It’s better than a mass e-mail

Now that I have faced the reality of my life as an unempl – I mean, a freelance writer, at least temporarily, it is now time to make some plans. My friend Lauren called me yesterday and basically brought me back to reality – time will fly if you don’t get it together, and are you in or out?

She was referring to Honduras, where she is heading in January for a Spanish language immersion program . Part of my feet-dragging on a full-time job was the possibility of either going with her or doing my own venture there or in Costa Rica (I am still really itching to go to CR, so perhaps I can roll the two into one trip?).

So I’m in. Just as the thermometer hits the negatives here in Chicago, I will be heading down to tropical Honduras to perfect my shoddy Spanish skills and breathe in the exotic life of Central America. Haven’t fully budgeted for it, or really signed up yet, but as GI Joe said, “Knowing is the half the battle,” … and, well, I know I want to do it.

I think I might be one of those people that welcomes strange interactions with others.

Case in point: While I was at a bar the other night, I went up the bar and was pulling out a stool when I met a woman sitting next to me. I don’t remember who initiated the conversation, but she said her name was Sara, I asked if she had an ‘h’ at the end, and she said of course not. I laughed, and said I was also Sara without an ‘h’ and she screamed and said, “Yay BFF.” So naturally, I was like this girl is hysterical and awesome.

Then I realized she was potentially a crazy psycho stalker or perhaps just an overeager friend. Throughout the night she kept tapping my shoulder and introducing me to all her friends. I met her roommate, her roommate’s boyfriend, some other dude and that guy. At one point, I heard her holler my name from across the bar. At the end of the night, I walked outside of the bar and was standing on the sidewalk when she comes bounding out of the bar. “You’re leaving? But don’t you want my number? Don’t you want to hang out.” I don’t remember how I dodged it, but somehow got away… I think it was when she said something about being unemployed and hanging out all the time that I just bailed. Yikes. (Note: One of the things I love about Chicago is how nice and outgoing people are, but seriously folks, this was a little much.)

Then, the other day Mo and I were walking down Broadway when we saw a young woman on a bike get clocked by a guy opening his Jeep door. She biffed, hit the pavement, and almost the second her Schwinn 10-speed went down did the profanities begin flying from her mouth. I am too much of a lady to repeat the things she was saying (or I just don’t have the space here). Yelling at the top of her lungs, shaking her fist at the man, creating an entire scene. The man asked if she was OK (she was going maybe 0.3 miles per hour and didn’t even wrinkle her pants in the fall), and kind of in shock, wandered off. She continued to scream for another few minutes, sat on the curb, still cussing. People are crazy.

Random: Today I was walking down the street with Cindy when a black SUV drove by, and the passenger rolled down his window and yelled something about me looking like Winona Ryder. Who knew?

In other news, I went to see my friend Joe’s band play last night and since Mo and I got special amazing privileged all-access passes that basically meant we could do whatever we wanted and spit on people while we were doing it, we got something of a glance of the rockstar lifestyle. Besides getting to drink PBR from cans in the lunch-meat-and-sweat-smelling basement of the club, we watched the headliners from a sidestage door. The best part was looking out into crowd and seeing what they see – a massive sea of sweaty teenagers pumping their fists and singing every word. I swear one guy was crying with this they-know-my-pain look on his face. Amazing. People are crazy. (And yes, I fully understand that ten years ago, I was there.) But it’s strange to me as a non-rockstar that these people who, while being amazing musicians and performers, are people. Just normal, very nice people. But from the look of the pulsating crowd, these guys were gods. What a life.

Speaking of that rockstar life, it seems massively exhausting. My friend has been on the road for months on end, working his way down a list of tour cities printed on a card on his keychain. They crash on random people’s floors and drive for hours in a van. My friend Joe was married two months ago and soon after left for tour and it will be four weeks until he sees his newlywed wife again.

So it made me think about how I just don’t think I could do that. I don’t think I could live that life and be away from the person I love. Then I realized something. I may not perform to screaming crowds of teenagers or wonder where I am sleeping that night, but I am living away from the person I love. I understand I made my bed, but you know, they say home is where the heart is. What about if you’re home is somewhere (that you chose and adore and want to be) but your heart is somewhere else, in this case half way across the damn country? I do know that it doesn’t matter where you are physically… but it is massively exhausting.

Well, before you get too excited…. it’s not that I got a full time job. See, I have just decided to change my perspective and embrace the life I’m living.

From now on, I am a freelance writer.

None of this “I don’t have a job” business. In fact, I have kept quite busy with work.

