come, take a walking-trip through happiness.

the next weekend was erin’s last a single lady. but instead of some lame debauched night out on the town that typefies most bachelorette parties, we went to michigan. stacy invited everyone to her lake house, but in the end only four of us ended up going. the trunk of her car was packed with obscene amounts of food and an absolutely massive bottle of grey goose. there were unsubstatiated rumours of perhaps some kind male strippers showing up but in the end the only penises that we saw were the very bizarre ones on the streamers that stacy brought:

we hung them up as soon as we arrived, even though it was really late. we lit a citronella torch and stuck it through the deck. we ate some serious teriyaki beef jerky that we picked up at a rest stop in indiana and made drinks and sat on the deck under the moon that was definitely brighter than it is in chicago. i think xan was the first one to walk right into the screen door on her way back into the house, which became almost invisible in the darkness of night. the frame of the door got a bit bent out of shape so we took it out to fix it,

which was, in the end, an otious endeavor as two more of us would walk into it later on in the weekend (i can’t take any credit for being the only one to avoid it, i chalk it up to my near-teetotaling because i am generally maladroit). xan and erin did gymnastics on the lawn and for some reason we were prompted to start doing roundhouse kicks and pushups on the deck, which i dubbed ‘spontaneous fitness’. i made erin do numerous one-handed cartwheels while smoking because i am impressed by that kind of thing.

the next day we woke up to overcast skies. we had bagels and there was a debacle with stacy’s old-school toaster which required us to dig the massive bagel halves out of the tiny archaic slots with knives. stacy’s neighbor offered us use of his boat, if we wanted to go out on it later that day. sadly, it started to rain and poured most of the afternoon, but then the sun came out eventually and we sat out and tanned (well, everyone but me- since i am averse to putting on bathing suits and don’t even own one). we planned on grilling for dinner and once we got the energy, we drove to the nearest town to get ground beef and other things like…fireworks. the grocery store had the most amazing characters: the woman who rang everything up and then apparently was stumped when i handed her my debit card; the woman she called over to help process my payment who had bright blue eyeshadow, a paucity of dentition, and feathered hair. i didn’t understand how they could all talk with a southern accent even though we were north of chicago. the boy who bagged our groceries asked stacy why we would ever want to come there from chicago.

we hadn’t seen the burned down house the night before when we arrived, but in the light of day, on the way back from the grocery store, we drove past it and decided we had to walk back and check it out. erin or stacy posited that it was probably a meth house and blew up because of some misstep in production. after we had dinner we started walking over, cameras in hand. stacy’s neighbor caught us leaving and asked where we were going. ‘oh, just an after dinner walk,’ we replied. ‘goin to check out the burned down house, ain’tcha?’ touché. he told us that a family had been living there and that their stove had caught on fire, and that a couple kids had actually died.

the house was gutted in the middle, and it looked as though it hadn’t been touched since the fire got put out. there was garbage bags of food, and just….crap…everywhere. there were kid’s clothes and shoes and dolls and what we were convinced was a dog’s corpse. we tiptoed gingerly among the ruins, as though one careless step could cause the charred skeleton of the house to collapse onto us. we snapped pictures and whispered ohmygods and were generally solemn until stacy just about gave her dinner back to the world and we had to get out.

we went back and made drinks and ate cheesecake and played a drinking game called rockstar rehab. we decided to get to work on the giant box of fireworks we’d bought. stacy started an awesome bonfire down by the waterfront and started to light the fireworks and i took about eight hundred pictures of each one. xan brought along her copies of the scary stories to tell in the dark books, which we all took turns reading (some in a more theatrical manner than others). everyone knew all those stories inside and out from childhood, so we made some silly modifications to keep ourselves entertained.

the next morning it was sunny and beautiful and so i got up early and sat on the deck and listened to music and watched the waterskiers buzz past. once everyone else got up though, it started raining so we were forced inside and watched the first film argento ever made- i don’t have an attention span for movies so i really only remember that the main character had a lovely crop of ringlets on his head. we weren’t able to go swimming in the lake (not that i can or am willing to swim, particularly in a body of water of whose depth i am uncertain) or on the boat so we decided, somewhat dejectedly, to make our way home. i think it was probably the best way to spend erin’s last week of singlehood- stuffing our faces, lighting shit on fire, and walking into screen doors. sure beats going to dick in face.

