Much to Catch Up On... And More to Come

I can't even remember when I last posted. Even though it's likely been only a few days, I'm guessing less than a week, much has happened.

Last week I was standing over a suitcase contemplating the right wardrobe for a girls' weekend in New York City. Jason didn't understand the significance when I announced that I would just go with brown shoes for the entire weekend. (This means that all my outfits had to be compatible with a brown shoe, so no black pants, dresses or skirts. No black in New York City seemed like a statement in and of itself.) After seeing the Sex in the City movie earlier in the weekend I tried to channel a New York City vibe in my preparations, and avoid dressing like part of a gaggle of midwestern tourists.

The weekend was in celebration of friend Allison's 30th birthday, although ultimately the weekend ended up feeling like a gift for us, not for her. She generously organized theater tickets, dinners, brunches and a trip to the spa. Thoughtfully, she also structured free time which afforded the opportunity to visit both my grandmother and friends Joe & Ellyn, and their new baby, Clara.

I couldn't decide what I was looking forward to the most: spa, theater, Grandma, or seeing the new little baby. When I came down with a cough and sniffles early in the week I responsibly had to e-mail Ellyn and confess that I might not be the person you want your little one exposed to since it wasn't really clear if the ailment was a cold (e.g. contagious) or allergies (just annoying). I was permitted a visit, but holding the baby was not allowed. Bummer, but I did sneak in a little poke of her little diapered bum. What a little squirmy cutie. (This picture reflects the closest that I approached and tried hard not to cough.)

In the ninety plus degree heat of Sunday I took the subway uptown to see Grandma. Everyone in my airport gate at O'Hare had smiled lovingly as they overheard my conversation with her on Friday morning, "Hi Grandma, it's Claire. I'm coming to New York. Yes, can I come visit?" (I had to talk kind of loud since you don't know if she's got her hearing aid in or not.) Gram's little non-air conditioned apartment was a surprisingly cool oasis and we enjoyed a quiet lunch together. She sent me on my way with a subway token for the ride home. I'm not even sure that the NYC subway accepts tokens anymore, but I wanted to pocket it anyway to save it as a token of a Grandma's taking care of her granddaughter.

The longer trip home to Chicago was a nightmare. Two days later, when we were ready to talk of the experience, Allison and I calculated that it took us 16 hours to get home. A five hour delay to board the plane due to summer thunderstorms, during which Allison, Andrea and I reminded ourselves how play gin rummy and picked outfits out for each other from the pages of InStyle and Lucky Magazine. Then up in the air, across half the country to spend an hour and a half circling Chicago before diverting to St. Louis to refuel. An hour on the ground in St. Louis and then 40 minutes back to Chicago to try to land. Our scheduled 5 pm departure didn't reach Chicago until 4 am. I got home just 40 minutes before I would have had to wake up to go to work on Monday morning. Not a chance that this was going to happen. I slept half the day and worked from home in the afternoon. The experience was so bad that today United *proactively* e-mailed me to apologize! I didn't even complain!

I'm hoping that the family and friends that are coming to see us for a wedding dinner celebration this weekend won't have the same experience. Or if they do, maybe it'll make it worthwhile that we paid for the bar package for dinner. We were sorely wishing that the LaGuardia gate had a bar on our side of the TSA checkpoint. Even it if were cliche, a cosmo might have been nice.