iowa

it's so past my bedtime. but you all have been so patient, how can i not give you what you want?

ok, so my favorite things about the trip-
- meeting d's next youngest sister, the only one i hadn't met, who is now my favorite
-playing lots of card games
- thanksgiving dinner, which left me completely sated due to the unlikely availabliity of the requisite corn cassarole.
- seeing the sewing factory where d's mom works- such huge production! it was totally cool. i wanted to run away and work at a sewing factory and get health insurance until d told me how much she makes, and it would not sustain my current lifestyle.

i didn't take many photos while i was there, which i sincerely regret, because now i want to just post impressions, which would be so much better as actually photos, rather than trying to come up with a thousand words. i definately had the feeling of being an ethnographer (or anthropologist? not sure what the difference is...)observing this strange, foriegn culture. i dont' think taking hundreds of photos would have helped much.

it's all just very different from the way i grew up. for instance, every salesperson or waitress who helped us was missing at least one tooth. d and i were talking about how iowaians appear to be exclusively white, so the shit jobs i'm used to seeing hispanics or african americans do are done by the next available minority, women. i didn't encounter any rich iowaians, but as a tourist, i don't know how likely i would be to encounter rich chicagoians.

d made me feel very cared for. she took a lot of care to make sure there was pop with sugar for me to drink, food without meat for me to eat, that sort of thing. it's funny, the things she would warn me about. her youngest sister's house- boy, i don't even know how to blog about that experience. her youngest sister lives in the rundown trailer her parents moved out of, so it was the house d grew up in, and we had to move the boxes of christmas stuff out of the basement to the parents' new apartment. d warned me the back yard contained weeds taller than me- but neglected to mention the dead car and washer and dryer parked out there. d told me it was an unfinished basement, which didn't sound like much of a threat until i encountered the ragged sheets of stained insulation hanging from the ceiling and the thick coat of spiderwebs and dirt that covered everything. there was a broom in a corner that had been so wrapped with spiderwebs it was round, and the grey dirt texture made it look like a hornet's nest- i couldn't look at it without imagining nasty things living in it. d's sister had offered us a bed if her parents didn't get their fold out in time, and d told me that i wouldn't like it cause it smelled, but i think she knew how horrifying i would find all of it- the disrepair, the darkness, the piles and piles and PILES of junk everywhere- it was very cinematic to me. it didn't seem to belong in anyone's real life, let alone people i knew.

so anyway, about these christmas boxes we were moving-
d's mom is the queen of tchotchkies, she collects carosel horses. has three pieces of furnature for the express and sole purpose of displaying said figurines. but after we moved the christmas stuff, it was all slowly replaced by new christmas figurines. the snowman who's foot you press and it plays jingle bells and another snowman pops out of his hat. suddenly, there's a snowflake girl in our room, sitting there next to the tv, and she ice skates when you push her button. but the one of my most intense fascination was the table by the front door, which was completely cleared of horses to make way for the choir of angels (4 white, 1 black) with FIBER OPTIC WINGS. oh yes. you plug them in, they glow, the lights move, they change color. i am Always won over by fiber optics! even though for my own house i try to stick to the rule of not owning anything i don't know to be useful and believe to be beautiful, i could watch them slowly go from red..... to blue...... to green...... all day. that's about how much stimulation i can handle.

this stimulation situation, as you may imagine, was troublesome for me. nothing is ever what you think it's going to be. i was expecting small town iowa, lack of public transit, or dealing with the family to be the hardest part of my trip. but it was television. every moment we were home, d's dad was in front of the tv in the living room, and whenever i had exhausted my entertainment ideas for jr (which, i admit, were slim), he turned on the other one. i'm sure i'd be able to tune it out if i was always exposed to it, but i wasn't there long enough to get to that point. i came home and sat in silence for 2 days. i haven't even listened to podcasts on the train.

now how to end this rambly post? i shouldn't have wasted all of my favourite parts at the begining, because now i'm left with a negative story. so instead i'll say i'm really glad i went, i feel like i know so much more about d now. meeting her family was one thing, but seeing how she grew up, how they all interact, makes so many things clearer to me. they really do all rely on her to run the family, and make everything happen, even from chicago. her house has always stressed me out, but now i know what a long way she's come. i'm always so wary about trying to change someone, but i feel like it's not so much trying to change her as give her valuble life skills, tools that people in the know use, like how to make a budget or "a place for everything and everything in it's place." still, i can't stop singing "sweet lorraine."

i'm being totally condecending, classist and elitist, aren't i? i've been worrying about how to describe things without it seeming that way. but i AM these things, so it's going to be impossible for me to write about them from another point of view. all i can work with are my observations, my feelings, my experiences.

enough. i'm going to bed.

oh, the only other thing i didnt' mention is how i'm totally 6-year-old-ed out. i have a peak capacity for 6-year-old, and it was unfortunately passed before our return to chicago.