god and other holy things i am thankful for fuck's sake for having a stable living situation, it's not mine and i'm not satisfied.

that's part of my problem, you see. every time i feel like i want to express this frustration, there's a voice in my head telling me to stfu and be thankful for where i am. i AM thankful, as most of y'all can attest if you've been paying attention. my #attitudeofgratitude has been well documented.

and then there's another voice in my head saying that i should just be ok with what i have and be done with it. to stop working so damn hard and accept what i see as a temporary life as permanent. to resign myself to part-time employment and barely having enough to cover expenses and honestly spending more time than i'll publicly admit thankful for my introvert tendencies b/c it means i can stay home and not spend money.

that's not me, though. i want more than that. i want a full-time job that lets me maintain financial responsibility and doesn't make me want to cry every time i walk into work. i want a place of my own where, if i so choose, i can invite y'all over or just be by my gotdamn self and be happy. i want enough money left over after paying bills and handling business to be able to eat, drink, hang out, and be merry. this doesn't sound like a tall order to me, and yet it's been elusive as hell during the past 6 years. did i mention that i'm fucking exhausted? b/c i am.

obviously i am able to keep moving and functioning on most days, but that's because yet another voice in my head pretty much commands me to get up every day. even today, while i'm parked on the couch writing this, i pulled myself out of bed and took a shower and even washed my hair b/c that voice reminds me that i still need to take care of basic things, like hygiene.

every now and then, though - like yesterday and today - shit gets overwhelming and instead of pushing all those emotions away, i need to give myself permission to vent them or at least sit with them and acknowledge their presence before i go back to living for what passes as normal. the fact that i feel like i have to give myself permission to be exhausted is exhausting in and of itself, and yet here i am.

you know where i'll be tomorrow? back at work. back to the proverbial grind. roxane gay kinda nails it for me in her "the price of black ambition" piece, specifically here:

I have achieved a modicum of success, but I never stop working. I never stop. I don’t even feel the flush of pleasure I once did when I achieve a new milestone. I am having a moment, but I only want more. I need more. 

i almost wept after i read that this morning b/c it's just so damn timely and applicable to my life. i can't even say that i'm having a moment...ok, i could say that, but i'd be lying to myself and i try to avoid that, so, yeah. as much as i think i would love to rest on my laurels (such as they are at the moment), i don't think i could ever stop until i reach my goal. knowing me, i'd probably make up a new goal and then keep working. such is my life.

o hai october!

i have been meaning to write something all week long. unfortunately, i have been unable to remember what i was going to write about. i know better. i know i should write these ideas down whenever they pop into my head b/c my quasi-ADD tendencies mean it's highly likely that i will forget whatever brilliant blog post idea i had. womp.

instead, i will share some of the random and/or reoccurring thoughts that have been swirling around my head this week. ok, some of them have been hanging around for longer than a week, if i'm going to be completely honest, but let's not nitpick.

--who takes care of the caretakers? what happens when the person who's been designated as the caretaker realizes that they're overwhelmed and can't fulfill the duty or duties that have been put upon them? who's there for those people?

--believing in love even when you're not actively in love with someone. i think i tweeted about this late last week - someone asked if i still believed in love and they were kinda shocked when i said yes. love takes all kinds of forms and even my cynical self can still believe in love even when i'm not in love. i don't know why that's a difficult concept for some folks to understand. the day i give up on believing in love is the day i just need to retire to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and y'all know i'm too much of a city girl for that to ever happen.

--football! woo! i love not having to worry about what i'm wearing on saturdays and sundays during the season. i watched a bit of last night's game (seriously, vikings: you had ONE JOB) and found myself annoyed with all of the pink for breast cancer awareness. yes, i am team #fuckcancer all day everyday but the "pink fatigue" is real for me. obviously your mileage may vary. also i saw like 2 minutes of the arizona/oregon game last night and holy hell those oregon uniforms pissed me off.

hope y'all are doing well and continuing to #embracethecrazy and #doitlive and believing in love and all those other beautiful things that keep us moving forward. :-)

connecting with "life itself"

i saw "life itself" last night. it was on my "must-see eventually" list as soon as i heard it was being released, but i missed it in theaters during its first wave. i could've rented it via on demand or on amazon, but i didn't for some reason.

