Leo and I had a very exciting date planned for Tuesday--at least exciting to me. We were going to go to downtown Chicago to the Macy's Flower Show and then the Oriental Museum at the University of Chicago. Flowers and archaeology, can't really get any better than that. However, the night before Elena screamed from 3 to 4 AM after falling out of bed. She wasn't hurt. She's just like that. Then at 5 AM Leo was woken by the saga of a lady leaving her boyfriend?/husband? and as he was very drunk, and she very upset, it was all very noisy. I was dead and slept through it, and anyway, as they were yelling in Spanish I wouldn't have understood anyway, so I just heard the drama secondhand. Lucky me. Then we listened to a very overtired Elena whine and cry all the way to the babysitter's. Errr. She has reached a new pinnacle in annoying crying--she's does this rough, gravelly cry that still manages to be so high-pitched, it literally makes my blood pressure sky rocket whenever I hear it. My flesh crawls. (The babysitter said she was excellent the whole day though--we, on the other hand, got to hear her scream the whole way home until she fell asleep as we turned into our parking lot). Needless to say, we weren't quite as chipper as we had planned.
Then we realized after spending 20 mins trying to find a relatively unexpensive parking garage ($12--that's our best so far) that we had parked near the wrong Macy's. Who knew that there were two 8-stories-tall Macy's in downtown Chicago? So we decided to take the bus down to the Oriental Museum only to realize that the express bus only runs during rush hour, meaning that it would take a good hour or more on the bus we were in. We could practically walk as fast. Only it was bitterly cold with the freezing wind pounding us from Lake Michigan. So we got off the bus and walked to the right Macy's.
It wasn't what I expected. I had seen pictures on the internet of previous ones. This just didn't live up to those grandiose designs I had seen online. Maybe the recession is hitting them a little hard too.
Anyway, these are some of the table designs. This one was my favorite.
Blah.
Nothing all that exciting here either.
Pink flamingos made out of flowers are pretty cool, but then again, pink flamingos aren't really my thing.
This was the center of the Macy's, it went up 8 stories.
The start of the kids department. Anyway, we spent the grand total of thirty minutes looking around, and most of that was riding the escalators. Then we had the long walk back to the parking garage. 
We did walk by the Chicago Cultural Center and decided to go in and we could have stayed for a free Jazz concert, but neither of us like Jazz. So we just admired the largest glass Tiffany dome in the world instead.
Leo admiring.
We then decided to burn our free time by window shopping. Mostly because it was cold and we really had no desire to see Elena again, for say, a couple of weeks? I chose to stop at Crate and Barrel where Leo picked out this bed. I liked it too. Although neither of us like dark wood.
Then we both picked out these plates as our favorite. Andrea called me consistently boring. Ruff.
Then we tried out all the couches and this was our favorite. Can you tell Leo was humoring me a lot? Not that he didn't like the couch, just that he tried them all out with me. We also stopped at the Mac store. Mac computers are sweet, I just have to say. And then we went home to our insane munchkins. All in all, not a bad date, it ended nicely anyways. Besides, anytime away from my kids and alone with my husband is time well spent. 
And since your life isn't enlightened enough about my life yet, instead of buying a swimsuit as planned I bought a new pair of shoes. My old running shoes died (they had had a hole in the toe for a long time but the back started breaking making them a little painful). This marks the first time since high school that I have actually bought a pair of running shoes based solely on my liking them. For the longest time I had to pick white ones for my CNA/LPN/RN careers and then I bought a pair at Sam's Club because they were cheap. But I did love that pair, which by the way is the same brand as this pair--Saucony--way better than Aesics any day. And do you notice, these shoes have red on them!!!!!
Now I must get to bed.
Anyway, they wouldn't let her graduate early because the school was paid per number of students and as North Dakota has a decreasing population, they try to hold on to students. So in protest, I didn't attend my graduation. No, not really. I just really find graduations the most boring things in the world. To escape, I went to Fort Mandan with my dad.
But Dad thought we should have the gown and pictures anyway, so he let us put on HIS gradutaion robes that he had to wear to the university graduations. Only it wasn't even his, it's not in the color of the education department, he borrowed it from a friend in the computer science department. Not that it matters. Dad is just funny.
