Bump in the night.

Another bizarre dream last night.

That entry I wrote in September about my baby fever? It has manifested itself in dreamland, apparently. And I am not okay with this.
So, I was pregnant. And not beautiful beach-ball pregnant. I was lumpy and awkward and toddling around. I know I was far along, but for some reason I hadn't figured it out that I was with child until it was too late to take care of myself well. Decidedly not glowing.
(Please don't let this be a sign of things to come: becoming one of those women who goes to the toilet one day and just has a baby all of a sudden. "I knew I'd gained weight, but…")
There was no man in the picture, and I had moved back in with my mother, who spent the whole dream telling me I was going to screw everything up with this child.
Which…yeah. Given the current state of things? That idea certainly didn't come out of nowhere.
I broke down crying just before the dream ended; I felt the baby kick for the first time ever just before I was due to deliver. I couldn't believe how unprepared I was. How magical the whole thing wasn't.
Ugh.

I so. rarely. remember my dreams.
Some people can go back to recurring dreams they had in childhood — or maybe they concoct them — and I've had friends who kept elaborate dream journals in their bedside tables.
I am not that girl.

I remember one dream from my childhood, and it was recurring for about a week, when I was feverish and delirious from some sort of stomach flu.
It involved tiny me, lost in a big factory with turning, churning gears from floor to lofted ceiling. I was stuck on one monstrous stationary gear high above the floor. On that gear with me was a hot dog stand. The stand played only Michael Bolton music.
And that dream scared the shit out of me. For obvious reasons. "Time, Love and Tenderness" on endless loop would be enough to drive an 8-year-old stark. raving. mad.
I can't believe I just wrote about that in public.
God.
I had to sleep with the light on in my big walk-in closet for months because of that dream. I hope there's some actually scary component from that dream I'm just forgetting in the years that have passed since then. If not, I was a pretty lame kid.

But between the dream I wrote about yesterday — which is still with me two days later — and the one I had last night, I've got to wonder. Something I ate? An undigested bit of beef? A blot of mustard?
…those scallops I ate last night, with candied bacon and butternut squash, over polenta in a brown butter sauce? Hmm.
I knew I was full when I left…
Guess I was eating for two and didn't even know it.

Pinch me.

I dreamed last night that a band of thieves tricked me. They tricked me into thinking they were street performers looking for a stage to premiere a new show.
They were so convincing that I invited them inside to perform for my friends and me.
We were all living together in a big old house — stately columns and whitewash, drafty windows and old doors, like the sorority house I lived in.
The Knight lived there, too.

I stopped in the bathroom to freshen up before their performance. That's when they moved in on me.
The Knight heard the commotion and came in to rescue me, but one of them had a gun and pushed him out of the way. He disappeared from the doorway, and I was alone.
The ringleader, an effeminate black man in a shiny three-piece suit — I'm seriously not making this up — just kept walking toward me and eventually forced me into the bathtub.
It all happened very slowly.
I slackened against the cold, damp porcelain and stopped trying to fight.

The man sat on the edge of the tub and stroked my face, cooing at me, while the other thieves grinned and waved everything they were stealing in my face.
A woman with slender, spidery fingers and deep-red lipstick slid a hand up my leg then behind me, where I'd tried to hide my heavy, oversized purse.
Once they'd taken what they wanted, they left me alone there in the tub, shaking and sobbing.

The Knight had called the police but was nowhere to be found when I finally mustered the energy to get up and look for help on my own. I wandered alone through the big old house and found my purse abandoned in a dusty room.
I can only guess that when the police arrived, the woman who had taken my purse dropped the bag and ran off with what she could carry: a few credit cards, my driver's license and my little laptop.
My laptop, where I'd saved the file that held everything I'd written in my novel so far.
It was all gone: my identity and my story.

At the end of the dream, the Knight had finally found his way back to my room, but he didn't find me. So he propped his guitar case against the wall and went looking.
I had been looking for him, too, to no avail. So I sat down on my bed and stared blankly at the case until he came to me. Then I started to cry, there in his arms. Uncontrollable sobs. On loop until I woke up.

With puffy eyes and no inspiration to keep writing.

Fallout Girl.

Last March, when I met the Knight, I had a problem.
Well, I had a few. Too many to list here, actually. It was a dark time.
But I'm ashamed even to admit my biggest one.