when i found out "life itself" was playing at the siskel film center, some part of me knew that there's where i needed to go for this. thankfully my schedule wasn't super-crazy this week and therefore i could take myself on this journey.

more than once during the movie, i reminded myself that i was watching a film about roger ebert at the gene siskel film center. i felt like such a CHICAGOAN in those moments. i can't really pinpoint why. i mean, it's no secret that i have lived in and loved this city for what feels like forever, suburban sojourns notwithstanding. maybe my subconscious was having a particular 9/11 remembrance and without my realizing it, i was having a stronger attachment than usual to this city. 

i am attempting to write this w/o spoilers for those of you who haven't seen the movie and/or read ebert's memoir, but this piece kinda gets at what i'm trying to share: gene siskel's widow was talking about the tempestuous relationship siskel and ebert had. at one point, gene said of roger, "he's an asshole, but he's my asshole." i laughed through my tears on that one b/c that's how i feel about, well, a lot of you. (i use the term "asshole" with nothing but love and affection, obviously.) 

i think that's what struck me both in roger's book and in this film - that throughout his life, he wanted to connect with people. not necessarily people he agreed with, mind you, but people who meant something to him. maybe it's b/c he was an only child and i'm sure any psychologist worth their proverbial salt would say that ebert was creating a family of his own. (i am not a psychologist, nor do i play one on tv, so please don't accept this diagnosis as scientific fact.)

that resonates with me, as most readers of this blog have probably surmised throughout the years. the desire…no, strike that - the need, really, to develop and maintain connections, however tenuous. not to be popular, b/c clearly i am bereft of fucks to give about being popular, but to know that there's a circle, however big or small, of people you give a shit about and who, hopefully, give a shit about you.

seeing roger with chaz was on a completely different level of connection, though. i was digging through my twitter archive looking for things i'd written in response to roger's death last year. a lot of what i managed to say through my blubbering focused on chaz and roger. i may live to see 100 and i'm not convinced i'll see another relationship like the one they chose to share with us.

building and maintaining connections. it's not easy and yet roger and chaz seemed to work so well together that you'd forget that there was actual work involved. there were a couple of times in the film where you just knew chaz was nearing the end of her patience while roger was hospitalized, but then you'd catch them giving each other looks like "ok, fine, i'll stay, but only b/c it's you." that's a helluva connection.

and then (spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the movie) chaz talks about how, at the very end, she and some other loved ones were with roger and they were playing dave brubeck's music and everyone was holding hands and she found herself peaceful enough to be able to let roger go. that's another part of having connections, isn't it? knowing when it's time to sever a connection, be it through death or disagreement or something else.

as the end credits rolled, i just sat there for a moment, primarily b/c i'd cried enough to give myself a sore throat and i couldn't stop blinking residual tears away. i just kept thinking that my heart was so heavy and yet so very full at the same time.

hours later as i write this, i still feel that way - that my heart has been so heavy and yet so full simultaneously. not just today. not even just this week. hell, not even just this year, and lord knows there's been enough to cry/laugh/cry about already.

maybe it's remembering how powerful connections can be. i know i've felt more connected to chicago in the past few years than i probably ever have b/c of [reasons]. 

but i also feel like i've (re)established some powerful connections during that same time frame. i don't mean powerful in terms of clout or anything like that. but powerful more like…meaningful. i guess that's a more appropriate term. yeah, we'll go with "meaningful." that sounds good.

i think that the older we get and the more we realize that certain things in life really do have the capacity to suck for what feels like forever, the more important the connections we have with other people are. sometimes those connections are the only thing that gets us through. other times those connections are blocking us from whatever's next. the wisdom, one hopes, would be in knowing the damn difference.

on: being grounded (and not in the teenager kind of way)

i was talking to a friend recently and they were telling me about the current woes of a young woman they know. apparently she's a child of divorce and her mom is unstable and one or both parents are recovering alcoholics and she, according to my friend, just can't seem to get her act together. in this young woman's defense, though, she's still, well, young. i've not met this woman, but i know she's only a year out of college and is still trying to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up.

my friend is understandably concerned about this woman, b/c apparently her issues are starting to manifest themselves in ways that could be construed as self-defeating, if not self-destructive. as far as i can tell (and this is based solely on what my friend's told me, mind you), this young lady isn't really aware of the fact that her behavior is starting to raise some eyebrows.

