midwest thang

at the moment i'm writing this, i have been in the midwest for 8 days. my trip started with my sister's graduation, hit a mid-point with a quick jaunt in minneapolis, and i'll end my journey with an evening of camping with my friends near milwaukee. in between these major events, i'll have dropped my grandmother off at her home in wausau (wi) and visited my other grandma in milwaukee.

since i moved to new york, i have yet to spend this much time back home. ordinarily it's a hyperactive vacation - for every day that i'm home, there's events planned from the time i wake until i sleep. there's always people that i don't have time to hang out with, and promised dinners or coffees that never occur thanks to me double booking on the fly.

not on this trip. with the exception of a lunch that i had to cut out because of my sister needing the car (sorry, cloud) i've done everything i've wanted to do here and more. and it's really made me appreciate where i came from. i joke that the best part of growing up in the midwest is that i didn't end up with a jersey accent and that i like to go camping. while that's true, there's more to the story. there's a kinship i feel with the folks here that i'll never have in new york. yes, i love my life in new york and i'll stay there indefinitely, but despite what borough i live in or how dark i dye my roots, i will always be that girl with green hair who spent her summers at seminole pool. i will think of memorial day and labor day weekend as synonyms for brat fest; the fourth for summerfest. christmas always has snow, and saturdays in the fall are supposed to smell like badger football. summer sunsets are meant to be seen from a green or yellow chair at the union, and you're weak if you can't handle a scrambler from mickey's with a chocolate malt.

there's an unspoken understanding here of how happy everyone is that they live here - especially in the summer. you can even feel it when you talk to people who just came here for college. i chose to leave for college to see what else was out there and i know that if i lived here permanently i would not have the appreciation that hits me everytime i come home, but i have it now. and it gives me gratitude for not only my hometown, but that i live in a place now that is so very different - but great in it's own right.

i'll never forget in high school when my friend maria and i were walking around in beloit (we were there for a swim meet). we had just stopped at burger king to grab some dinner and were on our way back to the pool. "i'm going to go home tonight and thank my parents for raising me in madison," she said after looking at our surroundings. i worry that if i stay in new york when i have a family that my kids won't have that. they'll use swear words in public that i can't say at 23 without turning scarlet. they'll know how to avoid eye-contact with panhandlers on the subways. granted a family is a long-way off for me, and i'm not leaving nyc anytime soon, but i hope that my kids can grow up like i did. yeah, the winters are awful and i ended up with an accent that elongates anything with an "a" or two "e's", but i was given a disposition that made me love where i'm from, while at the same time want something more. the part of me that wants something more keeps me thousands of miles away from madison and my family, but i really do love coming back.

i hope there's a hell for faulty gallbladders

rumors have been running rampant throughout madison and minneapolis, and i feel that i need to clear this up on record. to follow up on a previous post, i do not in fact have 2 pancreases (pancrei). while it is possible for that to happen (look it up naysayers!!!) i only possess one.

a shadow in one of my abdomen CT's led my surgeon to believe that i may have two pancrei (pancreases) but this was disproved after my latest small bowel series. (basically i was forced to chug two bottles of barium as quickly as i could; then the doctors took pictures of my stomach every 10 minutes to watch it travel through my intestines.)

it has now been determined and proven through multiple tests that my gallbladder is the culprit of my stomach pain. or at least it might be. the doctors aren't sure about that, but they are sure that it's about 1/4 of the size that it's supposed to be, so it should come out of me ASAP. in doctor-speak, that means june 3...10 days from today. at 7:30am, two tuesdays from today i will be sans gallbladder and up 4 scars from where i started the day. i hope this means in the near future i will have booze-filled evenings without ridiculously painful stomach pangs and can once again enjoy sushi (and any type of food that involves flavor). if not, i may to have to become a vegan or fruitarian. something that makes my life more exciting than bran muffins and nila wafers. i used to love the "simple goodness" of nila wafers, but i think one box too many has made me a bit more simple-minded than i was when i first started eating them.

