Karma

On Monday morning, after my bag was stolen, I pressed the emergency button on the train, and the two driver/conductor people came back and essentially escorted me off the train. I was so exhausted and pissed and upset that I was (embarrassingly but not surprisingly) in tears, and I'm sure I seemed younger and (hopefully) more pathetic than I actually am. So much so that the female half of the duo gave me a hug and told me how sorry she was that it had happened. Her partner instructed me to wait for the police, and they prepared to get back on the train. We were down on the platform at this point, and I panicked a little. I asked if they had a phone I could use. M. Defarge was supposed to be just a few minutes behind me, and if I could intercept him on his way in, he could hop off the train and give me some money or something, since I had no way to get lunch or pay for my train ride home. Neither of them offered me a phone, but the woman reached in her pocket and handed me a $10 bill.

I ended up waiting for close to an hour for the police to come. A few minutes after the train left, I ventured up to the ticket booth and asked the agent if the police were supposed to meet me there or down on the platform. He was dumbfounded that I was even there; no one had told him what had happened. He offered me his cell phone so I could call work, and then gave it back and made me call my husband as well. He kept me company for the entire time I stood there waiting, and when I was done with the cops, he walked me down to the platform and put me on a train.

Yesterday I got off the train at my stop and a man approached me and started talking. I kept walking, like I normally do, and then I realized he was asking if I was OK. I turned around. He told me he'd been on my train on Monday and had been worried about me. He told me he always rides the same train and that he's going to watch out for me from now on--to think of him as my protector. Then he gave me a hug, which was a little more than I was looking for.

I thought of all of these people today when a young guy stopped me on the street on my way home and shamefacedly asked me if I could spare some change. He said he'd been on the El this afternoon and realized his wallet was gone. He had no cash or credit cars, and no way of getting back to the suburbs. He offered to give me his name and address, so that I could contact him and he could pay me back.

I've always been skeptical of people who give me sob stories on the street about losing their wallets and needing money to get home. And, yeah, he was a young, well-dressed white guy--I honestly don't know what I'd have done if he was a black teenager or a homeless-looking old man. But I pulled out my wallet and gave him my extra cash. It was less than what the CTA employee gave me, and anyway I felt like it was the least I could do.

I believe in books, and in my brother

It feels like I wrote that last post a lot longer than a week ago. Ruminating on my beliefs has taken a backseat to worrying about my niece, although she is doing amazingly well, so hopefully I will be getting back to the ruminating soon. We're going to Atlanta this weekend to see her for the first time. I'm a little scared. I can't even imagine how small she must be, and I'm not very good at hospitals. Of course, I don't think of my brother as particularly good at that stuff, either, and it sounds like he has really risen to the occasion, keeping tabs on all of her medical stuff and keeping us all updated on her progress. It's a little hard to believe that my brother, who won't go near other people's babies, not only has one, but has one that's the size of his hand.

My mom told me that they're going to start reading to the baby, as funny as that sounds, and tape it so that the nurses can play back their voices when she gets fussy. So of course I, as librarian/aunt, went out and bought a bunch of books for them to read. I couldn't find the Dr. Seuss ABC book (that will have to be her homecoming gift or something) but I got One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Goodnight Moon, A Pocket for Corduroy (one of the top five children's books of all time, in my humble opinion), and--my new favorite--Pigeon Wants a Puppy. I'll wait til she gets a little older to get her my other new favorite--Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog. (Yes, that is actually a book. And it's awesome. I bought it for my cousin's little girl last year.)

Last Thursday when my brother called me, I honestly didn't think I'd be buying books or anything else. It's unbelievable what the combination of science and faith can do. It will still be a long road for them, and a lot of things can happen, but it sure seems like by getting through this first week, the three of them have proven that they can get through almost anything.

Writing and reading

My new tiny little laptop arrived today! Now I have even less of an excuse not to stick to my one-post-a-week resolution.

