ChiKat

New post over at YoChicago about the Ida B Wells Homes:

http://yochicago.com/journals/neighborhoods/woodlawn/

Home Depot closest to us is on 87th and the Dan Ryan, in the middle of the Southside. We’ve never had a problem there. We’ve never been harassed or threatened. But when we go there, we are the only white people there and we are noticed. We are watched.

I’m not suggesting we’re the only white people on the South Side (Hi, Beverly!). But the law of averages means that we have never seen other white people while we are shopping on 87th. Conversations pause when we walk by. People stare, either with bemusement or irritation. It is an uncomfortable experience.

I’m not saying it is a unique experience. Anyone who doesn’t fit in to their environment experiences it.

To have a more comfortable shopping experience, we sometimes drive to the north side to be with all the other gentrifiers, but that’s a bit of a drive for us.

Now, thanks to Home Deport opening a shiny new store on Western and 47th, we have a new option. Western and 47th on the border of Back of the Yards and Brighton Park (both Hispanic and African-American neighborhoods), just south of McKinley Park (Hispanic) and Bridgeport (Irish and Italian), so shopping at that Home Depot is…dare I say it? A racially diverse, integrated shopping experience.

I can’t remember the last time I had an experience like that. It feels like everywhere I go, it’s either one race or another. It’s never all of us, all mixed together.

Chicago is 42% white and 37% African America. I did Bike the Drive this weekend. I’m no statistician, but I would guess the participants were 95% white. Where was everyone else?

Yesterday, my traffic on this site doubled. BlogSpirit has somewhat limited stats, so I couldn't figure out what caused the jump. Then I learned that YoChicago wrote a little blurb about my site. Thanks, YoChicago! It's my 15 minutes of fame (fame being very, very relative).

Oh god.

I just looked out the window and saw the absolute worst aspect of spring.

The Cottonwood.

Does this happen everywhere? I don't remember being plagued by this in Seattle. In Chicago, every spring, the Cottonwood trees release their fluffy white seeds. It literally seems like someone is standing on a skyscraper, dumping out a box of cotton balls.

I can feel my sinuses crawling up into my brain, in a desperate attempt to avoid the allergy-inducing seeds.

You know, this is probably why people always say that Midwesterners speak so nasally. We’re not nasal, we’re just reacting to the Cottonwood.

It’s Bike the Drive time! The city shuts down Lake Shore Drive this Sunday morning and allows bikers to use it. My father, my husband and I are going to bike.

How far are we going?
30 miles.

How much have I trained for this?
Er…I did glance at my bike in the basement to confirm that I didn’t have flat tires.

Is this the only biking event this season?
No, next month I’m going to bike the MS 150, which is 150 miles over two days to raise money for MS.

How much am I going to train for the 150 miles?
Er…I’m doing Bike the Drive! That will be enough, right? 30 miles, 150 miles…it’s all the same after the first 10 miles, right?

Yeah, my knees are already starting to hurt, just thinking about it. Last year I did the same thing, and it almost killed me. I couldn’t walk for about two days due to RA pain. But this year, I’m 15 pounds lighter, which should help a bit. On the other hand, I’m not taking my RA meds because I’m trying to get pregnant and the meds would make a mutant baby. So I am med free, but svelte.

A tiny voice in the back of my head keeps telling me that I should train for the MS 150, so it’s not a shock to my system. But the other 99% of my head is saying, “Let’s go to a movie!”.

We have two units in our building that were foreclosed. They tried to sell one of the units, but had no takers, so they are renting it for a year. This is good and bad. It’s good because the real estate company who owns the unit does pay the bills on time. But it’s bad because we would really love to have a condo owner who actually lived in the building and could help with building maintenance. We’re a small condo association and we try to all chip in. But of the six units, there are only two with live-in owners. The rest of the units are rented out. And renters don’t care for the property in the same way and owners. Plus, home value is lower on a condo when there are more renters than owners.

The second fore-closed unit is right below us. The mortgage company took ownership of it and is trying to sell it. But in the meantime, they aren’t paying the association dues. It kills me that a bank that foreclosed on a property because the bills weren’t paid is not paying its bills.

The easy solution is to take them to court. But you have to get to the point where the attorney fees are worth less than the amount of association dues that you are missing. It’s such a hassle. We love our condo, but being part of a condo association really sucks. Especially when all the owners don’t put in the same amount of effort to make the association successful. My husband and I dream of owning a home. It’s not financially possible right now, but one day I dream of not having to worry about fore-closed units and late payments from other owners and leaking windows in other units.

On the bright side, the empty unit is right below my unit, so I don’t have to worry about being too noisy.

I grew up in a Chicago suburb. My grade school was all white. “Diversity” meant Lutheran or Catholic. In high school, it was all white plus one African-American and one Indian. I went to a big state university which was much more diverse. But we segregated ourselves. There were Asian-specific clubs and African-American fraternities. Even though it was a big school, almost all of my friends were white. After university, I moved to Seattle.

Seattle’s race problems are totally different than Chicago’s. Seattle doesn’t have a south side, a west side, the projects or race riots. Instead, Seattle has to come to terms with Japanese internment during WWII and casinos on Native American reservations.

