Pretzel Girl

Meet my cute as a button great niece Aubrey who lives in Texas just turned 7 this last week.  Among her many talents is that she is extremely flexible and the queen of the photo op. Currently she’s working hard in first grade and at losing those pesky baby teeth. This year brought a huge change in that she became big sister to her brother Grant Adam whom she’s clearly the boss of for now. She’s a lucky little girl in that she has an immediate and extended family who clearly adores her.

I don’t get to see Aubrey as much as I would really like to because she lives in Texas and we live in Michigan. Recently we were able to enjoy a trip together to Chicago and we had a visit that was simply FANTASTICO . That is when she demonstrated this remarkable ability to fold herself into a human pretzel and spin around on the floor. It turns out my son’s best friend Tom (who was also in Chicago) has that same rare ability. Later that night at a wild party at Jordan’s apartment he also demonstrated that ability to contort himself and spin like a top, only at 26 and well over 6 feet tall it presented quite a different picture.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUBREY!

Underbelly of the Beast

 We arrived in Chicago along with the remnants of Hurricane Ike bringing along that weirdly vaporous blanket of ick that hung all over the tall buildings in the city. Added to that was the obscenely warm drizzle that fell and left me feeling like a Golden Retriever whose fur never quite gets dry all summer because it won’t stay out of the lake.I was not about to let wet weather spoil my weekend in the city. It’s not often I get to pretend I am a sophisticated urban business woman except when I am visiting my overachieving firstborn. I pulled up in the loading zone in front of the sleek high rise building and follow my obsessive impulse to unload all of our stuff right away.

I  circled the block and found a metered spot.With nerves of steel I back up and drop it like it’s hot right into the slot on the first try. “It” being my silver Ford Edge with chrome hubcaps, gigantic sunroof, black leather interior and  Sirius radio. Dutifully, I deposited 2 hours worth of quarters into the meter and noted the time. You see I am too cheap to pay $35 a day to park my car especially when there is all this lovely street parking available. My August trip netted me a $60 ticket (which I’m contesting) for parking on the street  during “rush hour”. There was absolutely no sign acknowledging that on this particular block.  May I just tell you the parking signage in Chicago SUCKS big time. So here I am on my September trip and as far as I am concerned GAME ON  for this parking challenge.

A few hours later we decided to go out for a stroll along the river walk. I smiled as we walked up the street where my car was parked thinking I will move it later to one of the “free” spots since the weekend has arrived. The only problem is my car is not where I left it, even though I still have 3 minutes left on the meter! HOLY SHIT BATMAN SOMEONE STOLE MY CAR. My daughter rolls her eyes, accusing me of not remembering exactly where I parked. I retrace my steps in my mind, nope this is exactly where I parked, I even noted the address of the building when I got out of my car earlier. Then my tall friend from Sweden notices the sign partially hidden behind a tree branch about 5 spaces behind my (now vacant) spot. It says, “TOW ZONE BETWEEN 4-6 p.m.” Blast it all, don’t you hate getting screwed up on a technicality when you think you are being so smart?

Well, I pitched a small fit right there on the sidewalk. But I got over it in the next instant because I am practical like that. I resolved to deal with those sneaky car towing devils in the morning and proceeded to have a great night out at Carnival, which we could walk to by the way. I enjoyed the food, except we over ordered on the plantains (didn't know you could cook those little dudes so many ways.) It's amazing I could look this serene (could it have been several mojitos?) after the tumultuous day that I had:

Tucked back into the cozy apartment I do a phone search for my car. I get a recorded message asking me to enter my vehicle ID number or my license plate number. Thwarted again! All those numbers are IN THE CAR. I call back home to and ask the prince to look in the insurance file and get  my VIN number. I punch that in the system but it’s a no go. Then my 13 year old suggests, “ let's look through our vacation photos from North Carolina” remembering the pictures of my car we took at all the look out spots on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We found the perfect shot of the rear of the car and crop the picture to zoom in on the license plate and hit the jack pot. Thank you CSI.

The next morning we head over to the car impound. The pitted road is lined with vulture like tow trucks salivating over the thought of being dispatched upon the unsuspecting public. It’s about 5 miles west of the city, in a very sketchy industrial looking area. The rain continues and it is wet and muddy in the yard. The floor inside is a disgusting mess. While waiting I observe just about every kind of person you can imagine engaging in various activities related to getting their cars back. There were warnings all over the walls (no photos, no recording devices, instructions for the line, etc). Warnings that we were being recorded and under surveillance. There were also some peculiar looking couples in line.

