…I should just give this all up.

And then – I find that I need to show you all where I’ve been. And hope that you’ll know that I miss you all.

Love,
Ree

—- Last Sunday. Foster Avenue Beach. —-

Late on Saturday mornings, we load up the bikes for a day touring Chicago. Sometimes it’s a leisurely trip – exploring neighborhoods and marveling at the changes a few blocks can make. Sometimes, though, like yesterday, it’s a balls-out ride through the city.

Two and a half hours and 20 miles after we left our courtyard, we were ready to lock up the bikes and call it a day.

Our route

We did get an opportunity to stop here for lunch after wheezing through the special effects smoke the filming of Transformers 3 down on Michigan & Wacker. (No, there were no Shia LaBeouf sightings, but we did see the crew parking lot and catering tables.)

And now on to the list:

• Leftover steamed vegetables and rice for lunch.
• This link that Mr. Hot sent me.
• Dog beaches.
• Listening to Shortman playing Johnny Cash on Guitar Hero.
• Wrap dresses for work.

—- Amazingly enough, my knees survived the ride. Pippin, though, echoed my thoughts when we got back. —-

I can haz nap nao?

If you get skeeved out by the thoughts of horror stories and want to barf when you hear about grossness, then – by all means – shut down this page and move on to something with flowers and unicorns and sparkly rainbow prettiness. Today? This is not that place.

Not long after we’d purchased our apartment, moved in, met the other unit owners and formed the governing body (a.k.a. condo association) hereafter known as the Fort Chester Tiki Time Wine Club, we received an ominous email. It was from one of the owners who is renting out his unit.

My tenant believes there’s a mouse behind one of the walls. She can hear scratching.

Our response was, “Find the hole and set a trap.”

We heard nothing else until:

My tenant hasn’t heard any more scratching, but now there seems to be a strange smell coming from her laundry room. We think the mouse died.

We toasted the poor animal, hoped for a quick decomposition (better than tearing the walls out), and thought about sending flowers. Or air freshener.

Unfortunately, not long after THAT, one of the other members of the Fort Chester Tiki Time Wine Club (who lives ABOVE the tenant with the mouse odor problem) started hearing scratching over HER head. A pest control expert was called out. One roof climb and $200 later, he hypothesized that squirrels were getting in through broken ceramic tiles over the sunroom section on the south side of the building.

His visit resulted in the capture of one Rocky-type creature. After another $50 to cart the vermin away, we figured that the board of directors of the Fort Chester Tiki Time Wine Club condo association would simply have to find someone to patch the tiles before calling that little episode done.

Ha. Shows you what WE know.

The next email:

My tenant is complaining about swarms of flies coming from the area around where the smell was.

Oh mah holy hell, y’all. These flies? ARE HUGE. And there’s hundreds. And they’re taking over the building. They’re on the windows in the stairway. They’re congregating by the mailboxes. The tenant has shut herself in one room of the apartment and refuses to go in and out the front door.

Everyone on that side of the building (opposite our side, thank gawd) are battling the monsters.

The mouse? Was either as big as a squirrel or WAS a squirrel – and if you read about this while sipping your morning coffee, then you know what we believe is happening within the walls.

The Fort Chester Tiki Time Wine Club held an emergency meeting last night to approve the further expenditure of $900 to get rid of the fucking flies. We thought about changing the name of our group to The Amityville Horror Money Sucking Pit We Can’t Afford Wine Club.

—- If green snot starts oozing out of the walls, you’ll be able to hear my screams. —-

It was over 80 degrees in Chicago on Sunday morning. Mr. Hot and I mapped out our activities for the day between refilling coffee cups and reading the newspaper. A trip to the fruit market was a must – summer weather means salads and fresh juice, no more heavy winter food allowed. Then perhaps a bike ride down to Humboldt Park, part of our quest to explore Chicago neighborhoods while getting some much needed exercise. I may be working my ass off, but somehow, it’s not doing much for the way my pants fit.

We told Poopy the Puppy to behave himself, grabbed keys and cash, and headed out. The sun had come out of hiding, the puddles from the previous days’ rain were gone and the muddy spots had dried into cracked plaster spots. It felt so good to be in shorts and flip-flops again.

As we walked along Lawrence Avenue, sirens sounded in the distance. Looking ahead, we saw flashing lights at the front of the long line of cars that were stopped between where we stood and the bridge over the North Branch of the Chicago River. The screeching of the emergency vehicles coming from behind us was getting louder by the second. Fire engines. Police cars. An ambulance.

And then, there it was. The Chicago Police Marine Rescue and Recovery unit.

I looked at Mr. Hot and touched his arm as the realization hit me.

They found him.

One week, to the day, after an 8-year-old boy in our neighborhood fell into the river. After watching the news every morning hoping to hear that his body had been found and his family could have the goodbyes they desperately needed. After hearing how his distraught father had gone into the depths himself to try to find his son.

They found him.

—- Millions of goosebumps crawled up my arms in the heat while I tried not to cry. —-

I should just call this blog “Hotfessional’s Lists”. Because we know I’ve got nothing y’all.

• Mr. Hot just walked in with a pizza from the joint on the corner.
• Shortman called me today to ask me if he was looking at the John Hancock building. When I told him he was actually looking at the Sears Tower (I’m NOT calling it the Willis Tower…no effin’ way), I could give him directions and hope that he had on comfortable walking shoes*.
• Poopy the Puppy has learned to be a city dog. He ignores squirrels, but will gladly roll over on his back for a belly scratch from the kids in our neighborhood.
• I’ve been elected Vice President of our Condo Association. Of course, there are only six units and seven owners who live in those six units, so there wasn’t much of a choice.
• Also, volunteers were strangely absent.
• I am loving Jen Lancaster’s new book. My darling stepdaughter (who sent me flowers on Mother’s Day, ya’ll) is a sorority sister and thinks it is beyond awesome that I’ve met Jen and – ehem – had cocktails with her on Poppy’s sky-high deck.
• After multiple days in the 80s (temps, not the decade, yo), it’s now back to the 50s.
• I dream about cardboard boxes. Seriously, there is too much wrong with that to even enumerate.
• I may have had one too many vodka/limeades. (And considering I just typed vokda, you should just strike the “may” out of that sentence.)

I’m not going to make any more excuses about lack of posting. I’m now shooting for Memorial Weekend for an ACTUAL honest-to-gawd blog around here. Unless someone wants to come unpack boxes and decorate my house?

—- *Considering that after 40 years in Michigan, I barely knew how to get from Ann Arbor to Lansing, I consider this a great victory. —-