I am home. Tired, happy and exhausted, but home.
My trip to Chicago was wonderful. I got to spend hours and hours in the company of good friends. We slept waaaaaaay to little, smoked waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay toooo much (I sound like Kathleen Turner when she plays Chandlers [Viva Las Gaygas] dad on Friends) and ate some incredible food.
Oggis (on Grand) I am lookin at you. Dayum.
I met some incredible people, saw some amazing things (sadly the Body Worlds Exhibit was not in the cards, but maybe another time) and walked many miles in strappy heels downtown.
Jens Aunt Susan (a very young aunt) was in town from FL with her friend, Karen, and they were visiting another friend so we had two groups working and the mixture of people was very nice. We went out with them Friday night to RedStone in Oakbrook (or thereabouts) and on Saturday night down to the Signature Room (in the Hancock Building) and over to the Hunt Club.
We spent many moments perched on chairs in the back yard laughing and talking and this was my favorite part of the whole trip. The visiting. When I was young I used to look at my parents and their friends or my family members visiting on numerous back porches across the South, rocking and drinking cold Coca-Cola laughing and just talking and I thought to myself, How can they sit there for that long and just talk? Arent they bored? Dont they want to watch a movie or play a game of ghost in the graveyard? But now I know that the visiting is the best part. I would fly thousands of miles just to visit for a few days.
We talked about our lives, work, our families, Sils beautiful child; who is so scrumptious I chewed on her repeatedly; our exs, our boyfriends and our husbands and somehow the conversation inexplicably turned to teabagging. We talked about how we have changed over the past mumble-mumble years. How certain things matter and how certain things we thought we could never live without hardly cross our minds anymore. And how we are softer.
The birthday party for Sils daughter went off without a hitch on Sunday. It started at 3:30pm and ended at 3:30 am. Sils husband cooked what seemed to be a whole herd of cows and a flock of chickens and everyone ate and drank and was merry. We ended the party with a few rousing games of poker.
It was a fantastic weekend with lovely friends and I miss them all dearly.
The next trip to Chicago cant come soon enough.