ChiKat

My husband has kind of lost interest in moving to Oak Park. He loves the city, and a house in Oak Park, especially when you factor in the 9% property tax compared to the 3% we are paying now, is just out of our price range.

We were looking at homes that needed work, but even on the low end, we would be adding about $300 a month to our mortgage payment, plus about $300 in property taxes. That is a lot of money and our budget is already tight.

But Saturday night when we were driving back to our condo, I convinced my husband to swing by a house that has been on the market for months in Oak Park. I assume that means it is horrible inside. Even outside, it isn’t the greatest house. But I really liked the location, and I don't mind the idea of having the ugliest house on the block when the rest of the block is super pretty.

I couldn't remember the exact address, but I had a general idea of its location. We found the house almost immediately and we both recognized it from the picture online. It needs work, but we both fell in love with the potential of the house. It was super close to the El, on a quiet street, with a backyard. We must have driven around it a dozen times, checking out the street, pulling into the alley to check out the backyard, pulling in front of the house and staring at it longingly.

Then we went home, pulled up the listing online and…it was the wrong house.

For the family in Oak Park who thinks they have a stalker, sorry! Just two total flakes who can't remember an address or what a house looks like!

My alley is being paved! After years of bemoaning the horrible condition of the alley, which required an SUV to traverse, the city is finally overhauling the alley. It's the first time someone has done something that actually improves the resale value of my condo, rather than damage it.

In other exciting neighborhood news, I think we are getting streetlights on my street. At least, there are holes dug every 20 feet with electrical lines. That seems to suggest streetlights, right? That or a LOT of blue emergency phones.

Besides those two fabulous signs, I am so sick of living here. I'm sick of being president of the association, and when I sent a letter out telling people I needed other owners to help there was total silence. No one cares about this building. 50% of the units are now being rented out, which means many mortgage companies won't finance a loan for prospective buyers.

Despite good things happening in the neighborhood, I feel like this building is getting worse and worse. No one wants to take time to improve the building. I can't even get people to actually put trash in the dumpster rather than just throwing the trash bags in the alley.

I'm tired of living in a condo, tired of being tied to other people not of my choosing. I know everyone has to deal with neighbors, but I dream of not having to deal with an association ever again.

We really don't have money for a house. We have to decide if we want to dip into our retirement savings to escape condo-living, or if our future is more important than this current reality. If our future is more important, then I have to figure out a way to survive in this building without becoming filled with hate for everyone else who lives here.

Being a pin cushion was interesting. I can't say my arthritis is cured, but I wasn't really expecting that. I can't say my arthritis is better, and I was hoping to say that. But the session did have an impact on my body. The acupuncture did something.

I got to the session on time, and we spent over an hour talking about the pain I feel, and how my actions impact the pain. There were leading questions about my relationship with my family (good, so nothing to talk about there), my marriage (also good, despite the dirty dishes) and my job (the one I quit that wasn't satisfying, and the one I have now, which is fine). All in all, the consensus was that the usual stress triggers weren't an issue in my life, but I was still in a pain.

Not a ton of pain, which suggests to me that if I did have the usual triggers, my RA would be much worse.

The final decision was that I have problems with my blood flow, coupled with wind and damp.

I guess that wind and damp are common components of acupuncture. The idea is that cold or damp energy can clog the meridians in your body, or as in my case, be blown around my body, causing arthritic pain. I did a little Googling, and it sounds like the damp/wind diagnosis isn't entirely original – in fact, it's the pretty common cause of arthritic pain in most people, according to acupuncturists.

My acupuncturist put needles along the meridians in my feet, legs and arms, in an attempt to slowly correct things. She told me not to expect anything right away. Instead, she wanted to see me monthly for about two years. At the end of two years, we should have fixed the blood problem and I would have gotten as much out of acupuncture as possible.

I liked that she had a timeline in mind, although two years seems like a long time. Especially for something I don't entirely buy into.

At the same time, I woke up the following morning feeling looser. My joints felt lubricated. Instead of crackling and popping, they moved smoothly. My swollen wrist is a little less swollen.

So something happened. I'm going to stick it out for a few more months. It isn't cheap, but at $50 a visit, it's not unbearable. The visits are coming out of my clothing allowance, so I will be decidedly unfashionable this summer, but I figure I'm spending it on internal beauty, so it can't be all bad.

In a few months, I will either be telling you about all the money I wasted, or I will be raving about the joys of the needle.

This is pretty sad:

According to a 2006 UC study, only 35 percent of CPS graduates get a college degree. You can read the full article at Chicago Catalyst, which is a great site about Chicago Public Schools.

I'm pretty appalled by the 35 percent, although to be fair, I have no idea what my own high school's statistics were. I did find a statistic that said nationwide, 68 percent of high school students go to college.

When I worked in Seattle at a dot-com, I was occasionally involved in the hiring process. We never looked at anyone who didn't have a college degree. Not just for tech jobs, but even temp jobs doing data entry. You had to have a degree to get in the door.

I know there are other avenues kids could take, like vocational training, but 35 percent still seems incredibly low to me.

Today I put my son down for his morning nap. Half an hour later, he started to fuss. He does that sometimes, but it was much too early for him to be awake, so I ignored his fussing. He stopped fussing, only to start again 15 minutes later. I ignored him again, and again he stopped fussing, only to start again. This time I went into his room to try to convince him to take a nap.

He was covered in vomit. The floor had puddles of vomit. The entire crib mattress was drenched. He was miserable, shaking and sobbing.

I immediately began drowning in guilt, but before I could thoroughly self-flagellate, he started vomiting again. What do you DO with a baby who is vomiting, who is covered in vomit, who is sitting in a pool of vomit? My immediate reaction was to scoop him up and hug him, but he was puking – would he really want me picking him up, moving him around, when the entire contents of his stomach were being projected out of his body? This is something I had not read about in my parenting books.

He soon stopped throwing up, and I was able to strip off his clothes and get him into the bathtub. Then I realized that, while the bathtub was easy to clean, it was also cold. The last thing I wanted was to give him a cold on top of his stomach bug. I couldn't leave him alone in the tub to get clothing, because it was too easy for him to slip and fall. So we went back to his room and I toweled him off and put dry clothes on him. Which he puked all over.

Five outfits later, I am starting to figure this out. When he starts to gag, I grab a dish towel and hold it under his chin, so when he starts to throw up, I can minimize the amount that is spewed across the floor. I don't move him, but I keep my arm around him so he doesn't get scared.

These are valuable parenting skills that I have earned today. I would like my Mommy Scout badge, the one for "how to handle vomit".

While I am waiting for my badge, I am also trying to move past the guilt of leaving him in the crib this morning. Having my mom tell me that she did that to me helped a lot. I don't even remember that! And I still love her! I think my son will be ok. More importantly, long-term memory doesn't develop until after three years of age.