It was…a Fall Out Boy problem.
Not the kind most people have — the understandable kind, the moral and ethical problem with listening to such music — but the kind where I couldn't stop listening.
It was the only thing I could play on my iPod to get my energy up when I was in a bad mood or exhausted after a long day. I ran to it, I cleaned to it, I walked to work with "America's Suitehearts" blasting into my eardrums. It was like musical Viagra.
I started listening to it because it reminded me of someone, but even after he was no longer a factor, the song remained the same. So to speak.

The effects of that little blue Pete Wentz pill lasted longer than four hours. Thank God a professional stepped in.
The night I met the Knight, our guitar class set out to play "Hotel California" all the way through. And I'd never even heard it.
Now that I have heard it, I realize my life had been no worse pre-Eagles, but…well, it's testament to how little I knew then.
I thought I was pretty hot shit where music was concerned. People came to me for music recommendations. I'd seen more concerts than I could count. I'd taken piano for more than five years…I had been singing since third grade. I enrolled in a class my senior year of college called History of Rock 'n' Roll, for God's sake!
But lord, what a child I was. Consider it The Miseducation of Paige Worthy.

I'd only scratched the surface.
The Knight cured me of my Fall Out Boy problem and knocked me down a few notches on the hot-shit totem at the same time. Then he helped me climb back up. At the start of our courtship, when words weren't enough to satisfy our curiosities about each other (they still aren't, actually), we started e-mailing MP3s to each other.
Before I left for Paris — before we were really even together — he was sending me some serious music. With some serious messages.
Millie Jackson's "Hurts So Good."
Lucinda Williams' "Essence."
Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" by Al Green.
Soul and R&B. Girl groups. Songs I knew I should have heard by then but never had. Songs I couldn't believe I hadn't heard until then. Fast new favorites. The whole world opened before me.
Then he started with the rock.
The trashy stuff by bands I'd never heard of, the trashy stuff by Springsteen. Alice Cooper. Songs that made me feel like I'd walked into a dirty trailer, kicking empty PBR cans out of my way as I walked to the fridge for a full one.
He sent stories with each song for a long time, which I loved. He wrote about the associations each song held in his mind.

And then?
The Rolling Stones.
Bob Dylan.
And, dear God: Led Zeppelin.

My new Fall Out Boy — not a guilty pleasure, no shame involved. But absolutely my new musical Viagra.
I'd heard much of it before: My dad had every one of their albums on vinyl and exposed me to some of it early on. But I had never really heard it.
I don't mind that it makes me sound like an old man saying this: They just don't make music like this anymore. It's epic. Legendary. I could Barney Stinson all over it for days.
There are songs that, when I listen to them as I walk somewhere, completely transform my step. I become a sex goddess, a terror on the sidewalk in three-inch platforms — even when I'm wearing flats. Robert Plant's howling vocals, the guitar, John Bonham's…well, John Bonham. Jesus. I understand now why everyone was so devastated when he died.
Their debut album, the extent of my pre-Knight Zeppelin knowledge, still gives me goosebumps.
Physical Graffiti, from the oozing sex of "Custard Pie" through "The Wanton Song," which makes me want to scream every time I hear it. Learning how deliberate the ebb and flow was when the record was created, the way the album builds from side to side — even though it's all packed into one tiny white box now — changes the way I listen to it completely.
Let's ignore the fact that I heard "Kashmir" first as a sample in Puff Daddy's song "Come With Me" on the Godzilla soundtrack in 1998. Shall we?

I joke with the Knight that if we ever split up, I'd never be able to listen to music again, period. Every song, every note, every lyric reminds me of him; music is woven into the fiber of our relationship, and it would take more than a stitch ripper — more than deleting a few songs from my iPod — to separate the two in my mind.
So I guess we'd better stay together. Because I can't go back to Fall Out Boy now.

Blehhh.

I haven't so much as turned on my sweet little laptop today.

On the train this morning, where I might ordinarily have banged out a few hundred words, I stared blankly at the Monday morning crossword in the free paper.
Over lunch, which in the last week I've spent at Starbucks trying to get a bit more story out before daylight vanishes, I went to the mall and feasted on edamame and spicy noodles with a coworker.
I'm guessing I won't get much done tonight, either.

I blame all this on my lack of sleep.
And I blame my lack of sleep on cookies.

