Kinda Like a Hippie

Well! A brother just isn't gonna happen.

The Hippiekid (who looks so much less so with his new haircut- his choice not mine) is always on the brother campaign.

Okay I get it. I would like another one too, but the odds are not with us.

Sorry Dude, you got the hippie type mom that took a long time finding herself (and a few others along the way) and that whole kid having procrastination thing ate up a lot of the reproductive years. And how many times can we count on the condom breaking? I mean your older brother was a nice surprise and all (and we all know his death nearly killed me), but I didn't have a master plan worked out when he was conceived. And I realize you may not get the full implication of this but a vasectomy coupled with heavy doses of chemotherapy that the boyfriend has endured aren't really helping your cause.

Now you I had to work for. Walking around incubating a baby was a deliciously fun piece of cake compared to the work of getting you. Could be that my aversion to paperwork and patiently waiting were not the kind of qualities best suited to the job. And yet again, it wasn't planned out in advance. There you were on the computer screen and something snapped, or perhaps came alive again, inside of me and I was on my way to Moldova without even knowing where it was yet. And no, we can't just go buy you a brother. Besides, they cost A LOT!

So make do okay?

Welcome to the family Sonny. (Adopted from the local animal shelter 2/25/07)

It IS my kind of town

I love Chicago. Yeah, I know, not real original, but I do. I love it in the summer, when Hippiekid and I can walk around the farmer's market in Lincoln Park on a Saturday morning and pretend that we actually live there. Or go to another park on Sunday and eat donuts among the pigeons:

We get to leave small town Texas and enjoy a bit of urban culture.

Chicago is just such a cool city-- and we know how I love cool. (Not to be confused with damn cold, which I will get to in a minute.) I love that as a city they have devoted time, money and effort into being "green", the hippiechick in me loves that. In Chicago you get the big city feel of getting into a cab and not knowing what language your driver will speak, and the mega doses of every kind of overmarketed store you could ever want, yet you will also get to view a lake, a very big lake.

SO last weekend, to assauge my Chicago yearnings I flew into Midway Airport (thus using up some of those bothersome frequent flyer miles the boyfriend had cluttering up his account). And two of my cool friends joined me- one from Wisconsin and one from Michigan (yeah they are a little more conditioned to the cold). It was cold. It was Chicago in February. It was cold. I still loved it. If I had gone to Chicago in February and it had not been cold I would have stomped my feet and demanded my money back. Okay, so I didn't have to stand outside and scrape the ice off my car or take the dog out for an early morning walk, and I realize that would almost certainly taint the experience, but I loved being in real winter for a few days.

I got to wear my big coat -- the one I bought at a thrift store for $13.00 (you wish you had gotten it first-- black wool, made in Russia).

That's me in the middle flaunting it.

And my friends, the other cool chicks who joined me for our weekend sans kids or significant others, they were a ton of fun.  

See, here's one now... acting on my dare to make a snow angel.

And thanks to the supreme photographic skill of my other friend we now all have beautiful recorded evidence of our excursion. Pictures much better than the ones you are viewing here, which were taken by me. So we never really saw her face, it's a small price to pay for digital posterity!

We shopped, that's me with my mouth open- pretty much the norm,

we ate, we explored, we saw a show. We had a great time. A girl's weekend, even when the girls are all past 40, is a must every now and then.

And the bonus prize? New bootlets! In all their furry loveliness. Who could resist? Obviously not me.

I really love Chicago.

I Got to Play with Fire

And it was really cool.

And even though I rarely speak without massive amounts of metaphors (often mixed), today I am speaking literally. ('Cause, you know, normally it would be me alluding to the fact that I have done something stupid that is gonna come back and burn my ass.)

I'm taking a welding class. Yeppers, we got to light the big fire stick. And then we got to hold it to pieces of really hard metal stuff and watch it turn to a molten mass and then fall off onto the floor. What could be neater than that? I am such an awesome scap destroyer.

Basically, I'm overcome with excitement here so I will have to get back to you on all the particulars. And I may even take pictures, but that will have to wait a couple of weeks since our instructor has to go judge the agriculture metal shop entries at a stock show out of town. (Can you believe the nerve? Just when I'm all a tingle like this.)

Just think, by Christmas I shoud be able to make you all beautiful yard art from old farm implements. Save those rakes and plow parts!