Weekend Report

Friday:

The car started making horrible noises - noises that even I could have reproduced for Click and Clack on a Saturday morning. I called Jamie, my auto mechanic father-in-law and he told me in a soothing voice to stop driving and come to him. I did just that - well after waiting for Jim to come home.

Saturday:

First, some background: Many of you know either by Jim's post earlier in the week or by personal first hand knowledge that I am nesting. After not caring whatsoever about places that I have ever lived in terms of furniture or decor, I am all of a sudden spending most of time thinking about paint colors, dreaming of what diy projects I could accomplish, measuring for additional shelves in the pantry. It is all quite disturbing to me. I liked not caring, really I did. Friday night was supposed to be spent prepping the walls for painting (gray for the kitchen and a light yellow for the living area) that we would do on Saturday. I guess i should explain that there are two apartments that are turning into one for us. Currently, we have access to one of the two.

I wake up with no alarm on Saturday morning. I am waking up slowly thinking of how excited I am to paint and to move next weekend. The phone rings. Its our landlord telling me that the woman upstairs isn't moving out today, and while she was told that she needed to be out by Thursday, the landlord wanted us to be prepared for a possible no-go on the weekend. I felt like she had told me Chicago was on fire, worse actually. She wondered if we could wait until June just in case. I held it together on the phone, after that for most of the day I was a wreck. First, if we don't move until June - Jim would be doing most of the work as I will be gaining frequent flyer miles by the day all over. However and more importantly, I will feel homeless and not important in the move. Normally, this would be ok but after all the nesting I have done, I need to help and I need to settle. We decided not to paint - why when we might not move and I was convinced for about an hour that I would find another place to move into on Saturday - I have people coming on Saturday to help us move - so I am going to move.

In the middle of this, I need to go pick up the CSA basket at the conservatory - 20 lbs of fruit and veggies on my bike since the car is being worked on. I find my bike and Jim's bike needs air in the tires - we don't have time to go pump them - we have to walk. Its 10 am and I am defeated. Its not a hard walk nor a long one - but nothing is going my way!

In the afternoon with the help of a new game and PBS shows, I calmed down. The car was ready to be picked up, we rode the train and bus to Jamie's house (a long process that we have never done before). Picked up the car and then out to supper at a place called Bodhi, a Thai place that is in Berwyn - not exactly where you would want to go looking for Thai, but the chef (I had read) was amazing. Jim's Pad Thai was the most amazing Pad Thai either of us has ever had. My squash curry was also amazing. We give it 5 tomatoes (that is the best rating - tomatoes being my favorite vegetable). Then right down the road is another place that I had read about being important to eat at because it was worth saving in this recession - and had also heard that Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives was stopping there last week. We decided to have dessert there. Jim had red velvet cake and I had the made to order donut holes. Again, this was a great find (and we noticed Guy from DDD's signature on the wall). We want to go back for a meal, but dessert itself gained the place 31/2 tomatoes.

NOTE: We have decided to keep our moving date on Saturday - so please don't drop out if you said you were coming - we will move everything to the one side the one that is currently empty - in order to use the woman and man power available - then we will live in our apartment down here out of suitcases until both are ready.

Sunday:

Today, I preached a not very good sermon and then led communion. After church several of us talked about children in communion - interesting topic to say the least. The highlight of the day and my week was our trip to Graceland cemetery for a Chicago Architecture Foundation tour (Thanks for my membership, Russ, Betsy, Mom and Dad!). I saw the burial sites of lots of important Chicagians that often we would walk up to them I would read the name and gasp before the tour guide would tell the story - I already knew. Jim laughed enough that the tour guide caught on and asked if I would consider being a docent for the CAF - which I have thought about but it requires a 3 month class that is considered a graduate level class - you even have to write papers. I will consider it when my traveling schedule isn't quite as often.

We stopped at Microcenter, Joanne's - where my nesting tendencies all came rushing back, then grabbed supper at a place in the Entertainment book Mrs O'Leary's that would get 1/2 tomato.

The weekend worked out in the end!