Home!

I got home from Chicago Friday night, and it was a really fun trip. I saw a marvelous film that doesn't have a US distributor, so it's on tour in just a few US cities, went to the Art Institute on a free night and saw great stuff, heard a free Sonny Rollins concert (from a distance-- I didn't want to be part of the crowd, so I did a walk-by listen) in Millennium Park as part of the Chicago Jazz Fest, and had a pizza. One of those super-cheesy-saucy-deep-dishy pizza PIES and it was delicious.

Nonetheless, I was so glad to come home. It's better that I was in Philadelphia 2 weeks ago and Chicago last week because I wasn't as homesick on the first trip but Philadelphia is really boring (sorry, Fuzzy). Chicago is so much fun that it helped distract that homesick feeling that crept up every time I was in a quiet moment.

We spent the first half of this holiday weekend packing, and it looks like we're spending the other half having fun. This morning we took e-baby to a great big playground and she thought it was heaven (I don't take her to enough playgrounds, obviously). After naptime, we went to PIC and LeBon's to eat burgers and play with c-baby and with SammyC who came to town for the weekend. We had a GREAT time, and the girls are just so much fun to watch play together. Or, near each other. Or, in different rooms from each other, as the case may be. E-baby found a way to get grown-ups to cheer for her: she did somersaults (front rollovers) over and over on the living room carpet. Every time she stuck the landing (and when she didn't, too) she'd run into the kitchen where everyone else was and yell "I DID IT!"

We kept her out a little later than usual, and all the way home I was thinking, "It's too bad she won't get much sleep before her full day at school tomorrow" until SNG started singing "Three-day-week-end, Three-day-week-end" and I remembered.

And underlying every thought is the hope that by this time tomorrow, Gustav will have fizzled down and hit land with a splat rather than a bang, and that at least, the levees will hold.