Broad Shouldered Weekend

Chicago is not the same place when you have kids with you, but it's still Chicago. A friend loaned us her pied-a-terre at 777 Michigan Ave for the weekend, and it was not to shabby, as they say. This is the view out of one window, looking north. The kids spent a lot of time looking at it. B would start a game of I Spy with you but kept choosing cars. They would drive away, so you could never win. J reverted to some cloying language she must have gleaned from Disney, saying things like "I surely wish I could live here forever." She's five and fluent in princess.

It was mainly museums, then. No Damen Ave. book stores this time. Shedd Aquarium was my favorite except for the dolphin show, which is primarily a lecture. They should advertise it that way. But I could watch the Beluga whales for weeks. Unfortunately, the main attraction for me, the octopus, was balled up in a corner of his small box of a tank. But still, a live, large-ish, non-fried octopus. I could see one of its eyes, an intelligent eye, and I think we shared a moment.

Walking around some of the neighborhoods just northwest of the water tower was some of the more laid-back adult stuff we got to do. We spent about twenty harrowing minutes in a fabulous Anthropologie store. I was convinced we were going to buy some broken $200 bauble but we made it out okay.

In the particular beautiful brownstone part of Chicago where we were walking, you don't see a lot of families. It's just too expensive, I guess. You'd see a few local families out and about with strollers and it may have been me but the parents had these looks on their faces like "look at us! We're raising our family in downtown Chicago and we're doing great!" Maybe I was jealous, but I don't think so. Out of the other side of the apartment, you could see the Museum of Contemporary Art. On Friday night, they were having a late-night party thing with DJ's and hipsters, presumably, but I couldn't quite tell from the apartment. I watched people walk through the galleries for awhile and thought "I surely would love to sneak out and hang with the DJ's." But no, not this night.