I bought a little bag of chocolate chips at my local convenience store, the Happy Food Spot — which has bizarre hours and is cash-only, rendering it actually not very convenient at all — when I stopped in for a half-gallon of milk for the week to come.
When I got home, I flicked on autopilot and whipped up a batch of cookie dough.
Only I didn't have any vanilla extract.
And I mismeasured the sugar.

But that didn't stop me from dumping in the package of chips and dropping that dough by rounded spoonfuls on cookie sheets and sticking them in the oven at 375° F for nine to 11 minutes.

Except for the seven or eight…or nine…cookies' worth that I left in the big stainless steel bowl I'd mixed it in.
Which I took out of the kitchen and into my bedroom, where I proceeded to devour it. All of it, save for a few stray semisweet morsels. Over the course of two episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
After just a few mouthfuls, I thought to myself, "Hey, stop eating. It doesn't even taste that great."
Because it didn't. Cookie dough tastes a LOT different without vanilla. And too much sugar makes it gritty.

But I had told myself I could eat what was in the bowl. I hadn't eaten much that day, so a little treat didn't seem unreasonable.
So I ate it all.
And I thought to myself, "This is way too much. I'm going to be so sick later."
And what do you know? I was.

By the time the Knight showed up after his rehearsal, I was lolling around, listless, in bed. But completely unable to sleep.
I tossed and turned all night, my stomach twisting into deeper knots with every full rotation I made on my cramped half of the too-small bed. I was hot and a little panicked that I'd finally poisoned myself after tempting fate with too many raw ingredients consumed too many times.
The sugar had wound me up, and the egg and, y'know, quarter stick of butter hadn't helped anything.

I gross myself out. Hardcore.
And now I have the double shame of painful overindulgence plus no written work to show for myself today.
The rest of the week will be dedicated for making up for lost time. And untying the knots in my stomach.

Remember, kids: Pearls, heels and an apron are hot. Smudged glasses, stretched-out yoga pants and a sink full of beaters and mixing bowls, the soapy aftermath of a sweet tooth's excess? The twisted side of baking.
I don't even want to look at the finished product when I get home. Nor do I want to think about my life's other excesses — the ones I have to write about once I muster the energy to turn the little laptop back on.


For now, I just want to sleep.

Six months.

I took a break from writing yesterday.
A much-needed break.

This desire, this compulsion I've had lately to write? It's exhausting. Much good has come of it, but it's also left me pretty depleted. Lacking the energy to do other important things.

So yesterday, I celebrated my six-month anniversary with the Knight instead.



We met in the morning for coffee, then he treated me to an amazing dinner at one of my favorite BYOBs in the city.
HB is a tiny restaurant.
One room: maybe as big as my living room and bedroom combined, plus the kitchen in the back. It's painted a warm butternut-squash color, illuminated entirely by the light of tapers melting over empty wine bottles, reflecting in countless antique mirrors hung on the walls. Absolutely beautiful in its simplicity.
And nearly impossible to get into without an advance reservation.
And the Knight remembered when I told him I was dying to go back there again.

He'd forgotten his glasses, so I recited the menu items aloud to him after the server came by to tell us the specials.
She told us later how adorable she found it that I was reading it to him, but she also thought he was blind.
We liked her.

The meal started with bacon-wrapped dates, stuffed with almonds and baked in a dish topped with brown sugar. Probably my favorite hors-d'oeuvre in the world — the brown sugar turned into a sort of sweet, crunchy popcorn in the oven — but then again? Anything wrapped in bacon is a pretty good start.
We split our entrée to save room for dessert, but we still managed to stuff ourselves on the beautiful pork loin we ordered, served with roasted apples, au gratin potatoes and sautéed collard greens. I lost my train of thought every few bites and had to bring myself back around with a guttural utterance of how amazing our food was.
Dessert just about brought me to tears. The kitchen described it as a "gooey brownie," made with just a touch of flour. The secret ingredient: sea salt. It was like eating brownie batter, if brownie batter were ever served with a drizzle of warm caramel sauce and a dollop of fresh whipped cream.
I knew I'd be sick if I kept eating, but I couldn't stop. So with a knowing look, the Knight took my fork away and asked for the check. While I pouted and chugged water.