"you know what i think a big part of (young lady)'s problem is," my friend noted, "is that there's no substance there. she doesn't have any sort of grounding or center. she doesn't really know who she is. it's not her fault, obviously, but i think that's what's missing."

we mulled that over for a bit and then my friend continued, "i mean, look at you. look at the things that have happened to you during the past few years. you're grounded enough and you're confident enough in who you are that you were able to deal with all of those things without floating away or completely coming unglued."

(god bless this friend for choosing to ignore just how damn close i've been to breaking down on multiple occasions, but whatever.)

my friend thinks that this young woman needs to seek counseling so that she can identify all of her myriad issues and, slowly but surely, work on addressing them. not a bad idea, obviously. the conversation shifted to other topics before we went our separate ways, but i've been mulling this over ever since.

i'm wondering how we got lucky enough to have the sort of "grounding" that my friend referred to. a lot of us come from dysfunctional family backgrounds and therefore we weren't necessarily raised to be super self-confident. i know i personally spent a good chunk of my post-college years trying to figure out exactly who i was and who i wanted to be. let the record show that this is a constant work in progress and i reserve the right to change my mind at any time. :-)

but seriously - how is it that some folks get dealt a less-than-ideal hand and manage to get through it relatively unscathed, while other folks just can't seem to claw their way through? any thoughts?

michael mcdonald + stevie wonder = magic

so i saw michael mcdonald and toto at ravinia on friday night. judge away. i don't care. that show was AMAZING. i am 74% sure that cheryl lynn was there singing backup when toto did "georgy porgy." i am 1098% sure that michael mcdonald still has one of the best beards in the music industry. do not bother attempting to argue with me about this. i will write about all of the shows i attended in 2014 and friday night's performance will more than likely be near the top of my list.

did i mention that this show was AMAZING? b/c it was AMAZING. i'm not just saying that b/c i was #unsober for most of it, either. i have never loved yacht rock as much as i did friday night. even without kenny loggins, "this is it" performed live kinda melted my face.

and as much as i wanted michael mcdonald to do just one michael jackson song (although if he did, i might still be rolling around ravinia's lawn in sheer glee), my wish was not granted. michael mcdonald did, however, give us some stevie wonder as part of his encore. first this:



followed by this:



i have already tweeted the fine folks at ravinia about making an mp3 version of this encore available so i can throw money at them. michael mcdonald went from "you haven't done nothin'" to "superstition" and back and forth again for a good 10 minutes. i wished i'd brought my tambourine with me. it was (wait for it) AMAZING. my friend and i just looked at each other and kept asking "is this happening? is this encore happening? holy shit!" (i did mention that we were #unsober, right? right.)

soundtrack(s) for a day of sadz

i found myself singing this on the way home last night and it seemed appropriate because of myriad reasons:

and then i woke up this morning with this song stuck in my head:

it all makes sense, i suppose, given recent events in the news. also james would've been 52 today and y'all know how that tends to go for me. you can read my post from last year and also from 2012 because i'm pretty sure i don't have anything to add right now.

if anyone needs me, i'll be eating and drinking my feelings for most of the day.

unsoberly stumbling down memory lane, part i'm too unsober to remember what part i might be on right now

if you were paying attention to my twitter feed late this evening, then you probably noticed a series of tweets about my freshman year at northwestern and some of the songs that will always have a place in my heart, like this one:

oh, man. if i had a dollar for every time i heard this song during freshman year, i could...i don't know. pay my renter's insurance for the year? a couple of cell phone bills? or a couple of 30-day ventra passes? yeah, that sounds plausible. we'll go with that.

one of my favorite memories attached to this song? daddy picked me up for our thanksgiving excursion to st. louis to see ma dear (my paternal grandmother) and some other relatives. one of my fellow kappa sweethearts (just google it, y'all, b/c i tried to find a wiki link to post here and came up empty) lived in the st. louis area and daddy offered to drive her home for the holiday. road trip! i swear the flava in ya ear remix came on the radio (yes, children, this was back in the days when you couldn't hook your ipod or phone to your car stereo to haz all of the music nao) at least 5 times during the trip to st. louis and on our return to evanston. every time, my friend and i would look at each other and lose our shit b/c it was pretty much our unofficial anthem, based on the number of times we'd danced to it at parties that quarter.

daddy, bless his everloving heart, never said a word. i think the last time it came on in the car, daddy just rolled his eyes at our giggling selves and kept on driving.

