In Love. With a Town. And a Season.

Chicago rocks hard like a cinderblock in the summer. It's just so much fun. And so much of the fun is free. Free things are very important to me right now (see dentistry post from a couple days ago).

Just got home from marvelous Orchestre Baobab show with JSS. It was absolutely perfect out (hot earlier, but I made a deal with God that if I took a nap he would drop the temperature 10 degrees, and he did!) and the setting, the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park, was just lovely. Everybody danced, especially after the singer told them they had to, and by the end of the night everyone was grooving up front by the stage, waving their arms in the air, and yelling the chorus, "Oui, c'est vrai! Ca, c'est vrai! C'est vrai!"* over and over again, even if they were actually yelling, "Squash! Is green! Squash is green! It's green!" or some such thing.

There's this whole passel of free events going on here, as there is every summer, and I feel so lucky to be living here. Stevie Wonder performed for free. Andrew Bird is performing for free. Joffrey Ballet and Calexico and Pinchas Zukerman and Australia's Strange Fruit are all performing for free. And there's more! Free dance classes every night! Classic movies on the big screen! Neighborhood fests! Not to mention that there are fireworks on the lake twice a week just 'cuz and everyone is nice and friendly and the CTA is starting to work again. Not all the time, but some of the time, which is better than none of the time.

It's a big weekend. Tomorrow morning I'll be at the Anti-Cruelty Society doing my volunteer orientation, which I am so excited about! I'm going to be walking dogs, possibly doing a little light training and counseling people who want to adopt. Also I'll be helping to socialize puppies (read: tell them stories, fuzzle their ears, teach them to spell and look for constellations) and doing whatever else the coordinators tell me to do. I decided to volunteer at Anti-Cruelty after signing a lease on yet another dog-unwelcoming apartment (it's a studio; I probably wouldn't try to have a dog in a studio anyway) and just feeling enormous amounts of dog withdrawal. Part of it is spending so much time around cats since moving here I think. After the mind games and the strange mood swings and dealing with volatile tempers and fragile egos, I just want to stop feeling like I'm on a date and go play with an animal that loves me. For me that means a dog.

And Monday is the dentist (Boo!), who I have decided to ask what the process would be like to remove my retainers entirely. I don't know that they're doing anything for my teeth anymore, they fuck up my ability to floss as regularly and normally as I should, and they tend to come unglued when I'm on vacations or doing something when it's really inconvenient to get them fixed.

Tuesday I get keys to the new apartment! Hooray!

Best to you all. Enjoy the summery summer.



* yes, it's true, yes it's true, it's true!