I still check Ken's email. I'm not sure why. I just like knowing it's still there and active. And it's still something I monitor on his behalf should anything of substance ever arrive. It's one of the more mundane ways I honor him. I've long ago archived all the emails that he sent and received personally--or ones I sent on his behalf. Now I just check the inbox from time to time and delete the spam or long-ago-subscribed-to newsletters. One day last week I clicked on the lo

Today's date is significant for me. It's the third anniversary of Ken's hemipelvectomy. (You can read more about it in  last year's blog  if you'd like.) Because of this anniversary--like so many that have come and gone, Ken has been heavily on my mind this week. More so than usual. And I think it would be fitting to hear his voice--in a manner of speaking. (If you want to hear his actual voice, head over to the  Poop Song .) What I would like to try doing today--and on any

Mentioning Uptown in my previous post made me think of this. Since getting Kallie in a new day care situation closer to home I've been able to return to my normal route of taking Lake Shore Drive to get to work. (It's fun to say to co-workers and superiors, "I took LSD this morning.") As I was driving toward the lake the other morning I took Wilson Ave. When I passed Malden Street I smiled, adjusting the visor against the rising sun, and thought about the long, miserable ye

Since getting Kallie in a new day care situation closer to home I've been able to return to my normal route of taking Lake Shore Drive to get to work. (It's fun to say "I took LSD this morning.") As I was driving toward the lake the other morning I took Wilson Ave. When I passed Malden Street I smiled, adjusting the visor against the rising sun, and thought about the long, miserable year I spent in a studio apartment there back in the 90s. It was my fifth year living in Chic

While driving home from the Apple Store today in Lincoln Park, I passed a Bank of America branch on Clybourn Avenue. Sitting in traffic near it, waiting for the light to turn, I was reminded that it wasn't always a bank branch, and was in fact part of my early years in retail hell in Chicago. In the mid-90s, the building I was looking at was a now defunct "upscale" children's toy store called Noodle Kidoodle whose motto was "kids learn best when they're having fun." (Based o

I grew up in the church--or rather I grew up in a church. No, my parents weren't a pair evangelical ministers--they were a pair of…other "colorful" nicknames throughout the years. I grew up in a church because my dad stumbled upon one for sale in rural town he'd driven through on his travels working for the state of Indiana. Unlike a normal person who would have just started a secret second family in this ideal isolated hamlet, he actually relocated my mom, two sisters and m

It's hard to remember a time I didn't live in Chicago. The city feels as much like a treasured friend as the corporeal ones I've made since moving here twenty years ago. It offers a comfort and a feeling of "home" like no other place I've lived. I consider it a city that hasn't gotten so big for its britches. It's colorful, accessible and livable. When I was growing up in rural Indiana I always anticipated living in Chicago. And though I made one or two trips here up through