alternate title: Cousin Choking on Silver Spoon, Chicago a Treat

Well, I made it, we're home! Thank goodness for I-Pass, I tell ya, and Drive-Thru Anythings, and the McDonald's Dollar Menu salad. I have pulled my upper back strangely, as if I were carrying a 22 pound moving turkey around the streets of Chicago yesterday while my 4 yr old narrowly avoided being stranded on the El platform while the rest of us dallied too long to get off the train at our stop. But he's fine, we're all fine, and I am in agony.  Got home last night and found out my work did make it into MKE so this morning was a flurry of art activity and delivery to Sprout in time for tonight's Gallery Night, which I won't be attending for so many domestic reasons but mainly I'm in pain AND I have a lot of schoolwork and other committee work to do.

I've just joined another one. This is the official CDA Art Committee though, so I think it will be interesting beind on the "official" side of some "Plop Art" as they call those "Percent for Art" programs in Chicago.

But I digress. I wanted to mention a few really nice things about Chicago, and complain about my 16-17 year old cousin who wants for nothing and was a complete pill on the whole trip (they were in Chicago from Albany for a week staying in the really freaking nice and swanky Hilton Chicago at 720 S Michigan Ave.  I got to stay there too. Gorgeous. It's been redone. There were two bathrooms in my room. I could have wept. And more valet parking guys than in Hello, Dolly) (the belligerent boy cousin...he just wanted to go home the whole time, and I guess his cigarette-smoking tattooed girlfriend missed her neandermate..I just couldn't figure out why this guy who is on the crew team wearing a polo club sweatshirt was too weak and lame to help schlepp the stroller up a flight of stairs) (when taking the El, there is no easy way to get up there unless you just always use the stops with the elevators) and instead we got the eager assistance of a cracked-up black man helping these "helpless white people" har har with their heavy load. Helen slept peacefully in the back of the stroller while this guy single-handedly practically hoisted the big orange "homeless shelter" as my uncle calls it up the steps. I was cool with the cousin being "chill" and all, I'm not totally fuddified, but the fact that there was nothing in this giant city he wanted to see, and nothing his girlfriend was curious about at all, was mystifying.  That, added to a complete snobbish disdain for all things including quality of the wine that I brought (he is 16) to have a glass when my kids were in bed (belly laugh there - hotels are nice, but a sleeping young child in bed at bedtime asleep in a hotel means they are either faking it or terribly ill).  By day two I DID get to have a glass of wine, two actually, with my aunt who is gracious and friendly and understands my what-is-that-in-your-mouth-and-who-pooped level of interest in my universe and had her kids watch mine and we actually got to have an adult conversation for an hour and 18 minutes in the lobby of the hotel. Whew.

The good things we did in Chicago were: found a Loop restaurant within walking distance that was groovy for kids: Italian Village - Henry still didn't eat anything except bread and honey, but whatever, he's a cheap date. I know I can feed him a bushel of organic apples, a ton of oatmeal, and wash it down with organic juice so what's a little bread 'n butta in an Italian Restaurant. He enjoyed walking around taking digital photos of the fish in the aquariums and the floor (and one shot, I kid you not, of someone else's waitresses behind). Other fun things...during the day the following morning, went on the El, the Brown Line (the Yuppie Rollercoaster) and took it to Western, which has an elevator. That was good though the group tired of looking at endless backs of apt and condo buildings. Did get to Cafe' Selmarie, and the quesadilla was actually "Quite Satisfactory" according to my 11 and 16 year old cousins, and took them over to Merz Apothecary which appealed to the ladies and had my sexed up underage cuz looking for sex-enhancing balms. I just couldn't get over the combination of gallingly over-the-top in-your-face behavior and total financial dependence on mommy to buy everything. Wouldn't bring his camera on the trip because it's two years old and therefore lags in megapixel quality..and nags about having this or that constantly, yet orders "Oxygen" at the restaurant because he is so stifled. I was rather fascinated at the caged bird beladen with all things a person could want or need that could just not be pleasant to be with. However, the cousins were humanized when Henry interacted with them, for which I was grateful, as was their mother I think. I meant to take them to the Chicago and Franklin stop on the Brown Line, for Brett's Kitchen, Pearl, and the galleries, but there really wasn't time.  Also, if the Wendella water taxi were going (I think maybe it was, just has a new look?) it would be fun (and by fun I mean fun for me, but also hard to manage) to take the commuter boat. The river is really stunning in the sun, with all the bridges, and people and cars and boats, and the buildings all along the river are glorious.  I wish I had a brain that could retain information gleaned on the architecture tour etc, but I do not. I can't even remember the titles and artists who did the major sculptures. I used to know them all, include them in skylines, like the back of my hand.

On our way back to the hotel we took Michigan Ave, and there at the River there is SixtyFive, the Chinese hole-in-the-wall place where I used to stop a lot for Hot'n'Sour soup when I was pregnant with Henry (apparently I craved heartburn...he was born with a lot of hair...a total old wives tale which proved true in my world at the time) and ruined a cool camera Steve gave me by putting the to-go soup in a container in my bag with the camera. Nice soup in the camera. Ugh. Ruined.  ANYWAY, we stopped there because I wanted to share bubble tea with the ingrates, at least give them something to either enjoy because they're cool or disdain because they're haplessly provincial. ha ha. Thanks to my aunt for being up for a new experience! I ordered mango, and let me tell you. This was made with all fresh mango chunks. We watched a little in awe as this woman put an entire blender-full of fresh mango through its paces and added maybe a few scoops of the powder stuff, then the tapioca balls, and it was delicious. I have had bubble tea before and usually it's just the mix and ice chips. If you have a chance to go there, get the mango bubble tea. I even gave some to Helen on our drive (as I was totally bad mommy and didn't have time to feed her properly as the time just flew) - sans the tapioca "bubbles" of course - just the mango part, and she gobbled/slurped it up and then promptly passed out for the duration of the drive. Wowie.  Kids Yahhhh, Gahhhh, What is Thhhhaaaaat.  So I was glad, note to self, that I hadn't tried to take them to the quite non-Disneyfied actual Chinatown because for all the effort they just would have made faces and wished they were home where boy could have girl and blah blah blah. 

So I got back last night around midnight. And wow does my back hurt.  I tried to make it look effortless to carry Helen and walk and talk and keep track of Henry in Chicaggy and now I am Paying For That. As Henry says, No More Trips Without Dad. I agree. Hear, Hear.  Anyway,  in Shorewood Village News, I'm now a part of the CDA's committee for Art! Woo Hoo! So any Plop Art will be partly my fault, and I feel the responsibility. Hopefully, we'll have a beautiful wealth of integrated and unexpected and pleasing art pieces that go in seamlessly with the rebuild of our village.  That's my mission for that anyway! Stay tuned!