Let them eat pancake!

My girlfriend says that while I am by no means an optimist, I do tend to put a positive spin on things. I expect it to suck (and often enough, it does), but I can give you ten ways that we made the best of it anyway.

So yes, Little Guy bit my friend's daughter, and Girlie has a cranky case of allergies. Yes, we all got swarmed by mosquitoes on a walk the other night racking up about twenty bites between three of us. Yes, my husband has been working like crazy and is, even as I type this, passed out on the couch deliriously tired from a long week. Yes, my kids woke up at 5:30 AM after the one night I stayed out late with my girlfriend.

But then again, the weather has been deliciously cool. It has been amazing to see our friends and hang out in their downtown pad. The parks are fantastic and the kids have been outside way more than if we had stayed in Phoenix this month. And there are pancake houses on every block. I don't know what it is about Chicago and pancakes, but they are everywhere. Who knew?

So yes, travelling with the kids has been full of crazy and downright sucky moments. But when things fall a little flat, we'll just find ourselves a stack of pancakes, pour a little syrup on, and make the best of it.

Swoon

So yesterday we dropped in on one of my best friends. She and her husband moved back into downtown Chicago with their two small children about a year ago. He is working on a Masters in Design, with a special interest in self-sustaining structures. She has degrees in photography and Chinese medicine, and is currently working to renew an acupuncture license. They don't try to be, but these are really cool people.

The place they are renting is near perfect. It has fifteen foot ceilings, bedrooms for everyone, storage, a finished basement with a separate office, a lovely deck overlooking a cute little postage stamp yard, and a mudroom. While I have sworn off envy, I certainly had a moment where I felt certain that their apartment is the place where I am supposed to spend the rest of my life.

I must confess, I have always had a thing for Chicago. Yes, the weather is a disaster, but the people are warm and more than make up for the frigid air. Chicago is like New York's kid sister zipped up in a snowsuit. Quirky, but still undeniably attractive. All the sex appeal with none of the intimidation factor. Wrap that ongoing fuzzy feeling with my fantasy about living in a city and I suddenly found myself in the midst of a full swoon.

I told my friend how much I loved her place and she laughed, reminding me that finding it had been such a fluke. She said they looked at 37 places before landing on that one by accident. She mentioned that her upstairs neighbors are college girls who manage to party like it's 1999 every few months. She said that the back yard was covered in all kinds of trash and odd bits of things that she spent months picking up before letting the kids step foot out there.

Okay, so maybe the place isn't perfect after all, and my friends aren't moving out anytime soon. I will probably live a full and bountiful life, even if I never get to live there. And fantasizing about something you don't have, even while loving what you do have, is a sure way to make yourself crack up. Still, as I drifted off to sleep, I couldn't help arranging my furniture in the identical place I will rent right next door to hers.

2 kids divided by 1 day of travel = 1/2 crazy mom

We made it through the first day of our trip with only a few minor snags, including a 45 minute wait at the car rental place and a fun couple of minutes where we figured out that we had more luggage than car. We made it to the hotel where the dog bolted out of the room because little Guy figured out how to open the door. Hubs found himself temporarily locked in the hallway with the dog that we snuck in while I was downstairs getting something out of the car, Little Guy having a breakdown in the room, and the maid cart lingering just two doors down. The beer I had at dinner might have just been the best beer of my life.


Still, it is fun to travel, even with the kids. They spent the first hour in our hotel room jumping on the beds and hiding in the closets. Maybe their enthusiasm is contagious because I feel pretty happy too. Sure it's a little crazy to travel with them, but there is also the part where they burst with happiness over something like pushing the elevator button and you can't help join the fun. We'll settle into a furnished apartment today, with a little more room to spread out and a door that doesn't open so easily.

Meanwhile it's downstairs for a free breakfast. I'll be easy to spot, among the business types with my two kids, jumping up and down about the waffles.

'Sup

Last night I was headed to my car, a full cooler sloshing in my arms, when I spotted my neighbor's twenty something year old son doing the same. As he shifted his cooler into the trunk, he turned and lifted his tattooed arm in a half-wave/half-salute and said, 'Sup. I smiled back and waved back and tried to look cool as I hopped in my car. Only difference was, his igloo was probably full of beer, and mine was full of goldfish.

The fish were headed to a friend's house since the kids, the dog, and I are going to tag along with Hubs while he works in the Chicago 'burbs during July. He is going to be there for most of the month anyway, and it turned out to be cheaper for his company to just get a place with a 30 day lease. Lucky for us, the timing was just right for getting out of town.

While we are there, I plan on taking in as much of the city as I can manage. I'll have a chance to hang out with two of my closest friends and their fantastic kids, reconnect with a mentor from my early twenties, spend some quality time with my hilarious cousin who will be popping by for a visit (and offered to watch the kids), and squeeze in a short road trip to Ohio. I might even crash a cocktail party at the BlogHer conference.

Oh, and we're going to eat a bunch of corn. If you don't already know it, you'll have to trust me on this one. The corn is better in the midwest.

While packing, checked the 10 day weather forecast and the temperature isn't going to be above 90 in the foreseeable future. At night, it is going to dip down in the 60's, which compared to Phoenix, is, like, cold. I threw in a few scarves to keep the chill away and some long sleeved t's for the kids.

Anyway, at least now I will feel cooler, even if I'm not.