Sharing a meal like that was something he and I don't get to do very often. Money's pretty tight for both of us — if anyone would like to extend a fine dining scholarship for the expansion of our palates, I'll send my personal information along — so it takes a pretty special occasion to treat ourselves to that kind of richness, to dress up and play foodie with the Knight.
He tells me he used to go out to eat a lot in a past life. (But he's not sure he misses it so much; he was "raised on Potato Buds" and is still refining his tastes. He'll be annoyed I mentioned this. [He ate SPAM, too, while I'm getting myself in trouble.]) And to say that I used to go out a lot? Between a summer in Philadelphia, where I was a regular Augustus Gloop; a year and a half in New York City, where I didn't even blink at dropping seventy-five dollars on a weeknight dinner; and a year and a half in Chicago, where Yelp helped me embrace gluttony to my fullest potential? Yeah.
And yet? These few beautiful meals we've shared have been above-and-beyond wonderful.

Maybe it's just that I eat a lot more delivery pizza and take-out Thai now. That when my taste buds come into contact with those flavors I miss so much, my whole body comes alive.
Or maybe, just maybe, it's the company. The fact that after we've laid waste to all that food, the check is settled and the table has been cleared, I get to reach across that expanse of white linen and grab his hand.
That we wave goodbye to the host together, then we go home. Together.


This afternoon, I made up for the writing I didn't do yesterday. I'm still ahead on my count by a few hundred words. I finished a big chunk of back story in this novel about a girl much like me; it's rough, but it's there. And now the plot can move forward.

So, too, will the Knight and I. Into the next six months, which I imagine can only be better than the first.

Ahem: NaNoWriMo, halfway through day six.

"Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night, 'Must I write?' Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple, 'I must,' then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse."
— Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

The Knight posted this to my Facebook wall a few days ago.
It's a little heavy ("…she said, forgetting for a moment who she was talking to," he told me), but this is the desire I have lately to write. I am physically compelled to do it; the words practically flood out of me: on this blog. I've written more this past month than I can ever remember in the past. I am prolific.

As of this afternoon, my NaNoWriMo count is up to 9,336 words.
By the time I go to bed tonight, I'll have 10,000. (And two loads of clean laundry.)
I will be twenty percent finished with this shitty, shitty first draft.

(If you're reading this and still don't know what NaNoWriMo is, go away now and read up.
In that vein, if you have no interest in writing and would rather grow a whole lot of facial hair, go read up on Movember instead. Hilarious concept, great opportunity to support a good cause.)

So, this novel I'm writing.
It's about me.
Basically.
It's about me, but this character won't have my name.
Nor will any of the people this character comes into contact with have the names of the people I'm actually writing about.
There will be changes. There will be simplifications; there will be embellishments.

But this novel is about my life, the past year and a half of it or so. Peppered with a bit of the past and some speculation on the future, probably.
Which makes it pretty easy to write.
Because, you know, I've lived it.
But then again, it's kind of a bitch to write.
Because I've lived it.

And life wasn't so easy for me last year.
I made it difficult, and other people made it difficult.
Looking back at old blog entries and e-mails, the things I did and said? Yikes. Some of that really stings to recall.

But writing it all down, making it the best, most beautiful version of that it can be? Fabulous.
Even when it hurts, it feels good to be getting it down.

Yeah, vague, much?
My vest looks better with all these cards fanned out against it anyway.

But the writing is good. So good. I love my progress and can't wait to see where I am on the other side of this weekend.
Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive already. I never knew I had so many friends, even if you're often just words on my screen.

More overblown prose and forced reflection next week.
For now? Weekend it.

1, 2, 3. Three blessings — ah, ah, ah! 4, 5, 6…

NaNoWriMo post–Day 4: 7,767 words.



My name is Paige Worthy, and I am in the business of counting blessings.
I can get pretty whiny and petulant when things don't go my way — especially if it involves my commute, how my clothes fit or food — but I always remind myself of the good in my life.



However. If I had one wish, it would be to transplant my current job, located deep in the northwest suburbs, into the city where I live. Everything would be perfect. Actually, I'd probably just find something else to sub in as my Chief Complaint in Life. But it really would be nice.
That isn't going to happen, I realize, and I knew what I was getting into when I took this job two years ago.
So I've decided "grin and bear it" is the best approach.
It's working out: I look better smiling than scowling anyway.

All things considered, life is pretty delicious around here.