june 14 + 15

the whole i time i was in australia i was able to comfort myself with the certainty that, upon returning home, it would be SUMMER. things to look forward to. plans never broken because of snowfall or winter flu. windows down, always. after taking two weeks to recover from my debilitating jetlag, erin and i took a weekend jaunt to champaign (ah, my former brief college home!) to attend a memorial for her uncle. here is where i would post a hilarious picture of me and my short t-rex arms squeegeeing my windshield at a gas station in gilman, except it is still on erin’s camera. so use your imagination. i hadn’t been to champaign since the fall of 2005, and before that i hadn’t returned since i moved home in may of 2002. i still remember a lot about that place, i remember the grid of streets around campus and the first thing we did upon arrival is drive by my old apartment on locust street, only to find it gone. on the lot of 910 s. locust, there is now a giant building under construction that will eventually be lofts. i had to restrain myself from calling my parents because i was in such shock. that tiny apartment was the one lovely part about the otherwise horrible nine months i lived there.

we drove over to the channing-murray foundation building, which also houses a hippie vegetarian restaurant in its basement and is right behind my beloved foreign language building. we parked and walked over to the bread company (where i used to sometimes go to the swedish coffee hour, sigh) to get sandwiches. we met erin’s dad afterwards and he was wearing a giant pair of sunglasses that we complimented him on, to which he replied: “these are my stunna shades.” we went inside the c-m foundation building and met a bunch of people and drank some really weak coffee. most of the people who came to the memorial were friends of erin’s uncle’s who used to be a part of a group that would show films in that building many years ago. everyone went around a told stories while nibbling on oreos and nutter butters. i tried not to eat too many of them because i was lobbying to have dinner at radio maria, the spot where my dad and i would always have dinner when he’d come down and stay with me when he went to springfield for work, also the restaurant i ate dinner at the table next to sleater-kinney and then accosted corin in the ladies room in 2005.

erin’s godfather palmer joined us for dinner and soon found that he and i are kindred spirits re: music that only me, jenn, and old dudes like. over dinner i told him that i really only listen to old music, and the first thing he said was, ‘like what, moby grape?’ which caused me to lose my shit since i made erin listen to their first three records on the drive down. the rest of the night we talked about the soft machine and he told me how he saw led zeppelin (and jethro tull!) open for vanilla fudge in chicago back in the day. palmer keeps a detailed spreadsheet of all the gigs that are going on every night in the champaign-urbana area so after dinner we went to the bookstore to watch a jazz quartet play (sleeeepy) and then to the embassy for drinks and to see some kind of tropicália-ish group play which was nice and quiet so we could talk about more important things such as BOOKS. after that we went over to the iron post to see some other band whose flyer said “it’s rock! what else you freaking want?” that played a bunch of truly offensive ill-chosen covers, which we could only hear bits of since we sat outside (remember, the summer). i drank about four hundred cokes because i was driving. erin was getting drunker and saying the most profound hilarious shit that of course i don’t remember now because i didn’t write it down right after it happened. we drove to the hotel her parents had booked at and while we were checking in we taught erin’s mom how to do prune when posing for pictures and took a bunch of hilarious pictures in the lobby (which i also do not have).

erin and i shared a giant bed and fell asleep watching that horrible show about hulk hogan’s family. the next morning we all went to breakfast again. erin kept thanking me for coming with, like it was boring to hang out with her parents and listen to palmer talk about samuel beckett.  i was in a state of marvelment, i am pretty sure i vowed to not hang out with people my age any more after that weekend. only old people want to go to a bar and deconstruct the bell jar or the bands that comprised the canterbury scene. it made me reevaluate the level of discourse i should expect to have with people, though it seems i haven’t revised my standards. all we keep saying is, we should go back to champaign. my twenty year old self would not be able to stop cringing.

having a weekend wife is awesome. way better than having a weekday husband, which is what most people tell me i should get when i talk about my weekend wife. my weekend wife is way smarter than any weekday husband, she can give me serious personality tests and rhapsodize about john cheever’s short stories all night. a weekend wife can appreciate the beautiful atavism to youth that is spending your saturday nights drinking from a tropicana juice bottle filled with dutch vodka on a chicago park district baseball mound. or the steps of a church. my weekend wife is the looks and the brains. my weekend wife is always there to remind me that it is probably not a good idea to go around talking about how much i like oasis. my weekend wife makes heart shaped waffles with boysenberry syrup for sunday breakfast. my weekend wife gets all of my ‘rock of love’ references. my weekend wife sends me mail. my weekend wife is as obsessed with cardigans as i am. my weekend wife even has the coolest dad i’ve ever met (besides my own, which is why we’ve concluded they must be long-lost brothers). my weekend wife and i are starting a band that changes names every day. my weekend wife is r kelly, bitches.