satellite blues

i'm in madison this weekend for my sister's college graduation. it was a whirlwind weekend - lots of food, friends, and relatives - and an excellent time was had by all (or at least that's what we can gather from the lack of leftovers). tonight i wanted to take a quick break from the action - watch a bit of TV before heading downtown to hang out with my sister's friends. i fixed myself a bowl of cereal and got in perfect lounging position on the couch. i clicked on the TV using the remote , only to find out that our satellite was NOT working. (later i found out this was because the whole system had been screwed up when we watched 'hot fuzz' on the DVD player on our other TV the night before.)

out of the 950 channels we are supposed to get, only 1 channel worked on the TV: CBS. at first i wasn't too upset. maybe 'csi' or 'criminal minds' or even a rerun of 'two and a half men' was on. but then i saw fringe and cowboy hats and heard twangy music. it was the american country music awards - LIVE from las vegas. ugh. i immediately uprooted myself from the TV to the computer. i have a decent tolerance for pain, but everyone has a limit. mine is easily reached when carrie underwood steps onto a stage with a sequined microphone.

on the subway today...

- i spent 20 minutes on the subway debating offering the woman standing in front of me my seat. those 20 minutes were spent trying to determine if she was in fact pregnant, or just wearing an ill-fitting shirt. i wasn't about to offend her by insinuating her pregnancy if she wasn't.

- a kid grabs the center pole (that i'm holding onto) and starts whipping around it in circles. he crashes right into me, so i attempt to try and grab the railing on the side of the car. his mom glares at me for impeding his "playground". 

- a woman is sitting with her 3 kids. her children are all hitting each other; without any warning she reaches across two of the kids and starts smacking the youngest across his legs. he starts squirming and pouting, then swings around and whaps the random hipster sitting next to him. the mom starts yelling a story about some $^%$^% motha &*^$^% with their &*^# attitudes with no class. she's speaking so loudly that no one can hear the train stop announcements.  

- a greasy old man starts attempts to engage in eye-sex with me. while i attempt to avert my eyes from his view in any way, he keeps tilting his head, bobbing and weaving to get my attention. 

unfortunately, today was just a regular day in the company of ny's finest citizens

happy saturday

as heard from my bed this morning:

9am - screaming and crying (my roommate fighting with her boyfriend)

9:30am - my roommate babbling about bleeding all over the place

10:00am - the other roommate's dog running around. this was due to the fact that babbling roommate leaving the stove on. roommate with the dog went and turned off the stove, cleared the room of smoke and proceeded to try to go back to bed to no avail.

11:30am - the two of them fighting over depositing rent checks on time

i have no way of knowing whether this timeline is accurate, but these were the events that proceeded my exit from my room this morning. 

my life...as told by someone else

as i was cleaning my room tonight, i came across a bio one of my friends wrote for me in college. i asked him to write a few lines for me to put in the newsletter that was introducing me as the coach of a local swim team. just a quick blurb about me and how i looked forward to teaching kids how to swim the backstroke. this is what he came up with:

"jeni's swimming career is shrouded in mystery, a loose patchwork of folklore, half-truths, and hearsay. legend has it she fell through the ice on lake wingra as a small child, and instead of panicking she simply taught herself the breaststroke underneath the frozen surface. if the rescuers hadn't come so quickly she might have perfected the surface dive as well.

by the age of five, jeni was regularly practicing her stroke technique whenever and wherever she could. it was not uncommon for jeni's family to discover her missing, only to find her later attempting to crawl into the drainage ditch near her home, or the penguin sanctuary at the vilas zoo, or the lobster tank at red lobster.

by seven, jeni was swimming competitively against the nautical prodigies of the former soviet bloc countries, thanks to a fellowship granted by the eccentric and reclusive dr. wilford longfellow, a retired industrialist and lover of both traditional kabuki theater and olympic swimming. supposedly, longfellow spotted jeni at the local YMCA and said, "i have seen true beauty but twice in my life. the first time was when i spied a great white shark off the coast of antigua and barbuda, so aerodynamically perfect, a graceful dancer of the sea. i killed it and placed its fearsome plaque in my study. the same beauty i see now, in this little girl. she will bring home the gold medal, and i shall place it around the head of the great white shark"

there is no proof that longfellow ever said this. in face, there is no proof that longfellow even exists. there are medical records for a w.p. longfellow, but all pertinent information has been mysteriously blacked out.

