M. Blair Milne

On Friday after work I drove home through a snowstorm that had started sometime that afternoon.  The sixteen mile drive took me a total of four hours and seven minutes, which puts my average speed somewhere around four miles an hour.

For those of you who have never had to pay attention to it, four miles per hour is a speed so slow you actually have to work the break more than the gas – something you have to actively try for, like getting every question wrong on a test.

It was impossible to miss the irony in the verse I had just taped to my dashboard a day before to try and memorize – “Be joyful always and give thanks in all circumstances.”

About two hours into the normally forty-five minute commute, that turned out to be a real difficulty.  But all it took was a little observation and I suddenly found something to be very thankful for.

It turns out that four miles an hour is a great speed at which to look into other people’s vehicles.

Now in our defense, (us being all the commuters) the sign we passed immediately after getting on the highway at 4:15 said 2 hrs 45 min. to circle.  This seemed an almost impossible figure.  After all it was still light out, and none of us could fathom how it could actually take that long.  My thought was “they must be giving us a real liberal estimate.”

It seemed other drivers had this same thought and like me, refused to believe they’d be home any later than 6.  I could tell by the way they stubbornly refused to take off their hats and down jackets, and get comfortable for the long drive.

Fast forward to an hour later, as we were just passing the exit to a mall it usually takes me five minutes to get to from work and with it another sign that also read 2 hrs. 45 min. to circle, and that stubborn hope was gone.

Only a few commuters beyond this point were still bundled up and sweating it out.  The rest of us had began to discard layers.  For me, it was my hat, gloves and coat.  For the man who had no business driving a Prius in a snowstorm, or perhaps no business operating a vehicle at all, it was everything.  When I passed him, (he had pulled to the shoulder with his blinkers on) he was sitting in his suit pants and belt, shirtless.  I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that I’d simply caught him changing, but something about his waxed, spray-tanned chest led me to believe that here was a man who tried to remain shirtless as much as possible.

After clothing, the next thing to go was decency.  I’d had to pee since a half-hour into the drive, and at every exit ramp I passed there was a car spinning out trying to get up or down it, which eliminated the gas station option for me.  If I had better coordination, I’d have tried to pee in one of my many empty coffee cups.  As it was, I’m a little lacking in that regard, and thought it best to wait until I absolutely needed to, and then wet my pants.  Luckily it didn’t come to that, but I believe it did for several of my fellow drivers.  I say this because I passed more than one with the same look on his face that Steve Martin has as Rupert in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels when he’s wetting his pants at the dinner table.

Other snowstorm-induced indecent behaviors included nose-picking, which I jumped right on board with; talking to yourself, which I tried but proved too awkward; and gesturing inappropriately to other drivers, which I avoided altogether.

Last to go were the rules of the road.  Though I was one of the rare drivers who kept my eyes on the road and just listened, even I got through two episodes of Sex and the City and half of Elizabethtown before my computer died.  Other drivers had their laptops on their dashboard and were typing away.  One looked like he was Skyping with somebody, and another I believe had decided to take a nap and had fallen sound asleep during one of the half-hour segments in which we all put our cars in park and didn’t move at all.

We shared a lot that night.

At the very least, we all shared this look of resignation:

And this view:

But I like to think I’m the only one lucky enough to have a boyfriend waiting for me at home with a big bottle of red wine and a big plate of sushi, just for me.

I’d commute four hours every day if it meant sushi for dinner and that rare opportunity to choose the television programming for the night.  That, it turned out, was very easy to be thankful for.

Sunday mornings spent at church are very entertaining for me.  I’m sure they’re not supposed to be, but I’m not making any apologies.  I listen very quietly and intently for the twenty-five minutes it takes the pastor to deliver the sermon, but to me the announcements and whatever other activities cause a 25-minute sermon to become a 90-minute service can be so boring, that it’s important I find a way to amuse myself.

As a child and teen, I did this by doodling on the offering envelopes with those tiny yellow pencils.  These days I leave the pencils alone – partly because after twenty years I’m completely doodled-out, and partly because I’ve found another avenue of interest.

