south of the loop

A friend sent this to me back in March, and I keep going back to read the email. I still haven’t done it, but I will, I will! And you should too. I don’t know where it came from but it’s lovely.

the power of intention

dreams manifestation
remember that the word “inspire” is about giving breath, giving life

1) Think about what you want. You can think of something small if you’d like, but why?  Tap into that wellspring of courage you have deep inside you, and dream big. Dream wildly. Dream mondo beyondo (see below). Think about what you would love to have in your craziest, most incredible fantasies.

2) Write it down. Again, be brave — don’t say things like, “If it’s meant to be, it would be nice to have …” – believe it is meant to be. Start your intentions with words like “I absolutely intend to …” and finish the sentence as specifically as possible (“I absolutely intend to make my first million dollars in 10 years.” “I absolutely intend to visit all 7 continents within the next 8 years.”). Write it down where you can see it. And if you feel brave enough, make it a public declaration, if you’d like.  The point is to just make it tangible – not just something you thought about quickly, but something you’ve actually reduced to words, letters and expression.

Then once you’ve written your intentions down, just take a deep breath and walk away. Don’t worry about how you did it – you did it right. I promise.

3) In the next 24 hours, make a list of 10 things that you’re grateful for. Gratitude is the ultimate bringer of more. It is the ultimate releaser of drama. Make that list and write it down. Or say it out loud. Or say it in prayer. Whatever feels most authentic to you.

And then finally, just keep on keeping on. Even if you think there’s nothing to the above, try it anyway. Seriously, what have you got to lose?

Lists to write every year instead of making resolutions

• Things I learned last year
• 10 things I am grateful for
• 10 things I intend to create in my life this year
• And finally, the whopper–the mondo beyondo list.

This is the list of things that are outrageous, wild, and may not even happen for 5 or 10 years from now. This is the list of things that are SO JUICY and unlikely to happen that you are afraid to even write them down. This might be the most important list of all! This is where the trip to Tibet goes, the gallery show for your paintings, meeting your favorite movie star, owning a home in Switzerland, or whatever makes you grin and feel jazzy just thinking about. If this list isn’t really fun to make, you’re not using your imagination. Think big! This is your mondo beyondo.

Filed under: life in general, lists by ellembee
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I am attempting to move this blog to Dream Host and do a little remodeling at the same time. I’m generally pretty tech-savvy, but I’ve discovered that I am a total klutz when it comes to words like MySQL and CSS and SEO. Hopefully very soon you will be able to reach this blog by pointing your browsers to www.southoftheloop.com, and hopefully I will not break the internets in the meantime. See you soon!
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current book: I just started Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird last night. I’m supposed to start a quasi-synchronized reading of Gilead with my friend Ryan, and I’m still fully prepared to do that, it’s just that I got stuck on the CTA for two-and-a-half hours during a snowstorm, and Bird by Bird is what I had with me.

current music: I have Sleater-Kinney’s “One More Hour” stuck in my head on repeat.

current socks: Knee-high blue stripey SmartWools. Did I mention how cold it is outside? And that there’s five inches of snow on the ground?

Filed under: life in general by admin2
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I got a racist email this weekend.

I’m blogging about this with some trepidation—I haven’t asked the sender’s permission to reprint any of her comments here, and I’m not comfortable going into very much detail. But the incident is really bothering me, and I can’t seem to let go of it, which is why I’m handing part of it off to you. Sorry about that.

The email showed a photograph of the White House Rose Garden with a watermelon patch photoshopped in. The ‘joke,’ is, of course, that a black man will soon move into the White House, and watermelon has a derogatory connotation when connected to black people. Except that this isn’t a joke at all.

I’m not sure where you draw the line between off-color humor and outright racism.  And I certainly find some politically incorrect humor worthy of a good laugh—you can’t avoid offending everybody all the time. But wherever that line is, this photo is pretty far on the other side of it. A few emails exchanged between the sender and myself only made me angrier—the implication was that I was overreacting to a ’silly joke’ and that I shouldn’t let it upset me. The sender and I are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, so perhaps she thought that my bleeding heart was too sensitive, or that I was offended that Obama was made the butt of a joke. But I don’t think so.

I’m about the whitest white girl ever. I fit into almost every other majority: white, straight, raised in a Christian faith. I’ve lived almost entirely in big cities with relatively large minority populations. When I was kid growing up in Dallas and Indianapolis, I went to school, church, soccer practice, and ballet class with white kids and non-white kids. Which is to say that I have been, perhaps more than I realized, incredibly sheltered from racism. I know it exists, that it’s not just a toxic memory from the 1960s and earlier. Friends have even shared personal stories. But I’ve certainly never experienced it, never really witnessed it first-hand.

