The Joneses and The Freaks
I have football on today while I lounge in my PJs, make curtains, pay bills and stuff, and clean. I pay my electric bill online, and for the last few months, I’ve owed $0.00. I finally looked at my online statements and noticed that a few months ago, they credited me about $600. I have no idea why. Maybe they were estimating my usage before and when they took a meter reading discovered I used way less than the last occupants? I have no AC and always turn lights off when I leave rooms and so on. I’m going to call them tomorrow and see what it’s about, though. I had a huge electric bill headache when I left Germany that I do not want to repeat!
In Germany, they check your meters only once a year, at the end. I moved into my apartment in August, so for those last four months of 2002, they billed me based on the previous tenant’s usage. She admitted she ran the heaters constantly and left all the lights on. When my meter was read at the end of the year, they heavily reduced my monthly payment. The bills went on at that lower rate the whole time I lived there, till December 2004. A few months after I got back to the States, I got a letter from EnBW, the German electric company, saying I owed about 3000 Euros in electric charges because THEY had made a mistake in reading my meter — every year, apparently. Controversy over inflated electric bills in neighboring countries was brewing, so I was very suspicious. I tried to contest it with them, by letters, in German, but they just got more threatening every time.
I hired a German lawyer, who got in touch with them and told me that basically I had no recourse. He said I could take it to court, but I would most likely lose. They have up to 10 years to charge you backcharges, even for a mistake that was all their fault, and they can and will contact the US Treasury to get their money. He did, however, manage to talk them down to about 2000 Euros in monthly, interest-free payments of 75 Euros. I’ve been paying that from my German bank account ever since — only a few more months to go. So, yeah, I wanna find out what’s going on with this sudden hefty credit to my Chicago electric bill! I’m inclined to think it is a reflection of my actual usage because until that credit showed up, I did think the bills were awfully high compared to my bills in other cities in the past.
Winter in Chicago is, in my opinion, not as bad as people say it is. And I’m from Texas and was pretty scared of it. For most of my life, I’ve started shivering when it gets in, like, the 60s. To weather a real winter, you just need the right clothing, gear, and attitude. This year, I am weatherstripping my windows — you know, so I don’t feel the wintry breeze blowing in the window! I’m also making curtains to keep more of the cold and drafts out. My building is older, and these windows aren’t the best insulated. But the heaters are already on. I love the soothing sound of them, quietly whistling and bubbling. And I love the retro feel of my apartment. Richard told me he thinks my kitchen feels like it belongs in the ’30s. I finally got potholders. They were, like, $1 each at Walgreens, and they have leaves on them.
I rearranged my studio yesterday, in a way that makes spontaneous music making and recording much easier. I like it much better this way. The whole apartment feels more open and inviting. I’m nesting and cozifying for the winter.
I realized recently that I have been feeling a touch of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses pressure since moving here, really for the first time in my life. Once I figured this out, I felt disappointed that I’d let myself be influenced in that way. I’ve never lived in such a big city, where so many of the new friends and acquaintances I’m meeting have glimmering condos and apartments full of granite countertops, fancy furniture, and skyline views. I started feeling like I was still a struggling artist in my 20s, and missing all my artist and hippie friends, people who often left behind high-paying jobs to pursue their creative goals, and happily visited me and my good friend efrat in our hood house in Austin, where we kept the house in decent working order and often paid as little as $50 a month in rent.
It wasn’t even that I wanted the things they had — I just found myself asking, “What do I have to show for my life so far?” And I realized, no, I don’t own a house or a car and I don’t have any savings to speak of at this point, but I do have a thriving business that I started on my own, good health, creative talent and some smarts, a loving and very sexy man who is good to me and who inspires me all the time, great friends I can count on, tons of global adventures and experiences in my foundation, and a wide-open future.
No one here has done anything to make me feel lesser in any way, so I know it’s been in my own mind. I think I am in a liminal period, going through some growing pains. I want more financial stability and a nicer home environment than I did in the last decade, but I have no interest in being another model of overdeveloped consumerism and the upgrading frenzy that seems particularly strong in bigger cities. The reason I felt fine in the past is that I had a strong sense of self and was happy with who I was. This is a time for me of redefinition — or refining my definition of who I am and what I want. One of the things I love about Chicago is that there is plenty of room for the Joneses, as well as the freaks, and everyone in between. In fact, it’s one of many characteristics that make it such a great city.
