Friday house cleaning

Bruise watch: Day 7: Purples, yellows, hints of green. It's not so much the bruise that's worrying me at the moment but it's the fact that I'm still in pain when I walk on it. But there's no way I'm about to go to the Wellness Center for it, so it's going to have to wait until I get back to Colorado.

The days are passing quickly. I spent a good portion of yesterday cleaning. It's a slow process and I don't feel as though I accomplished a lot. I've been lounging today; I think I'm still trying to catch up from the weekend and the settling in of that horrid sleep schedule. But there will be cleaning today and then there will be game night with some friends. 

We have an open house tomorrow morning, so Carlos and I are going for a drive. (I will have to hide his litter box somewhere...) I don't want anyone to know I have a cat this late in the game, although I'm sure that he's been spotted hanging out in the windows. 

The people below us on levels one and two have moved out. It's weird; I always used to talk to the family on the first floor. The dad was always going to work at weird hours and once he almost gave me a bike when mine had a flat tire. The mom was always trying to wrangle the two kids. One once told me to "have fun at college." It was adorable. 

I've been cancelled on three times for babysitting this week. Once from a woman whose child had developed hand, foot and mouth or something for Wednesday day. And then I filled Wednesday night, but her book club was cancelled and so was I. And my regular Thursday afternoon cancelled as well. It's always nice to not have to work, of course, but at the same time, I've been looking forward to that income. It's going to be a really rough couple of months financially and any extra cash helps. 

(I'm going to put out a nannying post once I get back to Denver....hopefully someone will pick me up for six weeks post or even some random evenings.)

I still hate Kobe Bryant. I don't want him to be compared to Michael Jordan; it's frustrating. He's not a good human being. I have this conversation at least ten times a year, and I think this year I'm going to learn all of his stats so I can throw down with people and fight them about his supposed greatness.

The weather in Chicago is insane right now. It was hot today, then it turned cloudy, and now the sky has opened up as is unleashing torrents of rain on the city. Carlos hates thunderstorms. At the first sign of distant thunder, he was under the couch. As the storm grew closer, I looked down to see how he wa doing. He was gone.
I always know where to find him when I can't see him in one of his normal haunts.
I crawled down and looked under my bed. There in the darkness, next to boxes from my bed frame and assorted items, I saw two yellow eyes. He doesn't come out once he's under there. He'll sit there until the storm has passed. I love him.
I met someone else's cat last night, and I will say that it is nothing like mine. It was small and skinny and very cat-like. It seemed fragile and dumb. I was so happy to get home to see Carlos, who is thick and smart and has intelligent eyes and a pensive gaze.
We're going in for vaccinations on Thursday. (At my vet they're half-priced on Thursday and I have a $10 coupon.) He's going to be upset. He hates that. 

Wade Williams

I met Wade Williams at Dairy Queen. It was many years ago. We became friends after I called the number he wrote on a receipt.  His friends had dared him to do it. And so he had.
We've been friends for years. I haven't seen him since high school.
Wow, has it really been that long? We talk here and there.
We are the two most opposite people on the planet. He went to Colorado Christian University. Granted I did go a Catholic high school and a Catholic college, but we are religious people on very different planes. I'm spiritual (and consider myself to be in that typical post-adolescent transient philosophical stage) and he is religious. Deeply so. In ways I'll never comprehend.
But tonight, he paid me a high compliment.
It made my night and reinforced to me that friends come in all forms.

Wade

well im gonna go, 630 breakfast comes early, im so glad i got to chat with you, you are so cool, you know that right? i have not met too many people who are have the zest for life, wit and intelligence you do

Bruise Watch: Day 5

Attractive, yeah?

Another wild weekend.

(The ankle: see below. I promise my feet aren't normally this unattractive...not that feet should be attractive, but...)

The last time I went to sleep was for an hour, this morning. Before that, it was Sunday night.

Somehow trivia stretched into a visit to Mullens, our favorite Wrigleyville bar, which stretched into darts and then I met some Irish (Madeline was like, "It does not surprise me at all that you just came back in and said, 'I met some Irish, let's go.'"), which stretched into a joining of groups and then the late night bars. By then, it was past four, and the sunrise was calling to us. We climbed the lighthouse, pulling out fencing to crawl under before attempting to scale the ladder leading to the top. We were unsuccessful, and so we waited patiently, dangling our feet over the edge as though we could touch the water. We couldn't.
The sunrise never came, but the light did.
And so we drove to Midway.
And then I came home. And then closed my eyes. And then I opened them, dashing off to babysit in the suburbs. It was a long day.
I dared not sleep while the kids were napping, for fear I'd fall into a deep, necessary sleep. And so I watched "Twilight," that teenaged vampire movie.
And then I took the wrong highway because I was nearly a zombie at that point. Two hours later, I arrived home.
Only to leave again to do more trivia.
Third place tonight.
The trivia announcer tells me he always enjoys our wrong answers. They're always hilarious, he tells me. I smile.

The thirteen pounds of furry black animal has been renamed Carlos. I love him. I've been making my absences up to him with Fancy Feast (which is fancier than you'd think), and so he's got this roundness about him that I find entirely too endearing. He's in love with plastic bags. Not to eat, but to sit on. Currently, he's lounging on a Target bag.
He went for his first car ride the other day without his carrier. He hates getting in; I'm assuming he thinks we're going to the vet, because that's where we're always going and they hurt him so much every time. But once he was in, he laid calmly and napped. Until I got out and then he gave me these fearful yellow eyes and I kissed the glass and told him he'd live.
Not surprisingly, he did.

The swelling on my ankle is not going down. I am in considerable pain, but not enough to hinder mobility (sort of...) This injury is the result of a soccer game with friends and then a bunch of Chicagoans in the park on Saturday. A kid wearing glittering cleats (thus his new name, Glitter Cleats) kicked me, right before being yelled at to take it easy on the girl. That upset me, obviously, and it didn't bother me until I looked down and saw the emerging mass that had become my ankle.
That night Maddie, Patrick and I joined Harrison for a comedy show downtown and then went to a bbq being held by one of his friends. I seriously enjoy conversation. It was odd; I knew no one there, but I decided to make the best of it. It was enjoyable.

I'm rambling.
I'm going to start posting my pros/cons lists for Chicago/Denver.
Chicago Pro: Humidity makes my hair curl gorgeously.
Con: Humidity makes all of my cereal stale.