Need to remember this day

Spend hours finding various places to sit.
Ponder everything that is around you.
Find appreciation for simple everyday things that are part of your daily landscape.
The color of the street sign against the color of the sky and the brick building.
How it shares the backdrop of without discrimination.
It reminds you of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
How each side of the island is so dramatically different.
On a topical map, bricks and sky would be a fairly accurate description of each “country.”

The sun shining against Eastern State Penitentiary, it’s been on this corner for almost two hundred years.
TWO HUNDRED YEARS!
The first penitentiary in the WORLD!
And you’re drinking iced tea
out of a plastic cup
across the street.
Watching people.
Admiring the street sign.
The brick building.
The sky.

Dear Natalie,

You're feeling nostalgic today. Thinking about people from the past, the relationships you had with them. How you miss the closeness of these friendships. If you could use your five remaining vacation days to take a trip back in time, you would pack your bags today.

Not that your existing friendships aren't held in the highest regard. But there are some people you miss communicating with. And you might make vein attempts to start the fire again from scratch. But the rains came through and the wood is damp so you'll get nothing more but a few sparks. Just enough for you to glimpse into the past but not enough to build a new friendship for the present.

What a sweet deal a trip through time would be. To go back to the relentlessly care free days of your early 20's. Before bed times and a stressful job. The days of ordering take out, after parties, ability to handle booze, dancing until sunrise... you were so financially broke but boy did you have a good time.

Now you tend to be lazy. You like the idea of doing laundry and watching a movie even though it's a Friday night. Having a beer with a boyfriend that needs to go to bed early to wake up at 5, you're bound to REALLY do yourself in by looking at old pictures and writing letters that you'll never send.

Drunk letters.

That nobody should ever read until after editing.

No deal with your nostalgia, you've decided to go out this weekend. Go out and do the things you did in your early 20's. It'll be ok because everyone else there is doing the same thing on a much more regular basis. You'll dance and smile and come home sweaty. That is, of course, if you don't get lazy and declare the day perfect for staying home.

Get out, girl. Get out and enjoy while you still can.
Your friend,
Natalie of 7/16/10

Landlord

Always rushing. At least that's how it seems. So I decided to sit at Logan Square and stare blankly at the fountain and let my mind wander. I figured I'd do this for 5 minutes, since there needs to be a time limit on everything.

I ended up staring at the fountain for the better part of an hour. Thinking. Picturing. Wondering. I can't even remember the last time I did that.

So my landlord almost died and/or came *this close* to having his leg amputated. This is what happens when you let a MRSA infection take over your body. He pulled a pulled some strings and is surely spending a considerable amount of money to recover at home (via medical equipment in the apartment and a nurse that comes by every day). Yesterday, when Jordan came home, he found landlord standing at the door in an effort to get some fresh air. With a large contraption stuck to his waist to drain his wound and a look of death on his face, I wonder if Jordan asked, "How's it going?"

One thing that's always amused me about my landlord is the notion that he has spent time impersonating Elvis. That was the rumor anyway. Jordan had caught a glimpse of a flyer advertising his Elvis impersonating expertise which was being used for charity. When doing laundry, I heard, what sounded like, a grown man playing piano and singing along to The King but I never knew for sure....

Needless to say, I was delighted to find a flyer for landlord's Elvis impersonating skills taped to my door at 6 AM today. My neighbor must have found it and wrote a note saying, "I thought of you..." It made my day. Partially because I got to see the proof with my own to eyes. But also because I'd been worried about landlord and his recovery. The words "almost died" and "almost lost my leg" resonated with me after getting the informative text. Both in the "because I care about my fellow man kind" and also "because I'm self centeredly thinking about what would happen if I almost die and/or lose my leg."

Dear future natalie,

Today you swam in the ocean for hours. Even though the current was scary, you didn't panic and successfully dove under big waves to avoid injury. It was such a great day at the beach and you found exciting peace in the ocean. It sounds like a contradiction, but peace is exciting yo!!