(ehrin, if you're out there and you stumble across this somehow, please say hi via comment or twitter or whatever!)

on: being a (grief) counselor of sorts

i was at work last saturday and was still kinda cranky b/c i didn't really wanna be there, but since 2 people had already called out and saturday is one of the days that i'm technically in charge of the department, i felt like i had no choice but to suck it up and go.

so i'm at work and i notice that one of my co-workers is on the verge of tears. i asked if she was ok and she said that something happened that made her think of her mom and before she could finish that sentence, i pretty much ordered her to go hang out in the back room so she could have a quick crying jag & pull herself together.

see, this co-worker lost her mom about a month and a half ago, and since she's the oldest child, she feels like she has to put on a strong front for her siblings and for her dad. she knows that i'm well acquainted with the whole losing parents/family members thing (sigh), so she asked me if the pain ever goes away.

i didn't lie. i told her the pain somehow eventually gets easier to manage, but that in my experience, there will always be a part of you that will always be in mourning. i told her like i've told other folks both here and off-line - grieve however you think is best. if that means you need to take a few minutes at work to have a mini-breakdown on my shoulder, then so be it. (that totes happened, btw.)

later that day, this same co-worker asked how i was able to do such a good job of helping her and other co-workers who've experienced a loss in the family. i jokingly said that it comes from years of experience, but there's a bit of truth there, i suppose. work has been kinda weird lately anyway, seeing as how one of the librarians died earlier this month from injuries suffered in an accident while they were on their way to work. a lot of people have been coming in to express their condolences and in a couple of cases, i end up consoling them b/c they are distraught to the point of tears and frankly, sometimes i can't handle that kind of energy while i'm working at the desk, esp. from people i don't know.

it's different with y'all, obviously. we're cool enough and clearly y'all trust me enough to share your grief with me, and hopefully i do a decent enough job of listening and helping y'all work through whatever it is you feel like working through at that moment.

i've noticed that it's not just grief/coping with someone's death, though. a lot of times i'm pulled into a counselor role for friends who are just having a rough time. i'm ok with that. i like to think that i'm good at it. i can be that friend/counselor that allows you to say whatever's on your mind and if the situation calls for it, i can offer to beat people up or flip a table on someone's behalf or pass you some tissue or enable the eating and/or drinking of your feelings.

the difficult part, though (you had to have known that there was a "but" coming somewhere), is that sometimes i have to sacrifice myself a bit in order to effectively play that counselor role. i am human enough to admit that i'm not as selfless as i'd like to be during these circumstances. it's challenging when my selfish side is all "what about me and my feelings and my needs pay attention to me dammit" when i know good and damn well the occasion is really calling for me to shut the entire fuck up and listen to what y'all need and attempt to fill those needs as best i can. sometimes that means ignoring the fact that there's only one person on the desk at the work so i can literally lend a supportive shoulder to a colleague. other times it might mean changing my plans in order to buy booze that i really shouldn't be spending money on so i can help a friend drink their cares away.

i suppose that's kinda what being a counselor is about - having the ability to temporarily put yourself aside so you can serve others? i've been that friend for folks since high school (and possible junior high, but y'all know how my memory is sometimes) and it feels like it gets more difficult as we get older. which makes sense, i guess, since our lives get more complicated as we get older and therefore it gets harder to compartmentalize your needs so you can focus on the greater good.

so if i haven't already, let me apologize if at any point during our "counseling sessions," i've spaced out or gone quiet or you felt like i wasn't 100% there. that's me reminding myself to get my shit together and focus on the task at hand, which is helping you deal with whatever you've brought to the table at that moment. i appreciate that a certain level of vulnerability has to exist in order for us to talk about deep (and even the not-so-deep) stuff, and i don't take that responsibility lightly. we'll get through it together. i promise. :-)

love that father's day chicken

i had popeye's for dinner b/c, as previously stated, i wanted my father's day feelings to taste delicious. i have whiskey caramel frozen custard (!) for dessert later. feelings...nothing more than delicious feelings...