I finally finished the doorstop of a book I've been reading since before Christmas (The Shadow of the Wind, which was somewhat entertaining but not worth spending three weeks on but which was too heavy to justify carrying back and forth to work with me). Needing something new, I rummaged around in the pile under my desk and came up with a find from last semester's book sale, a collection of essays from NPR's This I Believe series. I always love listening to them on All Things Considered and (back when I used to commute by car) Morning Edition, and there are some wonderful essays in the collection. So now, of course, I'm tempted to write one myself, just to see what I'd come up with. One of my colleagues actually assigns this in her freshman comp classes, which I think is a really cool idea. I haven't read any of them, but I overheard her in conference with a student whose first line was "I believe in family dinners," which I really liked.

The tricky part, of course, is finding some way to encapsulate my belief system into a single thing. But I'm going to give it some thought. If nothing else, I think it'll be an interesting exercise, and if it ends up being more than that, I can always submit it to the series.

Pondering this idea made me think back to one of my first posts on this blog, when I was trying to find my word, as inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love. I went back to it and was reminded of how much I loved that book. It's sad to say that all of the hype has kind of caused me to look down on it--kind of like the Da Vinci Code--as if the masses liking something automatically renders it unworthy. We'll call it the Oprah Book Club effect. I was just reading a review of Gilbert's new memoir in the New York Times and wondering if I'd be too embarrassed to check it out. But no. I'm going to request it from the library and enjoy it.

Now, off to yoga (but maybe pilates next week).

Resolute

Day 1 of the semester, day 4 of the year, and already I'm feeling unmotivated and lazy. Not the best way to kick off the new decade. I'm going to blame the apathy on the sub-freezing temperatures and the unwelcome jolt of the 5:30 a.m. alarm after a week of sleeping late. But in the interest of jump-starting myself a little, I figured I'd throw out some resolutions, just for the hell of it.

First, a little year-in-review. 2008 was apparently the pinnacle of resolution-following; I wasn't nearly as successful in 2009. Of my four resolutions, I half-assed three and didn't exactly blow the fourth out of the water. I managed just 38 blog posts last year (a little more than half of my once-a-week goal) and didn't write anything worth saving in our short-lived creative writing club. I did learn to knit, but shelved my project with the warm weather; now I'm not sure if I remember how to do it anymore. I volunteered on a biweekly basis with Chicago Cares from January through April and then took the summer off, intending to find a new project or organization in the fall--which didn't happen. However, I did write a pretty solid grant application--unfortunately the state cut funding for the program before it was awarded--and I "published" an article in a professional organization's newsletter. So I'm going to count that one as a qualified success.

But when it comes to resolutions, I'm an eternal optimist. So here goes.

1. Write at least 1 blog post a week. M. Defarge is talking about getting me a laptop, despite the fact that Christmas ended about 20 minutes ago. Maybe that will help.
2. Expand my exercise repertoire to include one day of non-yoga activity per week, even if it means less yoga. In the short-term, check out Pilates classes at my gym and attempt to find an instructor who makes me rethink my current view that Pilates is horrible torture masquerading as fitness.
3. Invite over all of the people who have had us over for dinner. (That can't be grammatical, but I can't figure out how to make it less atrocious.) After successfully hosting three "dinner parties" in the span of a week I was reminded just how much fun it is to have friends over. In the past I've been reluctant because of our ugly bathroom, obnoxious dog, and dirty house. The first problem has been completely rectified, and I managed to look past the other two and still enjoy myself, so I'd like to do it more often.
4. Clean out the desk drawers and the medicine/junk closet in our study when I do my annual room-by-room cleaning, instead of putting them off indefinitely like I did the last two years.
5. Go to Europe. Enough said.

We'll see if I can put my money where my mouth is. I spent the entire fall semester preaching about setting goals, breaking them down into manageable tasks, and keeping oneself accountable, but it's a lot more daunting when I have to do it myself.