after rigorous training with the finest swimmers of the former soviet countries, jeni inexplicably walked away from competitive swimming for five years. some say the pressure was too intense. others insist she simply sacrificed her own career to further the aspirations of her new friends. a scattered few claim her decision came after weeks in a communist isolation bunker and session after session of unspeakable torture. whatever happened, no one can say, but this much is known: at the age of 14, jeni was found by an excavation crew in the middle of the mojave desert, 23 miles from the nearest town. when they found her, she kept repeating the same phrase over and over. they could not understand it, for it was in russian. years later, one of the excavators, a prominent archaelogist named rachel suarez, would stumble upon what she had said. it was this: 'the phoenix has risen from the ashes. i will swim again.'

she would swim again, but only after fifteen labor-intensive months of physical therapy. for reasons known only to her, she had lost all motor functions below her neck. she had to relearn how to walk, how to tie a shoelace, and, most importantly, how to swim. those who had seen her swim before would remark that she was only a shell of her former self, that she would never live up to the expectations for her once promising career.

no longer a competitive force, jeni turned her attention to other areas. she studied the works of the great french enlightenment thinker, voltaire. she learned american sign language and provided translation for the deaf attendants of rock concerts at san francisco's historic fillmore theater. she even ghost wrote the autobiographies of a handful of celebrity chefs. but her estrangement from the world of swimming would not last long. at the age of 18, jeni was asked by the europe swimming board of regents to serve on the planning board for the 1st annual parisian underground waterway classic. the classic was intended to be a world class swimming competition in the elaborate system of underground sewers below the city of paris. though the event had may critics skeptical, jeni's guidance and business acumen made it an unqualified success, drawing some of the world's biggest names to the humble catacombs of paris. in gratitude to jeni's foresight and dedication the mayor of paris presented her with a key to the city of paris. the key was soon stolen by gypsies.

jeni has worn many hats in her short yet rich career. she has worn the hat of world renowned swimmer. some may call this a swim cap, not a hat. she has worn the hat of athletic expatriate, of crippled survivor, and of organizing guru. yet there is more space in her closet for even more hats. who knows what the 21st century has in store for the enigmatic jeni dill."

estoy loca?

i can't sleep. i've been tossing and turning for the past hour and a half, so i thought a little quality time with my tv would make me drowsy. i went to the abc family website in an attempt to watch the latest episode of 'greek'. in order to be able to do this, i was directed to sign-up for one lycos' viewing parties. i know i should not sink this low, or admit to the virtual public that i'm willing to create a user password for this, but it was free and i'm really upset that i missed monday's episode. in order to sign-up, i was prompted to create a user name and password. as you would suspect, i tried to use "jenski". (i may be willing to make a user password, but am not providing any evidence of my last name to link me to my addiction to tween comedies. that's a step too far.) i didn't add any numbers or letters, just typed-in "jenski" to see what my options were. these were the choices i was given:

jenski.loco

brat.jenski.loco

jenski.brat

locojenski

jenskiloco

brat.jenski

i don't know who chooses the name options, but i'm a little bit offended. sure i can be a brat and am borderline crazy, but a program that randomly assigns username isn't supposed to know that. i would have rather youre.too.old.to.do.this.jenski or jenski666. i just got cyberburned by a network website. a network whose most popular show 5 years ago was 700 club. brutal. 

up in smoke

i took a cab home from work tonight. i was there late and just wanted to peacefully sit in the back of a car rather than trudge to the F. given that i tried to get one at 8:30 on a thursday in the rain, i really lucked out by even getting a cab. the driver seemed a bit sketch, but that's not unusual. i'll settle for any cab that is willing to take me to brooklyn. as soon as we cross the bridge, the driver starts talking to me:

"you smoke?"

"excuse me?"

"ma'am, do you smoke?"

"what?"

"you smoke weed?"

"uh..."

"it's raining, traffic is slow. you want to smoke?"

"no, no thanks."

"you live in brooklyn. the people in brooklyn and the bronx, they always want to"

"no, not me."

the last 15 minutes of my trip was pretty awkward. i have a sneaking suspicion that he was high already or just trying to gouge me for my ride. either way, pretty damn sketch.