You were sad to leave after just spending the afternoon in bliss. While your mom and her friends were preparing for happy hour, you were preparing for the drive home. It was depressing. It physically hurt you to leave. You need more than an afternoon. Remember this pain next summer so that you plan ahead with a Monday off of work, dummy.

Thanks in advance,

natalie of august 23, 2009

Dear Natalie Pep Talk.

That feeling of accomplishment is pretty sweet. Sore muscles indicating future strength, the idea that you sweated out some nasty shit that's been building up in your body. Working out feels GOOD. It's getting there that's the challenge...

Coming home from work, you're finding excuses to stay at home and maybe take a nap. Abandoning your goals to get in shape and maybe shrink parts of your body. Because you're tired. Because you have a headache. Because you have oh so much to accomplish at home. Who has time for physical self improvement when life is so busy?

Fuck. all. that. shit. If you listen to excuses, you'd never get anything done.

You tell your man that it's his turn to cook dinner and you get your tubby ass to the gym where you will polish the guns, ride a bike to nowhere and regret stepping foot into a yoga class. You will do it because you will feel super when it's over. You'll do it because your body NEEDS THIS. If you don't do it, you will be a lazy lethargic slob with more jiggly parts than solid parts.

You don't have kids, you only work 8 hours a day, you have no excuse. Good job getting your butt to the gym today, but don't you dare think about bailing tomorrow or Thursday!

Produce Man

Thursdays are fun because the Farmers' Market sets up their little stands and sells produce to the fine people of Fairmount. It feels good to eat food that was grown within an hours drive of your house. You can ask the farmer guy from New Jersey if he sprayed these particular crops with pesticides and if so, he'll tell you what chemicals were involved as you nod your head concentration in your eyes pretending you know what chemicals are good and bad.

The only part of Farmers Market Shopping that's tricky is choosing your produce stand of preference. Two of the stands have cheap prices and beautiful looking produce. But what they're lacking is an attractive farm lad peddling produce.

Maybe it's just me. But I'm partial to one particular stand because of the somewhat shy farmer boy with hazel eyes for the simple fact that (even as a woman who loves her boyfriend deeply) I like to look at a pretty face and blush from time to time. What girl doesn't?

We have a brief conversation about vegetables and what to do with them, I give him money, his hand brushes against my hand when he gives me the change and he says, "See you next week." There's nothing wrong with innocent swooning.

The downside of this is that I'm literally paying for the interaction. On several occasions, I've purchased produce that I was pretty sure wouldn't be consumed. Weird looking carrots, tiny zucchini, potatoes- I wasn't planning to cook these items, I just made a purchase for the sake of supporting the attractive produce peddler. I make my small purchase and then do my real shopping where I get a bag full of locally grown shit for under $10.

It just occurred to me that I'm exploiting the attractive produce peddler... or is he exploiting me?

Boys Love Needy Girlfriends.

You have your period. You can't stop sweating because it's 95 degrees outside. You went to the gym and have swamp ass. Even after the cold shower, you continue to sweat. You don't have any clean clothes so you throw on shorts that you bought but you never wore.

You'd kill for a compliment at this moment.

So you say, "do these shorts look stupid?" And he looks you over and with uncertainty says, "nah."

So you say, "Well do they look ok?" And he looks you over and says, "Yeah. They look ok. They're not sexy or anything. They're just shorts."

They're not sexy or anything. What you want to here.. what you NEED to hear is, "You make those shorts look good" or some corny bullshit along those lines. So you keep digging and digging for compliments in an obscure and extremely annoying way. In a desperate move, you refer to the fact that nothing looks sexy on you because you're overweight and can't stop sweating. And that's when he stops listening.

Although it's important to you, at the time, to hear some sort of compliment- it's a good reminder that it doesn't matter how someone else sees you. All you're doing is digging for validation about how you want to feel about the shell that holds your insides together. It's retarded you can't get a compliment out of a dude, but shit- does it matter? Are you happy with the hard work you've been doing? The healthy nutritious food you've been pumping into your body? It's time to shut up and praise yourself instead of begging for someone else to praise you.

But seriously though, dudes should compliment their chicks at LEAST once a week. Compliments should not be about tits, ass or vagina.