Perhaps it’s strange, then, that I had such a strong reaction to this photo. Although I tried not to, I almost certainly offended the sender with my reply, in which I pointed out that it did upset me, and that it should upset both of us. Our nation has an ugly history in slavery and Jim Crow laws. We don’t need to repeat that, especially for the benefit of—of what? A cheap laugh? I don’t know what pleasure people get from racism, or why people choose to propagate it. I don’t understand the close encounter I had with racism, and I can’t imagine how a black person would have felt seeing that photoshopped image. Maybe because I’ve gone 30 years without intimate knowledge of racism that seeing it exposed so close to me is so shocking, so hard to understand. Maybe because I’ve always been able to look at racism academically, removed from its emotional force.

Condoleezza Rice made some extraordinary remarks on November 5 of this year. She said, “But one of the great things about representing this country is it continues to surprise; it continues to renew itself; it continues to beat all odds and expectations… As an African American, I am especially proud because this is a country that’s been through a long journey in terms of overcoming wounds and making race not the factor in our lives. That work is not done, but yesterday was obviously an extraordinary step forward.”

I guess that whatever our color or experience, we’re all still part of that long journey, falling backward, plodding forward.

Filed under: Uncategorized, life in general by admin2
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When I told my friend John that I might have whooping cough, he listed all the things whooping cough reminded him of. “Reminds me of whooping cranes. And Whoppers, both the Burger King hamburgers and the chalky malt balls. And the 1993 Tag Team classic, ‘Whoomp! There It Is.’ All right, I’ll stop.”

My diagnosis is unconfirmed—my doctor is treating me for whooping cough (pertussis), but said that the antibiotics would kill whatever bacterial infection I’ve got, and that “if you’re still coughing in a month, we’ll know it was pertussis.” Super! I’ve been on antibiotics for four days and feel much better, but I’m still coughing, especially at night. (And in case you were wondering, my coughs lack the characteristic “whoop” sound, but according to the internets, adults may have milder symptoms than children do).

I’m not sure yet how this is going to affect my winter running schedule; presumably I’ll have to modify it to accommodate my reduced lung capacity, but I’m still hoping I can do the Austin 3M Half-Marathon (although I may have to let Mark beat me this year).

And I never did like those chalky malt balls.

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current book: Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces by Robert Clark (and with much thanks to Harriett for the tip)

current music: The last few days have been spent in codeine-induced slumber. Not so much with the music. I fear it would just give me weird dreams.

current socks: Black with multi-colored kitties on them.

Filed under: life in general by admin2
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I thought I’d (re)start my blog with a list of things I’ve done since I last posted, but honestly, it’s not all that interesting. My life is generally busy but not terribly exciting: I still run a lot, I did a major bike event earlier in the summer, I traveled for work to places like Lansing, Michigan, and Peoria, Illinois, I drank cheap beer. See what I mean? You didn’t miss much.

I’m going to try to update some of the links on my blog; I just added a sidebar of all of the reviews I’ve written for Contrary Magazine, which you should immediately go and read. The magazine has some fantastic pieces. I think you’d love it.

For those of you who spend your days staring at a computer screen and need more distractions, you can also follow me on Twitter, a kind of hybrid of instant messaging and micro-blogging. Fair warning, though: I spend a lot of time complaining about the CTA and the people who ride it.

There is also a sidebar for a social bookmarking site called Delicious, which I use relentlessly. The sidebar will show my three most recent bookmarks. There’s a lot of environmental/conservation stuff that I bookmark for work, a lot of political commentary (I’m obsessed with reading about the presidential campaigns), and a lot of shopping sites. What can I say? There’s a lot of cute stuff out there. And if I can’t buy it, I can at least bookmark it and share it with you.

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current book: I need to find something to review for the next issue of Contrary. Hmmm.

current music: Calexico’s Carried to Dust.

current socks: A pair of brown socks covered with silver and purple stars. My friend Megan sent these to me from Ireland a few Christmases ago. They used to be chocolate-scented, but sadly—very, very sadly—the scent has washed out. Boo.

Filed under: life in general by admin2
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Yeah, so, it’s been awhile. What if I commit to blogging one day a week? Will you come back to visit?

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current book: The Great Lakes Water Wars by Peter Annin, though it’s pretty slow going. It’s a somewhat dense book in terms of facts, and somewhat thin in terms of narrative.

current music: Heard Joy Division in the Kopi Cafe in Champaign-Urbana this morning (apparently no relation to the Kopi Cafe in Chicago). Been stuck in my head ever since.

current socks: Stripey SmartWools. I believe the design is called “margarita.” Natch.

Filed under: life in general by admin2
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Filed under: life in general by admin2
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For months, my primary care physician has been nagging me to get an appointment with a urologist. I’ve had three kidney stones, and even though I haven’t had one in four years—four years!—she tells me I have to have a urologist in Chicago. They’re hard to get into, she says. You have to have one in case you have another kidney stone. Blah blah.

So the morning of my last doctor’s appointment, I made the appointment with the urologist so that she would stop nagging me (she called it persistence). And that appointment was today at 3pm.

