and either i'm nobody, or i'm a nation

I got to spend a whole rainy September morning in bed, doing nothing productive except plan an apple-picking expedition for this weekend and getting "tickets" to The Dark Harvest Fall Equinox (aka, somewhere you can drink 19 "very rare" dark beers). I read a little bit in an old book I just started (again), The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and drank an Alex-made smoothie. Now it's looking not-so-rainy outside and my motivation to get out of bed is steadily increasing. I was feeling pretty all-powerful from bed (I mean, apple-picking and beer scheduled? What can she not do?), but then: I was unable to get seats in the free jam-making class going on at Learnapalooza in Logan Square this weekend. Canning and jam-making remind me of Montana because Alex's mom is a pro AND she recently sent us supplies.

Montana is: dusty roads, sweet dogs, Hank the dog chasing the car all the way down the dusty road to the next house (which is far away), planting tomatoes in the garden, homemade dinners, a lovely kitchen, a cabin in the woods, an afternoon spent learning how to shoot guns (the dogs were so nervous that they slept for the next 3 hours), collecting chicken eggs, hiking through the woods, sitting around talking and drinking mojitos, funny Bill thinking things that people do are weird, exploring nature and the pantry, hoping that the mama rabbit didn't eat the baby rabbits.

Montana is not: somewhere the government interferes, which is ultra-important to Bill ("So you live in the land of Rahm Emanuel, huh? He's like the devil"), a place where it is not unusual to keep a gun in your purse, somewhere you always need electricity (which is a beautiful thing, although makes shaving inconvenient), forgettable.

P.S. My afternoon of learning how to shoot guns left me a little enamored with shooting them, although I still believe in strict gun control. It sparked a conversation with Bill, who (not surprisingly) has exact opposite thoughts on gun ownership, but interestingly, is not at all opposed to the increased regulation that was being proposed at the time for purchasing guns. (This was early summer) He and Cheryl have guns to protect themselves from bears and animals, which comes with the territory of living in the mountains. They have both passed tests and taken classes on proper use and, at least from what I can tell, have no intention on using them on people. I still have a problem with guns in cities, which seems to hold a completely different context. So that's my little gun explanation, which feels necessary because I do live in Chicago, where guns (and the people behind them), are a huge problem.