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!

I am creative, outgoing, caring, and messy. I can not believe how neat and tidy some people are. It baffles me. I think my husband and I were attracted to each other (in Chicago, eleven years ago, working Saturdays at the Northwestern Computer Lab downtown in Wieboldt Hall) because we both sink into projects and pay attention to time only because things close and coffee gets burnt tasting. Cleaning up means taking wads and stacks of papers and pushing them into some kind of bag to work on at the next hitching post. Now that we have kids I have to be better about conventional time frames not just because it's good when kids eat at regular intervals but because other people call and freak out if norms aren't being followed.  I think I have so many projects going at once because I can't bear to get down and pick that congealed banana mound off the hardwood floor. It pains me even to think about. Eating at 5 makes me cringe unless it's lunch. Anyway, I digress.

I'm writing fast today because it's 7:45 am and I have to seriously Handle a meeting and childcare before heading to Chicago for an overnighter. I've been up since the cows and chickens this morning, as I unpacked my new seriously delicious macbook and had to clear a stashing place for it.  Today we're going on another Road Trip! My aunt and uncle are in Chicago from New York for a fancy conference on Neurology so we're going to spend a night with them in a hotel. You'd think I'd be packed, but was just working on the marketing proposal for the ADA committee at UWM. Another story entirely. Anyway, we're driving. I laughed a dry coughing laugh when they suggested we take the train. Neat! It is a neat idea. And IF I could come out of the train station, look around, and get back on the train with both kids asleep in the stroller, I would. Four hours with moving pictures and time to reflect sounds great. But this is different. Also, I love it when relatives let me know they're "coming to see us" meaning Chicago, which isn't so much HERE as all that. But I do enjoy Chicago, I know I'm not the norm here in Shorewood, it's full of IRE for the windy city, and I completely understand why. I had to move there from the East, not from here, in order to not get the Gary, IN impression of it somehow. The driving doesn't bother me - I just assume the position on the Edens that I'm going in to JEDI KNIGHT TRAINING and I'm flying a plane and that is why there are other fighter pilots on all sides of me.  I have I-Pass. I don't stop at rest areas because they tarnish my experience and make me look at them, and they are aesthetically Not Pleasing. :) And the one good value at the Lake Forest Oasis is gone - there used to be this weird pipe and used book shop smack in the middle inside there between that weird yellow trinket vending bus and the creepy pay-as-you-go massage chairs (across from the Illinois Info Booth that seems always always closed), and they had a machine that would BUFF OUT FLAWS from DVD's. Seriously, I kid you not. This goth tattooed teen was working late one night buffing dvd's for the owner of the little kiosk store and she told me all about it in a monotone soliloquy, staring at the machine as she held a shiny disk to the buffer, how you can revive "dead" dvd's and his kids make a mess of 'em and they don't last long enough. This was probably 3 1/2 years ago, .. and I assumed these buffing machines would become available. Where are they? Did Disney decide that no one should own them and instead keep buying copies after My Minty Pony, painful enough to purchase once, had a better chance with repeat sales? I wonder.

Anyway, so we won't be stopping there if I can help it. I like to hit Exit 347 at the 40-minute mark of our trip. I think I have that right. It takes other people longer. ;)  I don't stop there either, but that's my marker.

Our trips to Chicago involve many old haunts from when Henry was 9 months old, and before that, the many years I lived there as an artist and NMH employee as well. I did the typical 20-something apartment swap every year when my lease was up, so I have many one-year stomping grounds that I know well. Later we stayed put longer, but got a good deal on more space so those areas (Albany Park) aren't so walkable with the kiddos nowadays.

We'll go and I'll try to stop at the school where I'll be teaching up a storm later this month (I've been teaching this arts integration course for ten years called "the Green Team" ... now it's almost cliche'! Groan) but we're going to again pursue activism through recycled art that hopefully also brings a smile or cocked head, and I'll be checking out that seeing green exhibit for inspiration! My students are in 3rd and 4th grade and are bringing the concept to the school - it's not a population that sees green just yet so much.

Then we have to go to the Trader Joe's on Lincoln Ave because they have kid carts and Henry loves finding JoJo (not Milly like we have here)  AND the CB2 next door, the Crate and Barrel Concept Store that is fun to look at.  They have good deals on Messenger Bags by the way, and just neat totes and bags in general. They used to carry this bag called The Chicken Bag that was in Spanish and my students used to love to check out what I had in there. They have some fun recycled stitched-together juice box bags now, but the UWM bookstore carries those too. I digress. I might call my friend Jerry who lives around the corner. He's hilarious. Actually, he's not, but we are goofy and hyper together and Henry likes him a lot. 

We may have coffee (when are we leaving again? I am such an idealist!!) at Cafe' Selmarie, in Lincoln Square. Not only do I have friends (who are a couple, who just got married!) who are librarians at Sulzer Library, but there is a picture of me and Steve and our orange (what else?) marbled fondant wedding cake at the back of the restaurant in line with the other more traditional wedding cake photos they do. Oh yeah, and we're on their website too :) I love Steve's expression...kind of like, "Yeahhhhh, there's my crazy wife hugging her WEDDING cake."

In the morning I would love to get over to Brett's Kitchen in the River North district, take the El (brown line) maybe to Chicago and Franklin, go to Pearl Arts and Crafts and check out the galleries from the street (kids+galleries not so much). Love Brett's - haven't tried it with kids, but eh. Helen likes boiled eggs, Henry will eat cake and an apple. It's all good.

Will let you know how this goes - I'm sure I'll have better advice for any trips to Chicago! Maybe I can conjure up some bloggalicious coupons for you, dear readers!