All I Ever Wanted 1
One would think vacation would be totally in the mumu l.s. column, but one would be wrong. We went to Illinois for my cousin's wedding, officiated by my husband and rife with aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins. Three nights there, and then 4 nights in Chicago, in two different locations.
We vacationed hard. And it was good. And exhausting.
Highlights included drinks on the river patio of homestead #1 (a cushy hotel that we got on the cheap) with NYC cousins, seeing the Neo-Futurists Pride weekend special edition (with the kids), coffee and croissant on the river walk, an architecture cruise (believe the hype; this is an awesome thing to do), pizza lunch with my monkeys, snacky suppers in the cushy hotel watching cable together, a WHOLE DAY at the Museum of Science and Industry, a rainy morning on Lake Michigan, an afternoon at the Art Institute, a quick solo dip into the new Writers Museum, and a morning with a dear, dear, dear old friend whom I haven't seen in 25 years.
And then the trip home was really a 13 hour odyssey -- car ride to train station, lunch in the station, train to suburbs, brief ride to house where our car was parked, pit stop there for sodas and bathroom, then driving through late afternoon Chicagoland traffic, dinner on Simonton Lake outside Elkhart at the Flippin' Cow, and then the final long last leg home to arrive at 1 a.m.
No wonder I am tired.
Friday was mostly sleep and recovery and a drive in the pouring rain to pay back the housesitter. Kind of a blur.
Then I slept poorly last night. All turned around, maybe?
More lucid today, and summery. And I am READING, which I have had trouble with for a while.
Happy.
Apparel: Mostly short jeans and t-shirts.
Writing: No, but I took some notes this morning. Also, found next place for poetry submission, which I need to do.
Reading: The Son by Philipp Meyer (finalist for the Pulitzer in 2014, the year Donna Tartt won for The Goldfinch, which I also haven't read yet). It was sent to me by a friend a while ago and I've finally gotten to it. I'm enjoying it and finding it structurally interesting (although the first chapter seems unnecessary to me). Westerns are not a go to genre for me, but sprawling intergenerational tales are always appealing.
Dinner: I really enjoyed how we made bed picnics of snack food from 7/11 in our cushy hotel at the end of our long days. We would have a big pricey lunch and then just chill at night. Not at all out normal pattern.
Soundtrack: Oh, oh, oh! Best thing was the Billy Idol Live Transmission show on the Sirius XM First Wave channel late at night on our drive home. He played an hour of woman-fronted punk music. Yes, yes. Including 3 tracks by the X-Ray Spex, always delightfully acerbic.
Random thing: On Wednesday morning, O and I spent some time on the rainy beach while David and Z went for a run. I could see someone out on the jetty for a while, but after the rain came and went the figure disappeared. I sat on a bench under a tree reading, and a young tattooed and bearded man with a fishing rod and a small cooler and a pot strapped to his back pack trudged past.
"Catch anything?" I asked.
"Nah," he said. "I got two bites and then I lost my lure, so I guess I'm done. And now it's raining."
I made a sympathetic noise and he almost started to move on, but then he centered his weight and told me, "This is my dad's death anniversary, and every year I come out here and grill and fish and have some beers, for him."
"That's really beautiful," I said.
"I like to remember him that way."
We smiled and wished each other well and I told him to have a good rest of the day with his dad.
 |
| O plans to move to Chicago someday and live in Marina City (on the right) so he can park his boat in the basement. Hashtag goals. |
Highlights included drinks on the river patio of homestead #1 (a cushy hotel that we got on the cheap) with NYC cousins, seeing the Neo-Futurists Pride weekend special edition (with the kids), coffee and croissant on the river walk, an architecture cruise (believe the hype; this is an awesome thing to do), pizza lunch with my monkeys, snacky suppers in the cushy hotel watching cable together, a WHOLE DAY at the Museum of Science and Industry, a rainy morning on Lake Michigan, an afternoon at the Art Institute, a quick solo dip into the new Writers Museum, and a morning with a dear, dear, dear old friend whom I haven't seen in 25 years.
And then the trip home was really a 13 hour odyssey -- car ride to train station, lunch in the station, train to suburbs, brief ride to house where our car was parked, pit stop there for sodas and bathroom, then driving through late afternoon Chicagoland traffic, dinner on Simonton Lake outside Elkhart at the Flippin' Cow, and then the final long last leg home to arrive at 1 a.m.
No wonder I am tired.
Friday was mostly sleep and recovery and a drive in the pouring rain to pay back the housesitter. Kind of a blur.
Then I slept poorly last night. All turned around, maybe?
More lucid today, and summery. And I am READING, which I have had trouble with for a while.
Happy.
Apparel: Mostly short jeans and t-shirts.
 |
To the wedding, I wore my original and my shoes with no heels. |
Writing: No, but I took some notes this morning. Also, found next place for poetry submission, which I need to do.
Reading: The Son by Philipp Meyer (finalist for the Pulitzer in 2014, the year Donna Tartt won for The Goldfinch, which I also haven't read yet). It was sent to me by a friend a while ago and I've finally gotten to it. I'm enjoying it and finding it structurally interesting (although the first chapter seems unnecessary to me). Westerns are not a go to genre for me, but sprawling intergenerational tales are always appealing.
Dinner: I really enjoyed how we made bed picnics of snack food from 7/11 in our cushy hotel at the end of our long days. We would have a big pricey lunch and then just chill at night. Not at all out normal pattern.
Soundtrack: Oh, oh, oh! Best thing was the Billy Idol Live Transmission show on the Sirius XM First Wave channel late at night on our drive home. He played an hour of woman-fronted punk music. Yes, yes. Including 3 tracks by the X-Ray Spex, always delightfully acerbic.
Random thing: On Wednesday morning, O and I spent some time on the rainy beach while David and Z went for a run. I could see someone out on the jetty for a while, but after the rain came and went the figure disappeared. I sat on a bench under a tree reading, and a young tattooed and bearded man with a fishing rod and a small cooler and a pot strapped to his back pack trudged past.
"Catch anything?" I asked.
"Nah," he said. "I got two bites and then I lost my lure, so I guess I'm done. And now it's raining."
I made a sympathetic noise and he almost started to move on, but then he centered his weight and told me, "This is my dad's death anniversary, and every year I come out here and grill and fish and have some beers, for him."
"That's really beautiful," I said.
"I like to remember him that way."
We smiled and wished each other well and I told him to have a good rest of the day with his dad.
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