Our Place

We won't be at our apartment for Thanksgiving this weekend, which is good because that means we'll be out with friends and family, soaking up togetherness and food and jokes and football and wine. I'm excited. As great as it is to get out and socialize, lately I've been feeling so lucky to have an apartment like ours. The cool story is that our building used to be an Ovaltine Factory. Somewhere along the way it went out of business and someone got the idea to renovate it into a bunch of loft apartments. That means we have concrete factory floors, 16 foot ceilings, and all the duct work/pipes exposed. Maybe it's the Christmas spirit, maybe it's the extra dose of helpfulness via my husband to clean up when I've had lots of nights home late from work. Either way, I love this place. I think the best part is the guy I share it with. Check out our digs!

Lost Soul

This morning I was feeling a little off. A little lost. A little all over the place. I suppose I feel this way all the time and then not this way all the time, rotating back and forth between belonging and longing in some weird dance, but I was feeling off nonetheless. I often say to Brian, "Why am I in a funk?" only to snap back into reality and the present moment and fully living as myself a few days or hours later. Such is the life of a girl with a racing mind.

Maybe it was my 5:15 alarm, an hour earlier than I'm used to. Or the two bowls, four forks, and one spoon that I have in my apartment. Or my clothes in suitcases and boxes and bags and on the floor. Or the stop-and-go game my foot was playing with the breaks, joining the slow, irregular heartbeat of humanity flowing toward the heart of the city. Or the sense of odd stillness when I paced up Francisco Avenue to the front door of my school. 

Whatever the reason, today I'm feeling a little off, a little displaced. 

A little uncentered, or whatever the word that I'm looking for but can't seem to find is. Some things are in sync, and others are just not, and I guess that's okay and I guess that's what happens in this adult-world-where-there-is-no-prescribed-next-steps. I left my little home of Pilsen last weekend and I think that's what started spinning me off my center. I've found my thoughts taking random highways left and right. Last year, upon moving to the city, I missed the suburbs of my college life. I wanted so badly for a safely lit walk into my apartment, for a mall within a few minutes' distance, and free parking everywhere I went. Last week, in the city, I missed the country. I would've given anything to spend four days exploring by the river, walking on the beach, sitting around a fire, and staring up at a sky of stars. This week, back in the suburbs for the first time in two years, I missed the city. I wanted so badly to run by the lake, view the skyline, sit at my bar, and eat tacos bought from a food truck. My soul is confused because it doesn't know what and where to miss, and why. 

It's all due to this growing-up-thing, that I'm not very sure ever ends, in the end. I am all of these things swirling in my head, and I belong in all of these places, yet I don't know where to find my footing. Some people have that perfectly right idea of the future in 20-20 vision. I, in my very nearsighted fashion, must clumsily squint into the future, only to see a blur of colors and angles, no big picture coming into sight. I don't have a sense of place, yet. Is that something that eventually comes? 

In these next 36 days before that wedding day happens, I'll sort of be in this swirling cyclone. When Brian moves in after our honeymoon, maybe I'll start to see where this thing is going and maybe that picture, or at least corners and pieces of it, might start to come into focus after a small while. 

And yet, and yet, and yet...there is a small feeling that I get addicted to in these moments. I want this feeling, I long for it. Is that weird? Maybe so. Maybe there is something exciting about feeling a little lost; perhaps the very act of shaking it all up puts a thrill in my heart, like starting something new always does. It's a vicious cycle, but I tend to go back to feeling lost and displaced and seasons of feeling "off" over and over and over because it makes me question, makes me think, and makes me do things like stare into that future and wonder about what's coming around the corner. The fact that the object of my vision is a little fuzzy brings this uneasiness, yes, but it brings an excitement and challenge and freshness that I can't seem to live without. 

So I'm feeling a little off; I'm feeling a little lost. I'm waiting to see what comes into focus around the bend. 

Change-Up

This weekend was a big one. I finished the last day of Teach For America's Institute, said goodbye to my wonderful TFA friends, moved into a new apartment, met my new roommates, and will continue on as a real-life adult tomorrow in my real-life professional development session at my school. (I feel like I say "real-life" a lot when referring to my teaching and post-grad life...I think I do this because while all of those things are very real, I don't usually feel like a "real-life" adult.) Maybe I'll write more reflectively on the past little segment of my life in a day or so, but for now I'll let you know the cool things that went down in the past few days.

On Friday night my cousin Craig (who has a very high cool factor) invited me to go see his friend's band at the House of Blues. I grabbed Zach, my co-teacher who loves concerts, and rode up the Green Line to meet Craig and his friends (as well as unexpectedly run into one of my absolute favorite human beings, Lauren Sandberg! Ah!). 

Okay now a word about Zach. This kid has expressed how he feels snubbed for not being mentioned by name in the blog so far, so here goes: Zach was my better half in room 309 as the fellow Reading and Writing teacher and probably saved my life a million times by telling me to stop worrying, finding my lesson plans for me that I misplaced, and telling me that the lesson didn't go THAT badly when it definitely DID GO THAT BADLY. He's a Bostonian, so I like to repeat things in his R-omitting-accent (pahk the cah instead of park the car) while he often makes me repeat my Wisconsin-style pronunciation of "bag." One commonality that made me really excited: He also calls it a bubbler when you other people would refer to it as a drinking fountain. He is in the Milwaukee corps for TFA, so I don't have to say goodbye permanently, I just am super bummed that my partner in crime won't be there for me to make fun of and pester in Chicago all the time. But remember how I'm not getting too upset with saying goodbyes anymore? I'm an adult and I'm sucking it up. (Not really, but I want to sound confident so that's my story for now.) 

We saw the band Mike Golden & Friends headline at the House of Blues and it was AMAZING. They have such a cool vibe to their show (you can download their new album here!) and convinced me of their rockstardom in just a short hour and a half. It was a fabulous night to be in the city. Then reality hit. The next morning I opened my dorm door at IIT and saw this:

Yep. Move-out day. It sucks. Not only are you sad to leave your friends and awesome fun memories behind, you have to sweat like a beast and haul crap around in this sad nostalgic state. But then, all of a sudden, after 14 trips up and down four flights of stairs carrying everything I hold dear, Move-out day turned into Move-in day! Wouldya look at that?  See how that worked out to be an okay day after all? Nice. Here's a sneak preview of my apartment in Pilsen. It's a beaut. I'm just learning about how cool and authentic the neighborhood is as I'm hearing more about it and seeing it for myself. My roommates are two happy and fun girls, so I am really thankful for this living set-up. I'm still a little iffy on how I feel about being on my own in the real-life adult world (there I go again), but it's going to be a fun adventure to figure it all out. Look at me, a Chicago resident!

Not only did all those things happen this weekend, but another HUGE event in my life occurred. I discovered Cookie Butter. It might rank up there with starting a new job and moving into a new apartment on the gravity of impact that it's made on my life. I know there are others out there who have been on this train and I'm just hitching on now, but I have to say that it is the most delicious bandwagon I've jumped on since the joint Pizza Hut-Taco Bell drive-thru craze hit Sheboygan County in 2006. This stuff is amazing. It's hard for me to remember to spread it on other foods instead of just eat it by the spoonful on its own. I'm telling you, give it a shot. Right now. You won't be disappointed. I'll be spending tonight eating this, getting ready for bed, and falling asleep in a brand-new-to-me place. Real-life tastes good.