So on Friday, believe it or not, I finally made it down to Hyde Park for the first time in two and a half years, to visit my friends Carrie Golus and Patrick Welch. Regular readers will of course recognize Carrie and Patrick's names, because back in the '90s and early '00s I used to spend a lot of time with them, and was always filing reports about various functions the three of us had attended and the trouble we had gotten in at them. (Well, okay, mostly about the trouble I got in at them.) And if Carrie and Patrick's names sound familiar to new readers as well, it's because they used to do a comic in the '80s and '90s called "Alternator" that ended up having all kinds of successes - winner of a prestigious Xerix grant, syndicated nationally in alternative weeklies, including apparently a pretty big following back then in the Pacific Northwest, because of the Seattle Stranger. And it's because of Carrie and Patrick, of course (as well as my friend Shappy) that I know all the rest of those Chicago comics people I love name-dropping like the famewhore I am - Chris Ware, Jill Thompson, Brian Azzarello, Dan Raeburn, Ivan Brunetti and all the rest.

Like many artists, Carrie and Patrick's priorities ended up changing as they got older - first into comics as journalism (which they did a whole series of very popular examples for that ran in NewCity in the early '00s), then into separate pursuits (miniature fine-art "hate paintings" for him, stand-alone novels for her, while both holding interesting day jobs as well). And then about three years ago, priorities really ended up shifting, and they decided that it was at last time for them to have a kid; and not only did the seed implant, so to speak, but Carrie even got pregnant with twins, which was a problem since she was underweight and anemic, which meant that the pregnancy and all its complications became pretty much the only subject in their lives for about nine months.

And so this is when I first lost track of Carrie and Patrick, because I knew that the pregnancy was keeping them awfully busy and awfully preoccupied as well, and didn't want to be a pain in the middle of all that. But then they had the babies, and all ended up going fine, but I still continued to not contact them - and this, frankly, was because of me going through the middle of my "losing all my friends" thing that I went through a couple of years ago at the same time, and being worried that I would lose the two of them as friends as well if I ended up hanging out with them during that period of my life. But now I'm over that period of my life, thankfully, and am trying to re-establish some of the friendships I used to have before all that happened, which is why I ended up contacting them recently about coming down for a visit. So I made the hour-long trek from my place in Uptown to theirs in Hyde Park, via train to the Loop and then express bus to the southside, just like I always have to do when visiting, which I admit is another reason my trips down there started tapering off during the pregnancy. And Carrie and Patrick are in a new condo now, it turns out, about twice the size of the one they were in before, definitely big enough now for two toddlers, thank God.

So I'm happy to report, in my opinion anyway, that parenthood suits Carrie and Patrick quite well - which is a relief, frankly, and not something I automatically take for granted in my friends. Because, you know how it is, when someone's a friend there are suddenly two issues to deal with when they have a child - of whether they're going to be a good parent, but also whether they'll have the energy left over to still be a friend to you as well. And I don't fault new parents for this whatsoever, because I've seen those little things and I know just how exhausting it must be to have to raise one of them; but that's just how it is, that sometimes when a child gains a parent, you lose a friend, and there's not much to be done about that. So anyway, I'm glad to report that Carrie and Patrick have survived childbirth with their personalities intact, and can actually sit and have a real conversation with other adults about things that matter to all of them, while still juggling the nonexistent attention spans and endless cravings for attention that are inherent in twin two-year-old boys.

And it's funny to me to watch Carrie and Patrick play with their kids, because they're exactly like I imagined the two of them would be around their kids, back when they first announced the pregnancy and I first thought about the subject. That is, they speak to their children in plain language, not exactly as peers but definitely with the basic repsect all humans should be afforded; they expect their children to be polite around guests, but are also patient when they're sometimes not; and are already creating an environment where the arts are supposed to be an everyday part of one's life, not something special for a field trip or elective class. And of course, as any of you who know them can imagine, the twins themselves are both the cutest goddamn little things you've ever seen, with angelic blonde hair that almost glows, their father's British Midlands features, and a way of giggling that can light up an entire room.

And so the three of us ended up just sitting around Friday night, doing what the three of us do best - eating, drinking and talking intensely about our lives, Patrick and I sneaking out to the back porch every so often for handrolled cigarettes. And here's something interesting that Carrie told me about motherhood, that finally, finally makes me start to understand just what's so special about having a kid, anyway, and why people get usually get so tongue-tied trying to explain it. And leave it to Carrie, of course (who I originally met, by the way, because I was a huge fan of her writing), to put it in a way that immediately makes sense, yet not a single parent had ever said to me before (and I'm paraphrasing here, because I don't remember the quote word for word)...

"I think there's a time in every creative person's life when you think maybe that there are no more intense emotional experiences left for you. You know, you've had your first love now, and your first heartbreak, your first real love, that thing that makes your heart flutter in your throat and makes you think you're going to die, you just love this person so much. I certainly got to a point in my thirties where I thought I was done having such experiences; so it was a real shock, needless to say, to have my kids and to experience it so profoundly yet again, the same exact feeling like having a teenaged crush on someone."

Wow, well put, Carrie.