I love hymns.  I love the tradition, and I love the sound of hundreds of voices filling the vaulted ceilings of the chapel.  And lately, I love singling out the voices around me.  It seems that in every church, you find the same categories of voices, and they’re all equally entertaining.

First is that singer whose voice is so rich, deep, and vibrato-y that you have to look around to see if the Reverend Mother from The Sound of Music is sitting behind you.

I therefore call this singer “The Reverend Mother.”  You usually find that it’s not actually a character from a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, but just a regular 50-something individual who clearly has some singing experience but is trying to act like they don’t know they have the best voice in the congregation.  Everyone sharing this person’s pew looks pissed off because their seat-mate should clearly be up there with the choir, leaving them to their mediocre singing.

Then there’s The Lip-Syncer.  This person either:

a) Has accepted that all hymns are in fact written only for children’s choirs, and that no average human can hit those notes without shattering those beautiful stained glass windows and has therefore opted out.

b) Is sitting next to someone they’re really trying to impress, and knows their singing voice will prove detrimental to that goal.

The opposite of the lip-syncer is the singer who is either unaware of how bad his or her voice is, or just doesn’t care, and therefore fails to adjust his or her volume accordingly.  This voice makes you wonder if you’re actually listening to the person next to you, or if there is a rabbit being killed by an eagle just outside.

And then, finally, there is what I call “The Mute.”

Unlike the lip-syncer, who may be operating under a self-imposed silence because of a wish to impress his or her neighbor, The Mute has either been dragged to church by someone he could care less about impressing, or has some aversion to what is going on and is making a statement with his silence and therefore won’t participate in any activity requiring a response of the congregation.  Prayers and hymns alike are withstood with tight-lipped silence.

And then there is me.  I like to think I fall somewhere in the middle.  Though my singing has never invited a chorus of dogs to howl along with me, I am also all too aware of the notes I can’t hit.  Part of it I’ll sing as lowly as possible, right along with the men.  The notes I can hit I’ll sing as written, and then other parts I’ll just skip, knowing any attempt will end in disaster.  This leads to a lovely, piecemeal rendition of any classic hymn, and all I can say is anyone sitting next to me is damn lucky to be hearing it.

At the very least, I like to think I’m providing some entertainment for them.

Valentines Day is still a month away, but for someone with my personality, it might as well be tomorrow.  Planning has started, and for friends and family who will be on the receiving end of my cards and crafts, you should exercise some caution when opening up the pink or red envelopes that will inevitable arrive in your mailboxes.

I enjoy crafting and approach it with the enthusiasm of a child.

Often the results, however, are also that of a child.  It all started with the one craft gone right – a nutty bar log cabin I constructed for the kids to decorate as a haunted house.

What it may have lacked in stability, it made up for in aesthetics and deliciousness.  Unfortunately for the people in my life, this project gave me the impression that I could do anything.

Soon after, I decided that I could make jewelry.  Like the log cabin, the necklaces looked just fine, but lacked a certain sturdiness.  This led to several of the girls I worked with asking for necklaces, and a matter of days later, the breaking of each those necklaces at inopportune times.

I decided to give it up after the dangler I’d made for myself fell to pieces and into the food of the table I was waiting on.

Next I focused my sights on crafts I could do with the kids.  I found this cute Halloween idea on Martha Stewart’s blog:

Ghost cupcake = Adorable. I couldn’t wait to master it.  So I grabbed some cupcake mix, a bag of marshmallows, and two of my favorite kids.

The result: a grossly politically incorrect, unwitting batch of Ku Klux Klan cupcakes.

Seriously, you tell me which picture my cupcakes more closely resemble – Martha’s, or this:

As an apology, I thought seriously about trying to make a batch of Martin Luther King cookies on Monday, in an effort to show that my baking and decorating abilities in no way reflect my thoughts and opinions on racial matters.  Afraid of how screwing that one up could be misconstrued, however, I decided to skip it and set my sights on the next holiday.

So what does this mean for Valentines Day?  Stay tuned.

There’s something about Chicago that I just love.

The weather is not it.  In fact, Chicago never misses a chance to remind me that putting my winter clothes away any time before mid August is a bad idea.

