On Summertime and the Big City

Holy shit, it's officially summer! That little bitch, "Mother Nature" has been teasing us with warm, beautiful days here and there since last month, and here we are, officially in summer, and we've yet to receive consecutive "summer weather." It's all part of living in the Mitten, right? I mean, we're shaped like winter apparel, why are we surprised by the erratic weather patterns up in here?

With that being said, allegedly we're supposed to get our asses kicked with some severe storms and possibly tornadoes later today and overnight. Doesn't that sound nice? Who doesn't want to deal with tornadic weather in the middle of the night? I'll be sweeping my family into our flooding basement in the dark at 3:00am and using myself as a human shield while twisters sweep my money pit of a house away. Aside from being homeless for a while, getting a new house out of the deal might not be a bad shake.

All kidding aside, I don't wish to be involved in a tornado, nor do I wish for my toddler to have to experience that, not to mention, Leopold and Jameson would be shitting their fur to be involved in such an event. There, there's my disclaimer.

In other news, J and I went to Chicago last weekend for a family wedding. G had his first overnight weekend at Grandma and Papa's, in which he did amazing. Mama bear over here was all nervous for nothing, but, I guess that's what we do.

I'd never been to Chicago. J had been years ago. We've been to NYC and DC on past trips, and I must say, Chicago is the tamest in regards to traffic and crowds. Don't get me wrong, it was still hectic as hell, and there were people everywhere, but somehow, it seemed calmer, I don't know why. We got a little sightseeing in, you know, the standard Navy Pier visit and Millennium Park. Of course we wanted to get to Willis Tower, but my ass is so scared of heights, I couldn't bring myself to get up there, and forget about that sky deck or whatever. I couldn't even get on the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, okay? This is how much of a sissy I am.

I won't lie to you, I missed my kid, alright? I got choked up here and there when I saw little toddlers running around, having fun. However, this does not mean I didn't enjoy my adult time either. I got to spend an entire weekend being pre-mom me. We went out to the bar with the family and their friends for a little pre-wedding imbibing. It didn't matter what time we finished up or how lit up we were. We could just go to the hotel and fall asleep. We walked and biked around the City not having to worry about whether or not we were giving our son heat stroke or stopping for nap time. We went to the wedding without having to worry about leaving at a certain time to be home with our boy. It was, refreshing, needed. Naturally, when we saw him on Sunday afternoon, we wouldn't let go, but that's neither here nor there. Now that we know he's cool with spending a weekend away from us once in a while, it might be prudent to indulge our pre-kid selves and have a weekend. Right... we'll see.

On Total and Utter Randomness

I had a couple different topics that I could probably milk and get a couple of blog posts out of, but they seemed so insignificant to merit their own post, except for maybe this news right here:

As some or most of you might know, I am an attempted writer. I do have one fiction book published at the moment, that has remained rather stagnant since its publication in 2011. This year I decided I'd spend a little money and enter it in a couple book festivals, not expecting high results, because, what writer does? My first festival was the San Francisco Beach Book Festival. "Stress Test" did not win any of the grand prizes... however, it did win First Honorable Mention in the General Fiction category. Not such a huge deal to most, but a pretty big deal to me, as its creator who though my first book might very well be utter drivel. This little milestone is quite exciting to me, and almost a week later, I'm still riding the high from it.

This second bit is just a general observation about G-Money. I will preface this by saying, I know my boy is only almost two and things will change for him drastically as he gets older. I brought him over to a school a couple weeks ago to play, his future elementary school actually. One of the many things I like about him is his ability to stand back and observe his surroundings before he dives right in and reacts. There were about a dozen other kids playing while we were there and he cautiously walked up to the playground and kept a safe distance and watched each of the kids doing various things. He stood there for probably about 20 minutes just taking it in. He then started to play on his own, near the other kids, but not trying to play with them. I could see that he was hesitant about engaging them and it brought me back to my own elementary school playground happenings where I'd often times either play alone or with a set group of friends. I was painfully shy throughout all of my school years, and am still very shy, I know how it affected me, and I shudder to think that my sweet boy might take after me in that aspect. On the other hand, I know he's still so young and he may blossom into a social butterfly by time he reaches school. Either way, I just want him to be happy.

This third bit has to do with dating. I was at a bar with some co-workers the other day, having a good time, relaxing, when totally unsolicited a freakishly tall biker man approached me. He asked my name, I told him, he told me his name, he asked if he could hang out (at the bar) with me, I quickly said, I'm married. He was like... "that's okay." Red flag number one. Now, when a woman almost immediately tells a stranger she's married, does that not tell said stranger that she is not interested in talking to him any further? He still persisted. It must have been something about my red nosed, puffy eyed, sick voiced, no make-up personality that really got this guy. Then I was like, look dude, I'm married to this guy's sister (pointing at my co-worker). "Oh, that's even better." Seriously, bro? It took him a minute or two to let it sink in, then he was like, "Oh, so it's like a f**k off kinda thing right?" I stared at him while it set in. You'd think he would of gathered that from the whole, I'm "married" thing. Don't get me wrong, just because I'm married doesn't mean I'll be an asshole and refuse to talk to the opposite sex completely. But, I'm not completely blind, creepy biker man approaches one of only a couple mildly okay looking chicks in a bar asking to hang around after knowing she's married, and to a woman (so he thinks) and won't back down. Man, I can't be a party to that.

See what I'm saying? Three somewhat interesting pieces of information that really do not merit their own post, but it's something to think about. So let me know, any of you have any scum bag stories for me?