My New Favorite Room

After lots of packing and box gathering, Chris and I finally moved last Monday. And then last Tuesday, I became intimately familiar with my new bathroom, but not before defacing some public property near the Magnificent Mile.

I will explain.

It all started with this boy:



Sure he looks cute and innocent, but he is actually the carrier of the Evil Baby Virus (a.k.a. the stomach flu). Jack contracted this virus and passed it on to his poor, unsuspecting mother. However, unsatisfied with just infecting his mom, he decided to infect his grandfather as well. Grandpa went on to infect Grandma. And between the two of them, the Evil Baby Virus somehow found me, even though I spent only about 15 minutes with the infected when I went to pick up my baby (the good baby that doesn’t infect people with evil viruses) from Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize I had contracted the Evil Baby Virus until Tuesday afternoon while at work. Becoming increasingly nauseous, I called Chris and asked him to borrow one of his co-worker’s cars (he doesn’t drive to work) and pick me up from work. We agreed to meet at the corner of my street and lower Michigan Avenue.

Now, one of the joys of working on the 35th floor of a building is stopping a billion times up and down the elevator for other people on floors 1 through 34. Apparently, those people don’t realize what an absolute inconvenience their chosen floor of occupation is to the workers above them — ESPECIALLY when someone from 35 is about to lose her lunch and has to endure the feeling of an elevator stopping and starting five times in one trip.

When I finally did get down to the lower level, I was feeling a wee bit wobbly. I started to walk to the corner where I was to meet Chris, but quickly realized I wasn’t going to make it. I turned around, made a bee-line for the trashcan and successfully reached it, only to have my legs give out from under me as I sank to the ground and threw up in the grass in one glorious motion. On a downtown street. Next to the bus stop. For all to see.

One of those people witnessing my unpleasantness was Chris, who had just pulled up in his boss’ Porsche Cayenne. You know, luxury cars are nice and all, but not so much when you’re borrowing one from your spouse’s employer and you’ve just puked on the sidewalk with a high probability of round two.

Chris jumped out of the SUV, scooped me up and promptly took me home. Luckily, I did not make a mess of the boss’ car, but I did spend a large portion of the next 24 hours on my new bathroom floor, which, by the way, features brand-new off-white — very cold — ceramic tile.

My Husband

Earlier this week, I sent Chris an e-mail telling him to check out this Chicago crime Web site a college friend set up called www.chicagocrime.org. It's a pretty cool database of crimes that you can search by street, zip code, etc.

Anyway, I looked up our current block and then the block of our soon-to-be-residence. Surprisingly, our current block in relatively safe Lakeview had more crimes than our new block, which is in a slightly rougher area. I sent this info to Chris, and he wrote back:

"The crimes on [our current street] are weird, ie, telephone harassment, deception, and the like. I like my crimes like my women—rough, tough, and occasionally a peeping tom."

Sometimes it snows in April

Today is opening day at Wrigley Field. It's also snowing. Ha.

So, the big news going on right now is moving day. It's a week from today. We still have A LOT of work to do before then, like, you know, packing. I now regret opening most of our wedding presents. We SO could have gone seven months without ever opening the box with the water goblets. And the decanter? Please. We filled it once with top-shelf bourbon only to be drunk on special occasions. It lasted a week.

In somewhat related news, I think I need to cut down on the alcohol consumption. I realized this yesterday when I got a bit tipsy at Easter. Because nothing screams "lush" like having a few too many while hanging out with the family on the holiest of Christian holidays.