 Now I always carry my small camera in my purse and I smelled a good story here. I slipped my tiny camera into Raymondo’s pocket and softly suggested he go stand back by the door and snap a few pictures of the place. I stayed in line (see window #3) trying to determine how to get my car out of there. I quickly learn that if you don’t have the means to find your license plate number they are not finding your car, so all that CSI watching was paying off. Ray  goes to the door and tries to take some inconspicuous pictures, but the Juicy Girl’s pimp boyfriend started screaming, “ NO CAMERAS IN HERE.” “THIS IS BEING RECORDED, THE POLICE WILL BE ALL OVER Y’ALL IN A MINUTE.” I pretended that I didn’t know who my husband was, I was just praying they wouldn’t get my camera away from him. I could of understood if it were the employees who were yelling at him, but it was another customer who pitched such a fit!

They found my car, but we were at the wrong pound. I try to summon my bodyguards - let’s go! I see my non-confrontational  husband still being harassed about the camera. Finally, we get the heck out of there. Our Swedish friend Nicholas is laughing like a hyena by now, so this is what crazy Americans do on the weekend. We punch the new pound address in the GPS and ride around back into the actual city. Back on Wacker Drive and in the middle of a bridge the GPS lady says “you have arrived at your destination.” Um, I don’t think so. It took quite a bit of sleuthing to figure we had to get out of the car and climb down into the underbelly of the beast. There in the bowels of a hotel was another impound lot, resembling a scene from the 1990’s movie The Babysitter . In it the young innocent looking Elizabeth Shue has to search for her family’s car which has been towed to the steaming, dripping underground lot where thugs are lurking, waiting to pounce on her.  After handing them $170 I quickly drove my car (with a $60 parking during rush hour ticket stuck to the windshield) out of that place feeling like I have been chewed up and spit out by this nasty monster of a bureaucracy.  Looks like I am going to have to find a new parking strategy before the next trip but believe me when I say this game is not over.

Parenting is NOT FOR THE WEAK

It never fails, just when you think you have reached a milestone of traveling with some of your kids and leaving some at home you rudely find out things are not going according to plan. In the midst of enjoying some well earned time in Chicago I was jarringly reminded that I was once again overconfident in their abilities to function for a long weekend without me. I was strolling over a bridge high atop the Chicago River with my oldest (and may I say extremely self sufficient) and youngest daughters. We were skipping along happily after enjoying our coffee in Millennium Park , It was a great morning in Chicago disrupted by the shrill ring of the cell phone. On the other end was my pain in the ass teenage daughter, hysterically sobbing into the phone.Totally incoherent. Of course my response was automatic panic, despair, sweating, adrenaline rush coming on for the world to see. Only 5 minutes before I had enjoyed watching  my girls romp through the face fountain like this:

In a voice that competed with the MTA trains rumbling by I shouted, "WHAT????????" to which my teenage pain in my ass hung up the phone. Because when you've been notified in the past by phone that your only son has been airlifted following a serious auto accident your mind automatically thinks some one is dead, hurt, or at the very least arrested. Then when a subsequent call back finds that the reason for the hysteria is that the 16 year old and 23 year old are in the midst of a very cantankerous disagreement.....well. I don't want to disillusion those with young, but those sweet little babies will grow up and drag you down the road to craziness if you let them.

Obviously my teenage pain in the ass had not learned her lessons from years ago. It went like this: DON'T EVER COME SCREAMING INTO THE HOUSE LIKE THAT AGAIN unless your hair is on fire, someones been abducted, run over by a car, or is bleeding profusely enough to be in great peril. That lecture is usually followed by the threat of "I promise I will beat the shit out of you if you ever scare me like that over nothing!" Luckily, I was 250 miles away so I couldn't follow through on that threat.I was in a virtual time out. When I got home I calmly explained this rule again, teenage style. I got scoffed at, you know, " oh mom you are so over reacting!" It was only then that I GOT ALL UP IN HER FACE and explained how I earned the right to have a freak out after a scary phone call due to our family history of a near fatal accident 12 year earlier. I used to be an absolute rock, calmly handling just about anything coming my way. But kids, no matter how much you love them, tend to beat you DOWN, I do mean down. I think we are all cleared up on that now.

So I'll move on to tell you how my extremely intelligent #1 princess suggested a trip to Sepia to sooth my nerves.The glossy film covering the crystal chandeliers cast a seductive glow over all of us and the quiet sophistication of the place washed over as I found a new drink I really love, The Sepia House Bloody Mary, all rich and peppery.It worked it's magic and we went on to enjoy the small plates of food, the atmosphere and of couse the delictable dessert.If you haven't been to Sepia in Chicago, I highly recommend you check out their awesome and creative website: www.sepiachicago.com. I do think it promises to be one of my new favorite hang outs whenever I visit Chicago. And of course you know I have plenty of reason to do that often.