on becoming awesome

On Saturday morning, for some unknown and annoying reason I woke up at 7:15 a.m.  No one else was even close to being awake yet, so I put jeans, Stephen’s jacket (because Joey and I didn’t bring any with us, we’re not very bright), my Nikes, and grabbed what I thought was sister’s building entry key.

When I was in high school, my youth group had taken what was, for me, a very formative mission trip to Cabrini Green.  Cabrini was a large, extremely low-income housing project and what was left of it is located just a few blocks away from where Sister and Stephen live downtown.  Most of Cabrini has been torn down by now – there are two only two of the red buildings left, I was so surprised.  Some of the gray buildings are still there, and they look shabbier than ever.  But I guess that’s what 10 years will do to a low-income housing project slated for demolition, huh?

This is one of the only reds left.  It looks much shabbier now than it did when this picture was taken (I found it on the internets somewhere), so run down, in fact, that I didn’t think anyone could possibly live there.  I got close enough to determine that yes, people still inhabit it (someone was rolling a suitcase along an exterior walkway) before I got outta Dodge and went back to the main street.

I figured I’d be in enormous trouble if I went back to Sister’s apartment and told Joey, “I walked all over Cabrini all by myself!  And no one shot me!”  So I stuck to the main roads.  I didn’t walk all the way down Larabee like I wanted, to see if the church we did our VBS out of for the Cabrini kids was still there, but I caught a glimpse of what I thought was the building before turning around; I was starting to get some strange looks.  I had been walking for nearly 45 minutes, maybe somebody was finally awake back at the apartment.

No one was up.

I was dismayed to realize that the keyfob I had grabbed of Sister’s was not the correct one to get back into the building after all.  So I stood outside the door for 10 minutes, the security guard staring at me, until some guy came along.

“Can I follow you in?” I asked.  I held up Sister’s badge (although the picture on it looked exactly like me, so I was in luck) and said “I grabbed the wrong badge.”

“Sure,” the man said.  I followed him past the security guard who looked at me funny and said, “Can I help you?”

“No,” I replied, and got on the elevator with the man who had let me in.

This dude belched, cleared major phlegm out of his throat, and scuffed his feet on the carpet…all in the time it takes to go from the ground floor to level two.  I was not sorry to see him get off the elevator.

I rode up the next four floors in relative peace and quiet.  Pleased with my success at getting in Sister’s building even with the wrong keyfob, I got off the elevator on level 6 and pranced down the hallway to her apartment.  I tried the door…it was locked.

I had not locked it before leaving, I had specifically unlocked it.  Or so I thought.

I knocked lightly on the door for several minutes before giving up and sitting on the floor.  I sat there for five to ten minutes before giving up. I whipped out my cell phone and called the land line.  I heard the phone ringing and Sister stumbling around trying to answer it, so I hung up and started knocking on the door instead.

A few moments later, she opened the door, looking very confused indeed.

“Sister?  How did you get out there?” she asked me.

“I went on a walk,” I said.

Sister is very, very disoriented when she first wakes up.  Her hair gets really big, too.  I like it.

Two hours later, everyone was up, mostly showered, and Sister and I were in the midst of whipping up some whole-wheat Belgian waffles.  We ate a sumptuous breakfast to fortify us for our afternoon trek to Navy Pier.  We had free tickets for the Children’s Museum.

By noon, we were on our way.  But first we had to go verify the location of said Children’s Museum, so we stopped down at the computer lab, which also had a little library section in it.  Joey found this hilarious book that, when I was in possession of the last name “Laird”, I could have written.  We all laughed enough to make the other people in the lab think we were annoying and weird.

Really, it was the loveliest day for a walk.  About halfway there we reached the Lake and walked alongside.  The water and sky were so blue, and the breeze off the lake was so refreshing.

“I wish I had something to throw in the water,” I said.  I glanced around.  Nothing.

Stephen found a crack in the cement and somehow ripped off a chunk of it.

“Here you go,” he said.

“THANKS!” I said, gleefully.  I hurled my piece of cement a pathetic distance into the lake.  I can’t throw things at all.

By the time we reached Navy Pier, Sister was tired from walking.  So we sat on a bench to rejuvenate her while the boys sat under a tree.

We got too hot in the sun after awhile, though, and moved to sit with the boys.  I made Joey give me the camera and I took a picture of him.

He took the camera back and then lined us all up just so and took pictures of our bums.  I won’t tell you whose is who.

And then he took pictures of our faces…not to be confused with our bums.  Sister and I were talking about parenting.

Once Sister had recovered from the walk, we headed in to the museum.  I was excited, as you can see in this picture…but then, I’m always excited about something.

Evil sister, right after Joey snapped that picture she leaned over and whispered in my ear “Oh look, tallest to shortest…” and then jabbed me in the back with her elbow.  I wilted.  This is what a wilt looks like.  Please note that SISTER IS LAUGHING.

I am the shortest person in my family, and they are always making cruel remarks to me.  Always.

After wading through the mass of people watching a “pirate” show in the atrium (the show was lame, we watched it for, like, 15 minutes; actually I’m embarrassed to admit that…) we went to present our free pass to the Children’s Museum.