On Tuesday night, I was making the long haul from Arlington Heights to downtown Chicago and back up to Wilmette for dinner with my father and grandmother. (The Metra! It's everywhere you wish you weren't!)
The first leg of my journey was a joy, as always. In the two years since I started riding the train, I've made a few amazing friends: Doug, my Gay Boyfriend (first introduced here), his coworker Lisa, a lovely French-Canadian man named Pierre.
We're accompanied by a delightful cast of regularly occurring characters: The hugely obese man who snores like a cave-dwelling ogre in the very last seat of the last car. The woman who talks on her cell phone nonstop and tans herself orange — we sing the Oompa-Loompa theme every time she gets on. "Cane Lady" (who we know can walk without it because we've seen it happen, but she abuses. the. privilege.) and her friend — they struggle through the RedEye crossword every day, aloud, as loudly as possible.
Then there's the conductor, Steve. Oh, Steve. We call him Sunshine for reasons no one will ever understand — even me, and I came up with the nickname. He will have his own entry someday. Maybe a book.
Sometimes we buy beer and toast one another as we chug southeastward. Sometimes we mercilessly poke fun at Steve. Sometimes, after a really long day, we just sit and stare at each other until one of us cracks.
We are a happy bunch, if a bit odd.
Maybe it's because we know we're going home to the sweet metropolis of Chicago, where there are no cats, and the streets are paved with cheese.
Maybe it's our nature.
But I sort of thought the trains were all that way, that Metra travel encouraged a sort of conviviality unique to commuter rails.

Apparently NOT.
Because I sat down on the northbound train to Waukegan, the one that would drop me off in Wilmette, and no one spoke. Not a peep.
A man sat down next to me just before we pulled out, his jacket reeking of stale cigarettes and his scowl laced with bile. I inched closer to the window and focused on my writing.
Then I looked around. And everyone appeared just as grouchy, or worse. It wasn't the kind of temporary unhappiness that stems from the sudden knowledge of how stupid you look wearing bright white sneakers with your hose. It was soul-plumbing misery.
Hey, guys! Work is over! You're going home! To your really big houses and sweet, beautiful children and wives you might have cheated on over lunch! You're rolling in dough! You are the North Shore! Life is good!

I've seen the same look on the faces of countless drivers along I-90, too, on the few days I've had the privilege to pilot the Shining Camry to work.
Guys, listen! You get to turn on NPR or put in a CD and sing along as loud as you want! You can go to a drive-through (I will NOT write "thru") and not get strange looks for walking through it! Best yet, you don't have to walk through knee-deep snow in the winter — you get in your car, turn on the heat and GO! Life is good!
They were not counting their blessings.
Some people really seem to hate their lives.

I don't want to oversimplify. The world's not the easiest place to live lately. (Though this is America.)
I know some people are really going through it. People lose their jobs. People get divorced. People have deaths in their families. Life's not fair sometimes.

One of the things I love about my commute is the luxury of mindless voyeurism, making up stories about the inhabitants of the world around me or just wondering what's going through their heads.

But to project so much negativity to passers-by? I couldn't do it.
On that train, in my little yellow peacoat with my tiny white laptop, I was suddenly so happy to be exactly where I was. In my job, in my life station, in my body. Yes, I see a therapist every week. Sure, I'm taking a few things to tweak the mechanics up there. But I'd like to think this vision prescription I've been wearing since kindergarten came with rose-colored lenses. I never lose my ability to see the best in things. That Pollyanna attitude has gotten me hurt — more than a few times — where men are concerned, but in most other situations? It's hard to go wrong with that perspective.

When I arrived at Maggiano's for dinner with my family, we were seated in the corner of the restaurant with a server named Vickie.
Vickie was like me: She had those rose-colored lenses on, and that pink tint looked good on her.
And she treated my grandmother like royalty, a feat beyond words in itself.
After she dropped our check off, she hung around to chat for a few minutes. Turns out she and her sons are moving soon from Division and Pulaski out to Northbrook. They're currently at a great school, but the neighborhood where they live is atrocious. She drives them all over town and works a closing shift at Maggiano's on a pretty regular basis. She waits tables for a living. She's in constant fear of her kids getting beaten up or, worse, falling into a life of crime as they get older. So she's yanking them before it's even an option.
And she was the happiest person I'd seen all day. Whether that's really how she feels or just how she projects herself, it's what I saw. And that was amazing. So I told the manager what an impact she'd had on me, and he just grinned. I got the feeling he hears that a lot.

Take note, northward commuters and Kennedy drivers.

This is the 100th post on paigeworthy.com. I've been counting up to it and kind of hyperventilating about what I'd write when I got to it. Then I realized I didn't really care. And that no one else really does either. Huh.