while i was having dinner earlier, i found myself pulling off the chicken skin to save it for last, which is something i've done ever since i was old enough to eat fried chicken, i think. actually, that's not completely accurate. there was a period in my life when all i ate from fried chicken was the skin. it drove my family nuts. mashed potatoes? done. whatever veggies were on my plate? gobbled. cornbread? you know i was 'bout that action. but the actual chicken? nope. it wasn't happening. luckily this was a phase i grew out of relatively quickly, probably b/c knowing my brothers, that "naked" chicken didn't last long on my plate.

fast-forward a bit to a visit to kokomo to see my former stepmother. i think i was about 9 years old. daddy & i had driven in for the weekend - my former stepmother hadn't left her job in kokomo yet and there was a weird long-distance/commuter thing happening. i'm sure that was part of why their marriage didn't last. at any rate, we were there on a saturday and i think daddy had decided he wanted popeye's for dinner. my former stepmother went to popeye's and came back, we sat down at the table, loaded up our plates, and started eating.

now, anyone who's broken bread with me knows that my tolerance for spicy food is low. there are certain foods that i will just sweat my way through even though i'm thisclose to passing out from pain b/c the food's that good, but that's a short list and my tolerance for those foods is a relatively recent development. i have a number of friends who, when i ask them for a sample of whatever spicy food they're eating, will tell me straight up that i shouldn't eat it b/c i will have all of the regrets. i trust them.

my former stepmother, in a sort of wisdom that is still lost on me, ordered spicy chicken from popeye's. i am 37 years old and i still don't fuck with popeye's spicy chicken like that, so you know 9 year old me  wasn't having it. at ALL. i took one bite and was in tears by the time i spat it out and told daddy it was too hot and i couldn't eat it.

oh, man, the argument that ensued after that. former stepmother's rationale was that i should just shut up and eat what was on my plate. daddy's point was that if the food was making me uncomfortable and/or was inedible, he wasn't gonna force me to eat. then former stepmother tried to play the "well, i've raised more kids than you and you're just spoiling her" cards and...y'all. i can probably count the number of times i saw my father lose his temper on one hand, and this was one of them. i got sent from the room so they could continue their "discussion." i don't remember which one of them made a second popeye's run, but i did indeed have some chicken i could eat that night.

funny how this memory has stuck with me all these years. i never saw it as daddy spoiling me so much as him knowing his kid enough to know that if i said something was too spicy, it was too spicy and therefore it was a problem. i remember once in high school when someone was teasing me about being spoiled (one of the hazards of being the youngest and a daddy's girl, i suppose) and daddy said that he'd work as hard as he had to and move heaven and earth to make sure i had everything i needed and, if possible, some of the stuff i wanted. i was old enough to appreciate the difference.

that night in kokomo, daddy knew that i needed something edible for dinner. (yes, i know, how very first world of me.) he knew it was his job to fulfill that need, and if that meant getting into an argument with his wife about fulfilling that need, then so be it.

it's one of the things i love(d) most about my father. if you said you needed something and he was in a position to make it happen, consider it done. i think some members of my family took that for granted b/c he never made a big deal about it, but after i turned 18 and daddy felt like he could treat me more like an adult, we had some conversations about it and i knew the lack of acknowledgment hurt him.

17 years after his death, i still feel so incredibly blessed to have been daddy's girl. happy father's day.

father's day flashback

i wasn't kidding last month when i said that i'm an equal-opportunity hater w/r/t mother's day and father's day. here's what i had to say about it last year, and i stand by it now:

good morning. happy sunday. happy father's day.

— eulalia (@queeneulalia) June 16, 2013

s/o to all the dads i know who are raising children that i actually enjoy spending time with outside of #adventuresinbabysitting.

— eulalia (@queeneulalia) June 16, 2013

s/o to all of my friends' dads who i've adopted along the way. thank you for raising kids who grew up to be great adults (so far).

— eulalia (@queeneulalia) June 16, 2013

s/o to the folks who have complicated relationships with their fathers and therefore can't get behind the sentiment today. *hugs* for y'all.

— eulalia (@queeneulalia) June 16, 2013

s/o to the folks who lost their fathers way too soon (16 years ago for me) and might be feeling some kinda way today. *hugs* for y'all, too.

— eulalia (@queeneulalia) June 16, 2013

and i know there's a few daddy's girls on my timeline (takes one to know one, dig?), so make sure you holla at him if you can today.