I have started calling the three square foot space in my tiny apartment where my desk and phone are “the office.” Sometimes I pretend I have a secretary and that she just called off of work today.

The next step is getting business cards, which I fully intend to do.

A freelance writer. It’s actually quite liberating.

I stayed up last night watching a special on TLC about a man who weighed a half of a ton. That’s more than 1,000 pounds, people. He hadn’t been out of his house in seven years.

When the paramedics arrived, he was just minutes from death. He was literally suffocating himself with his fat. He couldn’t roll over on his back, and if he did, he would crush his lungs under the extra weight. His skin had stretched so much that he had these pockets of tissue that had gathered and were seeping fluids onto his bedsheets. I think it was called weeping tissues…. He had blood and probably fecal matter under his finger nails.

No words can describe what he looked like and how he must have been suffering.

The doctors put him on this crash diet of 1/10 of his calories (still more than I eat in a day) to get him down to a weight that was safe enough to do a stomach-stapling surgery. After a while, he was able to roll over and sit up with help.

He was married (when he was roughly 700 pounds; the marriage was never consummated), his wife would just feed him and feed him and give him whatever he wanted. One person on the show said it was bordering on assisted suicide. She said she just didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. (!!)

Well I am not really sure why I am sharing this, except that I just can’t stop thinking about him. It’s so sad to me that there are people like that that just can’t control themselves. Allegedly they don’t have some hormone or something that lets them know they are full… Combine that with today’s bad eating habits and lack of exercise and you have a man who weighs a half of a ton.

I had been living in Chicago – in an apartment alone for the first time after having shared a place with my BF and a house with four college girlfriends before that – for about a week when my oven exploded.

Exploded may be a little much. Technically, it was something of an oven blast. Call it what you will, it sent me to the hospital with third degree burns on my face.

I had just gotten home from the gym and I was cooking enchiladas. As I was sauteeing veggies in a pan on the stovetop, I preheated the oven to the bake the enchiladas for a few minutes. For the record, I hate cooking. I am bad at it, it stresses me out, and I rarely did it. When it was my turn to cook, the choices were enchiladas or … well… that’s it.

A few minutes after turning on the oven, I wasn’t sure it was getting warm, and like an idiot, opened the oven door and held my face close to see if it was heating up. Upon opening the door, I was met with a massive blue fireball that whooshed out at me, directly into my face.

I half-screamed, slammed the door, and patted my face down. That’s right, I f-ing had to pat my damn face down. I could smell the rancid stench of burned hair. That was part of my bangs and the tips of my eyebrows and eyelashes.

I turned off the burner and oven, threw water on my face and ran to the bathroom mirror, just in time to see a thin film of skin on my nose roll up and slide off. I put a wet towel on my face – it was beginning to hurt like hell – and proceeded to panic. I called my BF, who hundreds of miles away in New York was really helpless, and I think at one point I ran downstairs and banged on the building engineer’s door.

I had no idea what to do. I was alone and hurt. Finally, I called the one friend I had in Chicago, who – thank the heavens – came over immediately and drove me about three blocks to the ER. She spent the evening there with me as my face reddened and tightened and stung. She assured me it wasn’t that bad and the doctors would see me soon, and even distracted me by flirting with a ER-regular in this time for a broken wrist.

The doctor kindly told me what I knew, cleaned off the burns and gave me an antibiotic cream. It could have been so much worse, we all said, and it’s true. I was immensely lucky. This was my face for chrissake, where my eyes and mouth and nose and other vital things are located. That and my dashing good looks….

Just in case, I took a bunch of pictures of the burns. Minimal, I know. In fact, I realized it wasn’t the burns that were so bad, it was the recurring horror of that flame jumping from my oven directly into my face.

I suppose the gas lit and the pilot light as out. Opening a door of bottled up gas, which lit from the stove flame, sent a massive but short-lived fireball into my face. Although it was a new stove, I ordered the building engineer replace it, and after threatening to sue (I was mad the management company seemed to disregard what had happened), the company finally agreed to pay my minimal doctors bills.

A week later, the thin scabs fell from my face revealing new, pink skin. But only after days of stares and feeling ugly and uncomfortable. And as a journalist, I was surprised that none of my peers asked what happened or if I had some kind of condition. I guess the newness of school and the people overrode the curiosity of a journalist…

Today, I have no scars. My hair and eyelashes and eyebrows are back, and I even laugh about the whole incident. But about two months after it happened, I tried to bake cookies and cried the entire time. I still refuse to turn on the oven and every time I leave the apartment, I check and double check that the burners are off, even if I haven’t cooked anything in days.