I always hated going to my old urologist in Indy. I was the youngest person in the waiting room by 50 years, and the only woman. All the old men put their golf magazines down when I walked in. And really, I’m so glad I could give them that breath of fresh air, but I’d rather be in just about any other doctor’s waiting room.

There was a little more diversity in this waiting room (though I was still the youngest by a few decades), but it had a few strikes against it before I even saw the doctor: it shared a waiting area with the Alzheimer’s Disease Center, so I picked a chair facing the other direction because I really can’t deal with sad. The lights kept flickering, and I kept imagining that some poor Alzheimer’s sufferer was confusedly flipping switches somewhere (your mind goes to funny places when you have nothing to read but Money or Golf magazines). The receptionist had given me a pager—the large blinking kind you get at some restaurants—and mine finally went off 20 minutes after my scheduled appointment time, just as my brain was turning numb from reading about investment strategies.

I met a nurse in the hallway who introduced herself by way of giving me a cup to pee in. She showed me to an exam room, where a toilet was sticking out from a cabinet beneath a sink. Like this:

After another 25 minutes—this time I read an Esquire article about experimenting with steroids, which at least was interesting—a woman came in and introduced herself as a physician’s assistant. My doctor had gone home sick (which I hope explains the 45 minute wait—that had better not be the norm around there). She looked through my files and gave me some photocopies about low oxalate foods, which list pages of nutritious and delicious foods to avoid, including sweet potatoes, squash, and spinach. Clearly they are smoking crack if they think I am giving up sweet potatoes. (On the plus side, most berries appear on the list of bad foods, which means I can now tell people that I can’t eat them for fear of kidney stones, not because I think they taste disgusting. Yes, all berries. Yes, I know they’re different.)

So finally a doctor came in and explained that he wanted to determine my risk level for kidney stones. They’d do a CAT scan and then my favorite, the 48-hour pee test, in which you save all your urine in bright orange jug—in the refrigerator, mind you—for two 24-hour periods. The physician’s assistant emphasized that they’d like me to do this during the course of a normal day, when I’m working or at home. Yeah, no way in hell am I putting my pee in a biohazard jug in the work fridge. Are people who work in urologists’ offices really that far removed from reality?

The doctor, a young smarmy guy, told me that they’d have to do a pregnancy test before the CAT scan. Me: I’m not pregnant. Him, smarmily and patronizingly: Oh, I know you’re not pregnant. I just have to do the pregnancy test.

So a nurse comes in to take my blood (I can’t just pee on a cost-efficient stick?), and I assume that I’ll get sent over to the CAT scan lab afterwards to wait in a long line with other grumpy people who need to have pictures taken of their insides. Except… I have to wait a week to call just to schedule the scan. And… why the fuck are they taking my blood one to two weeks before the scan? That is plenty of time for me to go and get knocked up, and for them to harm my unborn child.

All that, and they didn’t even have fun band-aids.

Filed under: doctors, life in general by admin2
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On the 22 Clark bus on my way home. Talking to my mom.

Me: Oh! Ohohoh! I just saw a coyote in the cemetery!

Mom: Your Uncle Tom caught one a couple days ago.

Me: I don’t think I want to hear about this.

Mom: He had a trap set up.

Me: I don’t think I want to hear about this.

Mom: And then he shot it.

Me: Yeah. I didn’t want to hear about that.

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current book: I really just need to suck it up and pick up Kavalier & Clay again. I put it down for The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, but for some reason I’m just not motivated to get back into it.

current music: Anner Bylsma’s rendition of Bach’s Cello Suites. It’s my writing music. I’ve been listening at work to try to get more writing done, but who the fuck can do work when there’s SIX FUCKING INCHES OF SNOW IN THE FORECAST?! Honestly, this winter is ruining my life. It is an evil, soul-sucking, spirit-breaking behemoth. Somebody please make it go away.

current socks: Excellent Easter socks: two bright orange carrots on each sock with a gleeful white bunny at the top.

Filed under: life in general, texas by admin2
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It is 8F with a wind chill of -11F. The forecast calls for highs in the teens until Thursday, when it will climb to a whopping 26 degrees. And then it will snow. Again.

These are the forecasts that make me hate my life and swear I’ll never live another winter here. I’ve lived in cold climates for about 10 years now, and it never gets easier. Or warmer. Some people are all about outdoor winter sports (I actually know somebody in Wisconsin who belongs to a curling team), or view bitterly cold temperatures as “character building,” or claim to prefer cold weather to hot.

What are your secrets for getting through winter? I already have a down comforter, two cats, and the urge to hibernate.

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current book: On the bus tomorrow, I will be starting The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, which I have to read and review by March 1 for Contrary Magazine. I’ll resume Kavalier & Clay at some point.

current music: So many good concerts in Chicago. So little desire to leave my apartment.

current socks: Lovely stripey SmartWools in greens, browns, and oranges.

Filed under: chicago, life in general by admin2
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