— eulalia (@queeneulalia) June 16, 2013

recipe review: parmesan-crusted tilapia

i was reading gale gand's new cookbook tuesday night as i was attempting to decompress enough to go the fuck to sleep. i'd had some time off from work and my first day back was wednesday, so i was hoping to turn in early enough so i wouldn't be completely exhausted. of course i couldn't go to sleep right away, even though i was in bed by 9:30.

anyway...i'd already started my shopping list for the week and saw that tilapia was on sale, so i added it to my list, planning to make another batch of dijon fish cakes. then i saw this recipe for parmesan-crusted tilapia, and the fish part of it looked easy enough to try out.

i got 3 tilapia fillets, which was slightly more than a pound. i used shredded parmesan instead of grated b/c that's what was in the fridge. i also used dried parsley instead of fresh b/c that's what was on hand. i didn't actually measure the pepper - i used a ziploc bag for the panko/parmesan mixture and just kinda eyeballed the pepper (and the parsley, actually).

verdict: meh. i think it needed a bit more seasoning of some sort. not salt, necessarily, b/c parmesan is salty enough on its own, but something. maybe i'll add a bit of paprika next time. or lemon pepper instead of black pepper. i'm not sure. i'm willing to try it again, though. i was kinda rushing through prep because i wanted to eat and have things cleaned up in time for the blackhawks game. i was successful in that quest, but maybe next time i won't be as harried and can actually think about seasoning, etc.

a stormy monday of sorts

obviously depending on how you choose to define "stormy." it looks like it's gonna rain any minute now as i write this.

i woke up around 3:30 this morning attempting to shake myself out of a really intense nightmare. that was one of those moments when i once again realized how much it sucks to be lonely - to not have someone that you could curl up with and they would tell you, even if it's a bald-faced lie, that things would be ok.

i was watching anthony bourdain's parts unknown while working on job apps late this morning. this week's episode was all about the mississippi delta, and it made me think of my father, and then i got all weepy. actually i'm still a bit on the weepy side. i know - who cries over seeing tamales being served in mississippi? this girl does, apparently. i remember how excited daddy was when he was finally able to get his hands on a tamale recipe and make it his own. those tamales were good, too.

and now i have to leave for work in a few minutes and hope that the bullshit is kept to a minimum b/c i'm already in a weird mental space today.

happy monday. :P

just in time for mother's day

i think it was monday or tuesday of this week that i officially hit my "i am so DONE with mother's day ads" peak. mother's day is difficult because of [reasons], and every year, it feels like i'm bombarded with more and more commercials and sales and gift ideas and offers until i want to literally run away screaming. i don't like announcing that i feel this way, though, b/c i know mother's day is a big deal for some folks and i don't want to steal their joy, but sometimes, i just wanna yell "holy fucking shit we get it moms are awesome enough with the commercialism already" as part of the aforementioned running away and screaming. i am the worst.

as an alternative, though, i thought i would share some of the tweets i posted last year for mother's day and then go back to pretending that this holiday doesn't really exist. (yes, i do the same thing for father's day. i'm a equal-opportunity both parents are dead and therefore i have no fucks to give about these holidays hater.)

good morning. happy sunday. happy mother's day.
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) May 12, 2013

s/o to all the moms i know who are raising children that i actually enjoy spending time with outside of #adventuresinbabysitting.
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) May 12, 2013

s/o to all of my friends' moms who i've adopted along the way. thank you for raising kids who grew up to be great adults (so far).
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) May 12, 2013

s/o to the folks who have complicated relationships with their mothers and therefore can't get behind the sentiment today. *hugs* for y'all.
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) May 12, 2013

s/o to the folks who lost their mothers way too soon (29 years ago for me) and might be feeling some kinda way today. *hugs* for y'all, too.
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) May 12, 2013

oh, what the hell...*hugs* all around. the sun's out and this is the last sunday i have to work until june, so i'm trying to be positive. :D
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) May 12, 2013

lucky for me that i no longer have to work sundays, which means i can spend this mother's day...i don't actually know what i'll be doing yet, besides watching hockey. maybe i'll just drink and watch hockey. that's an acceptable way to spend a sunday, right? right.

but seriously - happy mother's day to all the awesome moms i know. thank you for raising (mostly) wonderful children. your efforts are noted and appreciated. :-)