Possibly the coolest thing I've ever heard ot

The Poetry Brothel.

Why do I never think of these things?

Quote for the day

"Dad?" She looked up at her father, forcing herself to be brave. "I just want you to know, this wasn't the life I expected for myself."

"I know that, sweetheart." A smile played on his face. "It never is."

--from Happy Now? by Katherine Shonk

Happy Thursday

This morning on the Blue Line, my fellow commuters and I were conscientiously avoiding eye contact and interaction when we arrived at the UIC Halsted stop and a cheerful voice announced, "Everybody have a great day today!"

I cringed and waited for the inevitable follow-up about Jesus or, potentially, Barack Obama. Instead, the speaker continued, "I'm living the American dream and telling my boss to shove it!"

That was enough to make me look up. The woman standing by the door was young, studious-looking, and grinning. We all laughed and a few people cheered. It was a nice little moment of commuter camaraderie to start off the day.

Just what I need--another phobia

I walked home from the train in a thunderstorm this evening and hyperventilated the whole way. I felt a little silly having to chant "everything's going to be okay" to myself, until I was two blocks from home and the tornado sirens started going off. Then I felt somewhat validated--or would have if I hadn't been running. I'm sure that was quite a sight--7 months pregnant in a dress and gym shoes, sprinting down a busy, flooded street. I made it home okay. Nothing fell on me, and there were no funnel clouds. But after this week, I'm really starting to wish I lived in the desert.

Preview of things to come?

I've been told that being a parent makes the world suddenly seem fraught with peril. Friends or family members with kids have described not being able to ride roller coasters or fly on airplanes once they had children. I've never been overly adventurous to begin with (I already can't ride roller coasters), but I somehow thought that this phenomenon began once the kid was actually out in the world. Leave it to me to adopt this paranoia early. My kid isn't even born yet, and I already discovered danger in a completely unexpected place--my backyard.

My neighborhood is full of big old elms and maples--our house is almost 90 years old, so I guess it stands to reason that the trees are too. After a thunderstorm or too-vigorous wind, the surrounding streets are an arborist's nightmare--strewn with severed limbs and the occasional trunk on a roof or porch. This usually happens under cover of darkness, or when I'm at work; like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, they don't usually make a sound--or if they do, I'm not around to hear it.

Friday my nemesis Tom Skilling was forecasting a major thunderstorm, and NPR predicted that it would hit around rush hour. I was hanging out at home when M. Defarge sent me a text saying he was on his way home and optimistic he'd beat the storm. Ever the chivalrous wife, I told him that I would rescue him from the El stop and save him a walk home.

At the appointed time, I headed out to the garage and backed out the car. The sky was dark and the trees were blowing sideways, but to be honest I didn't think twice about it. I headed out of the alley, started to turn right, and then thought the better of it--it can be difficult to cross the busy street we live on. Instead, I often make a left turn and double back to the stoplight in the next block. So I headed the opposite direction--and suddenly all I saw was branches.

I looked out the passenger-side window and saw my neighbor standing next to his van. I assumed he'd come over, but instead he covered his head with his arms. Suddenly the tree-lined street didn't look so innocuous. I looked up at the big maple tree on my left just as another the windshield broke to my right.

Limbs from not one but two different trees had fallen on my car in the space of a few seconds. That didn't seem like very good odds, but I couldn't think of much to do but sit in my car and gape at my neighbor, who still didn't move. Luckily another face appeared in my window and a man with glasses and a yellow rain slicker told me to back up. I pulled back into the alley. But that didn't solve the problem of rescuing M. Defarge from walking home in the storm. Always cool in a crisis, I called his cell phone repeatedly and left a hysterical message involving a lot of obscenities and the news that two trees had fallen on my car. Then I went home, where the power had gone out, abandoned my car in the alley, and tried to turn on the TV news to see if there was in fact a tornado. Then I decided I'd better go get M. Defarge anyway, retrieved my car from the path of an oncoming ComEd service vehicle, and headed out of the alley again, this time in the opposite direction.

Traffic on our street was at a standstill on account of the actual tree that had fallen at the next intersection. I was able to squeeze through and cross to the other side. M. Defarge called to say that his phone had locked up around the time he'd watched an electrical transformer in the neighborhood explode. I screamed some more obscenities to the effect that I was on my way, then had to turn around because another giant tree was blocking the street. Another block detour, and he was safely in the backseat, since the front was full of tiny glass shards.

We got stuck in traffic again on the way back. I've sat on that street a million times, but I'd never noticed just how many trees there were, and how many huge, precarious-looking branches stretched over the street. We turned onto the street intersecting our alley and saw not only the limbs that had been on my car, but also the trees that they'd come from--one atop the remains of a smashed fence, the other split nearly in two and weighing down a power line. M. Defarge made me pull over and switch places. Another quick detour and we were safely in our garage. A broken windshield, a missing mirror, myriad scratches and dents, but the car was mainly intact.

I've always liked our neighborhood and its canopy of trees. I've walked the dog in rainstorms, knowing that the branches would keep us almost dry. It never occurred to me to worry.

We put together a baby registry recently and perused aisles of things like gates and outlet covers and bed rails. I guess maybe we should have registered for a helmet.

I didn't expect to be the most together mom on the playground. But apparently now on top of everything else I have to worry about protecting my kid from falling trees. This was a little more than I bargained for when I signed on.

The storm blew over in less than half an hour and before we knew it the sun was out. But the neighborhood suddenly looked a little more ominous. It still does.

Miscellany

So much for my relaxing Fridays off. Every week I think I'll spend at least part of the day catching up on email and writing fabulous things on this blog. And every week I end up doing errands. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing--it's nice to be able to get that stuff out of the way before the weekend starts. But of course, that means the Internet is missing out on all of the fascinating things I could have been writing about. Such as:

• The other day M. Defarge was on Facebook, communing with all four dozen of his high school classmates, when he saw something that stunned even him. One of the girls in his class posted an excited status update: she's going to be a grandma! [Insert Good Country People joke here.] Apparently the girl in question got pregnant freshman year, and her daughter, in turn, made it to the ripe old age of 20 before getting knocked up herself. I can't decide if this makes me feel old or young by comparison...

• When I was leaving work recently and attempting to navigate the pedestrian traffic on Michigan, I came upon a woman with a white cane and a cell phone. I was a bit flummoxed. Not that blind people don't have every right to walk around in public on their phones just like the rest of us, but wouldn't they need to pay attention to the other sounds around them?

• Huck Finn went over really well with my student/faculty book club. Reading it was a weird experience for me, though. I know that I read it in junior English, and certain scenes transported me back to my seat behind Mike Hallman, who was so tall I always felt well camouflaged. But the majority of the book was a total surprise to me. I was not a fan of much about junior English, but complete amnesia related to a book was a new one for me. We're reading Toni Morrison's Jazz next, which will probably bring back nostalgic memories of my glory days as an English major, but I guess we'll see.

Say it ain't so

Garrison Keillor predicts a world without traditional publishing.

Back in the day, we became writers through the laying on of hands. Some teacher who we worshipped touched our shoulder, and this benediction saw us through a hundred defeats. And then an editor smiled on us and wrote us a check and our babies got shoes. But in the New Era, writers will be self-anointed. No passing of the torch. Just sit down and write the book. And The New York Times, the great brand name of publishing, will vanish (POOF), whose imprimatur you covet for your book ("brilliantly lyrical, edgy, suffused with light" — N.Y. Times). And editors will vanish.