bitterfig

Tomorrow I fly to New York and despite my considerable trepidation I am rather looking forward to having some time off.  Between work, and my burgeoning (and occasionally bludgeoning) efforts to increase my social interaction I’ve been pretty busy lately and am getting pretty worn out. 

 

During the past couple of days I put in two late nights, staying out until 1:00 and 1:30 a.m.   Monday night I hung out with Tycho after work.  He’s going to be out of town for a couple weeks and I’d really wanted to see him again before he left.  On Wednesday I ended up spending a couple of hours at an impromptu party of Whole Foods employees on the roof of the parking garage.  I didn’t drink anything because I was driving and also exhausted from work and mainly because by the time you get to be 36 years old getting drunk on the roof of a parking garage has severely limited appeal however I talked to a couple people I know by sight from around the store but have never really had a conversation with, sort of expanded my horizons a bit. 

 

The reason for the impromptu Wednesday night party in the parking garage roof was that everyone needed to do some serious decompression after a particularly hellish day at work.  I work at the Lakeview Whole Foods and that afternoon the Lincoln Park Whole Foods which is a couple of miles away was closed down on account of health code violations.  Or as the tenants used to say when I worked in the property management office “Mices!”   

 

The closing of the Lincoln Park Store resulted in an inundation of customers from that store (which sort of baffled me—I don’t mean to question the loyalty of our customers but I’d go to the nearby Trader Joes or Stanley’s Produce Market or even Jewel or Dominiques which are on the way before I’d haul all the way from the Lincoln Park store to Lakeview store in rush hour traffic) and a frenzy of panic cleaning least our store too be inspected and found wanting.  I lucked out on the cleaning end as I’m in a department that does not actually handle food.  “Deep-cleaning” the registers only took about half an hour longer than the usual closing routine however people in other departments like Prepared Foods and Seafood were running an hour and a half to two hours over the usual time they finish. 

 

Lincoln Park finally re-opened on Saturday afternoon but Friday was extra busy with a lot of indignation over the closing.  “What an embarrassment,” one customer sniped.  I had a hard time not snipping back, “It’s not an embarrassment for me.  I don’t work there and I don’t shop there.”  Also, I know enough about agriculture and pre-modern hygiene and food production that I really can’t be shocked to realize that there are such things as rodents and pests.  There always have been and there always will be until food is grown and prepared in sterile labs. 

 

In addition to all this other stuff, I’ve been doing a lot of biking- in the last week I only used my car three out of seven days which I’m quite proud of.  Still, I have to be careful not to over do it.  Fatigue from too much riding on restricted calories was definitely one of the factors that contributed to my accident last summer. 

 

On Thursday, my last day off, and again yesterday when I was working a closing shift I ended up spending most of my free time during the day sleeping.  I have today off as well which is good. It’ll give me time to pack and take my cat over to my sister’s house where he’ll be staying during my visit (he actually lived there for a couple years but I doubt his little cat brain remembers that far back).  After I get the kitty squared away I’d like to do some cleaning.  I don’t vacuum as often as I should because he hates it.  Nor do I sweep as often as I ought because he tends to get in the way of the broom.

Over the weekend I finally got out and did some serious bike riding.  On Saturday morning I rode to an ANAD meeting which was a couple of miles away and then on Sunday I rode to work. 

 

It’s taken me an inordinately long time to get back on my bike this year.  Part of it has to do with the crazy weather we’ve had this spring (I actually just missed being caught in a really bad storm yesterday) but it’s mainly fear, sort of a delayed reaction to my accident last summer that was really brought home when I found out that two cyclists had recently been in fatal accidents not too far from my neighborhood (one death was literally a block away from where I live).

 

On April 20, 22-year-old Tyler Fabeck was hit by a car at the intersection of Logan Boulevard and Western Avenue.  On April 30, 24-year-old Amanda Annis was killed at the corner of Kedzie and Armitage (another girl was killed at the same corner back in September). 

 

When I rode my bike to work last year, I often went through the Logan Boulevard/Western Avenue intersection and frankly it made me very nervous because of the heavy traffic and poor visibility because of a highway overpass.  When I was riding over the weekend I tried to stick to side streets, though you really have to get on a main thoroughfare with a light to get across Western Avenue. 

 

Right after Memorial Day weekend, something called a Ghost Bike was put up to mark the spot where Fabeck was killed.  A Ghost Bike is a bicycle that’s stripped down, painted white and chained to a place where a cyclist died as a memorial.  After it appeared, I hiked down to the intersection and took some photos of it.  Since then some more candles and flowers have been put around it.  It’s really a chilling reminder of what can go wrong and I’m trying to be really careful when I ride this year and also to drive more carefully and pay more attention to bicyclists.

 

If anyone is interested on more information there was a piece about the Ghost Bike's on Chicago Public Radio a few weeks ago.

Yesterday I broke out my bike and went riding for the first time since November.  I went over to my sister’s place in Ukrainian Village and though I took mainly side streets I did a little riding on busier roads and it’s going to take me a while to get used to traffic.  It gets sort of daunting when you’ve got parked cars on one side and cars and trucks zooming by on the other.  I do wish my bike had narrower handlebars.  When my bike was in the shop after my accident last summer (for those of you who missed it: Deathly Hallows release + 3 way intersection + city bus + turn of questionable legality + me= smashed bike and spectacular bruising) but they still seem too wide.

 

After numerous false starts it seems like spring is finally here.  Several successive days of fine weather have done wonders for my mindset.  I feel like I’ve finally pulled out of the period of low mood I’ve been in since the end of March.  Yesterday when I was at my sisters I felt pretty content and enjoyed myself whereas a week or two ago I felt quite bad about how we were relating and everything.  I think when I get in these moods everything is off. 

 

Because I’m feeling so much better I’m almost tempted to cancel my psychiatrist appointment next week because frankly the clinic in Pilsen is seedy and depressing and I’d really rather not go there.  Unfortunately it’s what I can afford and I have to make myself follow through on the appointment.  I’m all right at the moment but if I don’t address the problems with my medication the sort of depression I’ve had to go through this winter is going to continue to be a problem. 

This morning when I was riding my bike to Biff’s office I had a bit of an accident. Nothing major this time thank goodness, I clipped the mirror of a parked car with my elbow and went sprawling on the pavement. Both my knee and elbow were skinned even though I was wearing thick corduroy pants and a fairly heavy jacket. I also have a nasty bruise on my thigh but overall it wasn’t much worse than the damage I’ve done myself just by tripping and falling. The chain got knocked off my bike and it took me quite a while to get that back on. I’m actually sort of amazed I was able to do it on my own.

Once again I find myself wondering if I should keep riding. I really enjoy it but it might be that I’m just too spacey to do it safely.