Now that I am back in Chicago, I am living in a primarily black neighborhood on the South Side. It’s quite a change from my Lutheran vs. Catholic grade school. I am very much in the minority. Many of my neighbors glare at me when I say hello. Others looked shocked that I would even say hello to them.

My husband and I have mounted a campaign to get to know our neighbors. We race home to tell each other that “the guy who always glares at us who lives at blah-blah-blah finally waved to me and smiled!” We make a point of saying hello to the people on our street. It’s all part of our campaign to carve out a tiny niche in our neighborhood in which we feel comfortable and at home. We have a lot working against us. For starters, our pearly white skin screams “gentrification”. Also, we’re right by a private university. Almost all the students drive to the university and park in the neighborhood. I think it took at least six months for our neighbors to figure out that we weren’t just friendly students. We actually live here. We actually want to live here for awhile and be part of the community.

The one thing we have working in our favor is that all Chicago neighborhoods have a great sense of pride. My neighborhood in particular has a long history of community involvement. I’m hoping that if I just keep showing up to the community meetings, and greeting my neighbors when I am out walking, eventually someone will actually be happy to see me. Eventually, someone will think of me as a neighbor and not just “the white girl with the 90 pound dog.”

Does this dog bark a lot? I mean, is he a barker?

Well, all dogs bark, but he isn’t a super noisy dog.

But will he bark is people walk by? Like, if he’s inside my house, will he sit at the window all day barking at the people on the sidewalk?

Well, that’s a training issue. You need to train your dog not to bark at disturbances, if that’s what you want.

Does he bark a lot?

From what I can tell, he doesn’t bark a lot. But I only spend about 15 minutes a day with each dog, so I can’t say for sure.

Hey! He just barked!

Er…actually, that was a yelp. I think you stepped on his paw.

So he does bark a lot.

***

Will this dog like my cat?

***

Is this dog good with children?

All the dogs are evaluated by a vet before being put up for adoption. In this dog’s case, the vets found no behavioral problems with the dog, so he should be fine with kids.

So he won’t bother my kids?

Bother them?

I don’t want him messing with my kids.

He is a gentle dog, so he won’t try to hurt your kids, if that’s what you mean. But I’m sure he’d want to play with them.

No, I don’t want him doing that. He’s my dog, not my kids’ dog. I don’t want him playing with them

***

He doesn’t sit when I tell him to sit.

He’s only 6 months old. He hasn’t learned “sit” and “stay” commands yet.

Ok, if you teach him that, I’ll come back and adopt him.

Uh...we don’t train dogs.

Well, I have to tell you, young lady, no one is going to adopt such a poorly behaved dog.

***

Are you a volunteer here?

Yes.

So you walk the dogs?

Yep.

That's all you do, you just walk the dogs?

Er...right.

Well, my dog was here because he ran away, which WASN'T MY FAULT, and he was locked up in that cage all day and I don't think you walked him.

Er---

He was here a WEEK and during that entire time, he was just in that CAGE. LOCKED UP. He would have been better on the STREET where he could run around.

Actually, the street is really hard on dogs. Here, he was safe, well-fed--

You people never should have picked him up! This is the second time this happened and the poor dog just gets LOCKED up by you--

This is the second time we picked up your dog as a stray?

That's right! TWICE now he's been locked up in one of this cages! The poor thing!

Well, I'm glad you found your dog...

Oh, I knew where he was the whole time. You people always find my dog. You just love locking him up.

Today I am in pain. Not too much pain, but enough to make me limp a little when I walk. I’m pretty sure it is because I went to yoga yesterday. My body both loves yoga (so relaxing and de-stress-ifying) and hates it (pain in my joints the following day). Exercise makes arthritis better in the long run, but often causes pain in the short term. Ugh.

I went to yoga with a close friend of mine. She’s had a bunch of auto-immune problems also. We’re both similar people, so it’s been great going through all these health problems with her. Don’t get me wrong – I wish we didn’t have health problems. But if we have to have problems, I’m glad that I have someone who can relate to me so well. We both get the pain, we get how sad and depressing it is, and then we decide to try 500 different alternative medicines because we both just aren’t ready to give up and say, “I am broken”.

My friend read this article about how some people have delayed reactions to food. Wheat is a big one. A lot of people aren’t immediately allergic to wheat, but after eating a lot of it, they feel lousy. Or, in my friends case, develop weird auto-immune symptoms. My friend doesn’t eat wheat, nuts or refined sugar.

In my case, I’ve found that dairy and refined sugar often trigger RA flares. So I avoid dairy, eggs, white flour and refined sugar. And I’m a vegetarian.

We went out to a restaurant yesterday. It’s usually a challenge eating out because…well, you say the list. There’s a TON of stuff we don’t eat. But we ate at the AMAZING Amitabul way on the north side by Milwaukee and Devon. It was Korean vegetarian. All the food was made with brown rice. For once in our life, my friend and I could BOTH eat ANYTHING on the menu. It blew our mind. I’m still full a day later.