One hiccup.  Sister and I forgot our IDs and the weren’t letting us in without those.

So, change of plans, we decided to absorb all that Navy Pier had to offer us.  We started at the Children’s Museum store where Joey tried to scare me with a huge plastic spider.  It didn’t work as well as he planned, so I grabbed it from him and carried it around.

After the gift shop, where no money was spent, we went up to the Navy Pier atrium.  There are water arches, exotic plants, and lots of seating.  I wanted to poke one of the water arches, so I did.  I love the way the water looks after it gets interrupted.

Sister made the water spray…I didn’t realize how nice Joey’s camera was until we saw these pictures.

I really like this one.  This is an uninterrupted stream of water…but I didn’t realize that this is what water looks like as it’s falling.

We finished with messing up the water, shortly after someone interrupted one of the arches and completely soaked my back.  We meandered through the gift shops as we made our way to Ben & Jerry’s.  As we passed the window of one particularly cheesy shop, this apron caught our eye.

“We have to buy that for your Dad,” Joey said.

“He never wears aprons, though…” we said.  We looked at it longingly but in the end put it back on the shelf.  We did take this picture so we could email it to Pops. (The fuzzy words you probably can’t read are “at the mention of my name.”)

Our next stop: Build A Bear.  I had to go in once I saw the Panda.

I love Pandas, it’s no secret, and I even have a little one sitting on my desk at all times to motivate me. It totally works.

I walked out of Build A Bear with no Panda, just this lovely picture.

The next shop specialized in flavored popcorn and Jelly Bellys.  That seems like a weird combination to me, but it sucked us in like a vortex.  Stephen likes jalapeno popcorn.  A lot.

Sister and I preferred the Jelly Bellys, so I put a variety of them in a small bag (SISTER LIKES BLACK LICORICE, isn’t that the sickest thing you ever heard?!) and we spent the next little while eating them and trying to figure out which flavor they were.

“What do you think this one is?” Sister asked me.

“Oh, Margarita I think,” I mumbled.  I hadn’t even looked at the Jelly Belly before she put it in her mouth.  Nor had I gotten any Margarita ones.  But please look at the shocked look on Sister’s face — she’s a Moody student and I guess Margarita flavored Jelly Bellys would be really bad…at least judging from her expression.

Ben and Jerry’s.  They have ridiculously expensive ice cream, but it’s tasty.  Joey and I each got a single scoop in a  cup but Sister and Stephen got double scoops in cones.  LUCKY.  Mine was melting fast, so I held Joey’s cup, ate mine, and tried not to drop anything while he took the picture.  (No, I am not two-fisting it.)

We sat out on the Pier to eat our ice cream.  Joey turned around and snapped this picture of the Ferris Wheel, which I think is really cool.  (The picture is cool.  Not the Ferris Wheel.  I am never getting on that thing again in my entire life.)

Here I am trying to eat that jalapeno popcorn. It is burning my tongue, sinuses, eyes and lips…but somehow it was still tasty.

Sister is noshing away on her ice cream.

After we finished our ice cream, Sister and Stephen headed back home.  Joey and I wanted to make it to the end of the Pier, so we started walking.  That thing is LONG.

Almost to the end, we came upon a Tiffany stained glass museum, and it was free!  We went inside and stayed for quite some time, taking pictures and gasping over the intricate details.  The stained glass pictures were 3-D, it was amazing!

This red flower one was my favorite.  Maybe you can notice how the pedals of the flowers are a different texture?

Finally, we made it to the end of the Pier.  I stood and looked at the water (isn’t it beautiful?) while Joey took a million pictures of me.  I finally got fed up with it and said, “Get over here and stand by me!  Quit taking my picture!”  We have eleventy billion pictures of me and like 12 of him.

Joey and I caught a trolley back to Michigan Avenue, and from there, we hoofed it to Sister and Stephen’s house.  After a short rest, we began whipping up a colossally good dinner (Sister’s a mean chef) and had the table set and the apartment smelling savory within an hour and a half.

Sister’s friend Cassidy stopped down with their amazingly cute baby, and we took about 150 pictures of him before and after dinner.  This one’s my favorite.

Tired out from our Navy Pier adventure, we cleaned up dinner and zonked out in front of the TV to watch an Agatha Christie mystery.  It was good…but we were all too tired and Stephen fell asleep near the end.

Sunday, the next day, we got up early, drove an hour to Oswego and went to Sister and Stephen’s new church.  We ate lunch at Panda Express – I KNOW, PANDAS! – and they dropped us off at the airport, just in time to wait in line for an hour at security.

My least favorite part of the whole O’Hare experience was, when I was exiting the metal detector screening, the TSA agent looked very seriously at me and asked, “What kind of glasses are those?”

DANG!  My glasses look like a bomb!

I turned my face to the side and told him what label they were.

“Where did you get them?” he asked.

Seriously!  I didn’t think you could have bombs in glasses!  I never should have worn these!

“I got them in Texas,” I said, hesitantly.

“I love them.  I’m looking for a pair myself and I really like yours.”

I heaved a huge sigh of releif, thanked him for the compliment, and picked up my carry ons.  What a zany ending to such a delightful trip…and our plane didn’t even get delayed!