I have a bad habit – or maybe it’s not in fact a bad habit but a gift that keeps me relatively sane and off of suicide watch all winter – of getting about three months ahead of myself when it comes to the seasons.  The anticipation of the next season is just too much for me.  I find myself decorating for Fall at the end of July, and heckling the Baristas at Starbucks about EggNog lattes in early September.

Therefore, as I sit here this mid January day and watch the worlds grossest weather hitting the windowpanes, I’m not only ready for spring, but so very sick of my winter wardrobe that it’s a safe assumption that it will be packed away within the next 48 hours.

It may be the bright cheery colors of warm-weather clothes, or maybe it’s the fact that I just believe if I wear shorts long enough eventually the weather will have to catch up to me, but around this time every year I develop a strong gag reflex at the sight of anything woolen, down, fleece or for that matter, anything long.

What this leads to every late winter/early spring are some of the worst fashion choices imaginable, which manifest themselves in one of two ways – I either start wearing my spring clothes anyway, despite the weather, or I adopt a uniform.

I don’t mean this as in a “Mondays I wear my comfy jeans” uniform – I mean that I wear the same thing.  Every day.  This month, that thing has been black leggings, a Target t-shirt and some kind of black shrug I haven’t yet identified.  I know two things about this outfit – it’s meant to be pajamas, and it’s meant to be the pajamas of someone under the age of 17.  But here I am, so comfortable that I can’t be bothered to put on normal, adult clothes, and my uniform has come off me only to be washed.  Which, at least, puts me a step above where I was at in college.

In college I wore the same pink boxers and navy t-shirt so often that not only did people think I was a cartoon character whose closet featured 50 versions of the exact same thing, but people identified me by these clothes.  I distinctly remember walking into a party at the FIJI house on one of the six days freshman year that I wore something else, and when I introduced myself to someone I didn’t hear a “Hi Melissa” in response, but instead got “Oh, you’re the girl with the pink shorts.”

Undeterred, I continued to wear them until my roommate, in one of those “for your own good” fashion interventions – threw them away while I was out of town.

I wish instead she’d taken the time and effort to film me going about my days, without my knowledge, and submit the film to What Not to Wear, so I could have at least gotten a new wardrobe out of it.

Instead, I developed bad habit number 2 – as soon as I’m fed up with one season, I stubbornly refuse to dress for that season anymore.  I simply pull out  next seasons clothes and layer them into the most uncoordinated, impractical piecemeal outfit imaginable.  I put  on almost every article of clothing I have in an attempt to capture the warmth of just one wool sweater, but so help me God, if it’s March, therefore it’s spring and I refuse to wear wool, whether or not the weather calls for it.

Cold spring days find me wearing up to eight items of equally impractical spring clothes, and looking a like one of the houses on Hoarders has just thrown up on me. I’m lucky I met Bill on a warm day, or I may have never found love.

I do it with every season, not just winter.  As soon as we get that first “Fall” day where the weather finally dips below 80, I’m into my hats, vests and boots.  Especially if I’m doing something considered seasonal.  This lovely picture was taken on a balmy, 70 degree fall day, but here I am in my fleecy, wooly hat because I’m at a pumpkin patch, and when you’re at a pumpkin patch it must be FALL.

However, as soon as the weather actually calls for that hat, it’s long since packed away, and I’ve moved onto my spring clothes.  Once on a winter ski trip, probably in an effort to balance out the wool pants I was grudgingly wearing for warmth, I donned a top that was meant to be a bathing-suit cover-up.  The heat on the train promptly went out, and I spent the rest of the trip to Montana in a train car where the temperature was 35 below zero, shivering in my chiffon.

Luckily, it gets a little better every year.  Last spring, after a particularly bad rain storm in my wool clogs, I finally traded them in for rubber boots.  This winter, I’ve ditched my old “that’s what pockets are for” excuse and started wearing mittens.  Baby steps.

And, perhaps someday, I’ll trade in my current uniform for something a little more age appropriate.  Or, equally advantageous, something that makes me look a little less like I’m headed to a pre-teen pajama party.  After all, it’s a pretty slippery slope from here, and if this isn’t checked, I could end up living in this:

Maybe this summer.