So that was that, and then around 8:30 it was time to give the kids a bath and get them to bed, with much splashing and much towel-wringing to be had, which inspired me to exit stage left. And then, hmm, I don't know, I was riding the bus back to the Loop and suddenly started feeling just really overwhelmed emotionally. And I guess this goes back again to that period several years ago when I lost a lot of my friends here in Chicago, first because of some things I said about the poetry scene that pissed a lot of people off, and then from my continual unemployment, being a dick to certain people, etc etc. Because the fact of the matter is that you don't go through an experience like that without it affecting you at least a little bit, no matter how much you've learned to turn off your abililty to be emotionally affected by other people, like I've done quite a bit over the course of writing this online confessional journal. When you lose a bunch of friends all at the same time, you can't help but to sometimes think, "Okay, this is my fault that this is all happening, and my friends are doing something very smart by abandoning me, because I really don't deserve to have any friends, because I really am that much of a prick." Which, yes, is an emotion I really did have when I was going through all of that myself.

So to meet up with Carrie and Patrick again after all that time, and to have them just simply accept me as I am, and open their place to me and welcome me as a friend...I guess it just meant more to me now, because there are such a fewer amount of people willing to do that anymore. And I always considered them in that top tier of my friends anyway, that little list of ten people or whatever I always considered my closest friends, the ones who mattered the most to me. And they're about the only ones left from that list still willing to even get together with me, and so that was a little overwhelming as well - because up to last week, of course, I didn't even know if that was going to be the case, or if they were just going to be like most of my former friends and tell me to piss off.

And so I cried a little on the bus ride back, just relieved that I still have at least a couple of friends from before "The Troubled Days" who are still willing to even hang out with me, to be publicly known as my friend. And then the bus dropped me off right in front of Millennium Park in the Loop, where I spent a little time watching the ice skaters and trying to get interesting photos of Crown Fountain, now that the water's turned off for the winter. (I couldn't, unfortunately, because of my cellphone camera being lousy at night.) And then I just wandered around the park a little more, and then around the Loop for a bit, before getting on the connecting train back to my neighborhood, just thinking about how continually glad I am to be a citizen of Chicago, and how this year for some reason is already feeling like an opportunity to make some profound progress in my life - to build on the things I got done last year, to celebrate the fact that I've burned almost no bridges in the last twelve months (a major accomplishment for me, and one I usually fail). And then I went home, got high and watched The Empire Strikes Back - because, hey, what else is an unemployed slacker gonna do on a Friday night?

So speaking of weekend activities, then on Saturday I ended up going to Rogers Park (on the extreme north edge of Chicago) to help out my friend Kate Cullen, yet another old buddy of mine from the '90s poetry scene, in this case still in the scene herself and still writing and publishing new material on a regular basis. Kate's moving to a new apartment, see, and while she actually ended up hiring movers for the actual move itself, she still needed to get all her crap carted away into packing boxes. And see, Kate has Attention Deficit Disorder as well, so sometimes doesn't do so well at such concentration-heavy activities like packing one's stuff, so basically called me in a disorganized fit on Saturday morning and asked if I could please help her with what was becoming an overwhelming challenge for her.

So I went over and just basically applied a real simple "Getting Things Done" implementation to the project; that is, the first thing I did was move everything that was ready (like taped-up boxes, furniture, etc) into the hallway, then designated one of the empty boxes as "Crap For Kate To Deal With," which we used to throw individual items into, whenever we didn't know at first glance whether it was something to pack or throw away. And just those two things alone got Kate's floor from full to empty less than 30 minutes after we had started; and not even three hours after I had gotten there to begin with, we had each and every item of Kate's packed up and ready to be loaded onto the moving van the next morning. Hooray, GTD!

And I guess Kate was pretty grateful, because not only did she give me almost an entire eighth of an ounce of pot as "payment," she also took me out to dinner, and how can I complain about either of those? And we went to a Peruvian restaurant as well, and I've never had Peruvian food before, so that was an especially fascinating treat this weekend. And so I ended up having this really interesting dish, consisting of a country-fried steak (or 'schnitzel' as it's known in Germany), served over spaghetti with 'Peruvian pesto' (think both spicier and creamier than European pesto), along with an entire potato that had been flash-fried, like sliced French fries usually are. Trez bien!

So now here it is, the start of another week, and I've got some pretty major things going on in my offline life this week; namely, the full and detailed GTD implementation I'm doing this year, because of a New Year's resolution, has inspired me to get a bunch of repairs done in my apartment that have in some cases needed done for half a decade now, with me actually being that absent-minded of a person. (Are you starting to understand now why I'm so excited about having GTD as part of my life?) And so today, for example, my building manager laid down some pretty toxic roach poison throughout the space, as well as replacing my broken refrigerator (which they're doing even as we speak) and repairing the broken tiles in my kitchen; and then before the week is done, they're also going to repair my kitchen sink, replace the showerhead in my bathroom, and also replace my broken bathroom mirror. And then a little later this year they might even replace the carpet as well, simply because I've been in the place for eight years now and the carpet could use a replacing; and so all these things will hopefully result in a little nicer of a place to hang out, especially now that I'm doing a big possession purge at the same time, and getting my existing belongings organized in a more efficient way.

Okay, so that's it for today, I think; and make sure to tune in tomorrow for more from my ever-exciting life.