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Six hundred miles later…

Dude, we are totally beat. The weekend was an unqualified success.

Tim ended up taking off the entire day on Friday (even though the mortgage-fiasco closing did not happen), so, after trading vehicles and child with my mother, we left even earlier than I had hoped. Whee!

After a long, rainy drive, we arrived at the immense Hyatt Regency at about 7:30. The drive up Lakeshore was amazing, as always. Tim wanted to take some inner-city Interstate, but I insisted that we drive I-55 to the very end. The lake looked all cold and lonely, and the skyscrapers were all enshrouded in mist. Brr!

We checked into our palatial room, unpacked our stuff and then headed out to River North to meet up with our friend JT from New York.

Backtracking a bit here, the whole reason for going to Chicago this weekend was to attend the Breeders Cup of thoroughbred horse racing. We’re big fans, and I just realized that not everyone who reads this may know that.

Anyway, we arrived at this bar, Brehan’s, about an hour early, so we struck out looking for some dinner. We walked up North Wells, passing some intimidating-looking clubs with velvet ropes and doormen and such. Finally, we were nearing a diner-type place and Tim was starting to try to talk me into burgers, when we came to the front and realized that it was Ed Debevec’s. You know, the place famous for bad service and wisecracking waitresses? No, thanks.

Across the street was Gino’s Pizza or something like that. Huge, just huge! With a line out the door! Then, on the next block, Tim spotted this little sign that said “Carson’s” and was like, ‘We have got to go there. Ribs.’

So we did. And it was pretty fabulous.

We made it back to Brehan’s (where every girl I swear was Mimi Smartypants) and met up with JT. It’s always so great to hang out with JT. He’s so honest and earnest and I totally wish I knew some the perfect single girl for him. Whoever wins his heart is lucky indeed.

We ended up drinking several beers (read: I wasn’t totally wasted, but definitely more intoxicated than I had been for a very long time) and talking about our mutual friends, discussing the next day’s card, etc., etc.

Bizarre incident of the night: When we were settling in at Brehan’s, we snagged a table as this 40-something woman and her male friend left. She was pretty drunk — not stumbling or anything — but she had tons of stuff. It was obvious she had been there since after work, and since it was then about 10, well, you can guess how much she’d been drinking.

Anyway, so she’s trying to gather up all of her stuff and her dolt of a friend is just standing there watching her, and I offer her a hand. I helped her pick up her shoulder bag from underneath the table and made sure her takeout bag was arranged so the food wouldn’t fall out. After some awkwardness, she was finally gone and Tim and I sat down.

About 20 minutes later, she pops up at the table again. Apparently, she’s been in the bathroom this entire time and now she can’t find her purse. She thinks that she left it at the table, but I know for a fact that she had it when she left. Anyway, she’s drunk and the place is pretty loud, so Tim and I humor her by getting up so she can look underneath the table and around it. I started getting a little nervous, because she’s looking all huffy like we took her purse. Great.

About this time, JT shows up and we begin talking to him as this lady continues to look around the bar for her purse. Waitresses get involved, soon some burly-looking guy is looking around too. They eventually realize that she’s pretty drunk and lose interest. But she’s not going away.

So I finally get up, take her elbow, and ask her to help me retrace her steps between the table and the bathroom. She’s mumbling about how her life was in the purse, yada yada, and she might as well kill herself now. Hello! This is fun!

Nothing in either bathroom, nothing around the bathrooms. I’m thinking, ‘Great. Someone stole this woman’s purse and now I’m going to get stuck paying her cab fare home.’ I’m looking in trash cans, hoping that the guilty party just took the cash and dumped the rest. Then, lo and behold! a waitress parts the seas and she has the purse! The drunky left it on the bar! Nothing’s missing! God bless the Midwest!

She leaves, and I can get on with my vacation.

Tomorrow: My emotional breakdown at IKEA.

Man, I love and hate the night before a big trip. And this one is only for the weekend! I’ve still got a million things on my to-do list, but it is dwindling a little.

One fun thing that has kept me up this late: When bringing up my hanging clothes from storage (yes, still), I had a mini-fashion show for myself, trying on things that haven’t fit for a long time. It was so awesome and now I’m all proud of myself and motivated to keep chugging away on the program.

I rock!

One thing that Tim and I have agreed on is that this is a free weekend. No worrying about what we eat. Now, I’m not going to go completely nuts and eat an entire Chicago-style pizza. (Mmm… Pequod’s….) But I’m not going to religiously write down every single thing that goes in my mouth.

So my friend Ryan (who we are meeting for breakfast on Saturday and I’m so excited) has given me a secret tip for IKEA. Apparently, they have an “As is” room on the first floor by the cash registers and you can get neat-o stuff there for even cheaper! Woo hoo! We are the king and queen of scratch-and-dent! Is it sad that I am so looking forward to this orgy of consumerism?

OK, OK, off to bed I go. Tomorrow I surrender my baby to my mom for two whole days (plus a couple of hours). What am I going to do without him??

The mystery of the missing peppermint lip balm is solved! I’ve been scratching my head for two weeks, wondering where my wonderful Whole Foods-brand nectar had made off to. I was pretty sure that Auggie had snagged it off of my dresser, but why couldn’t I find it? I mean, we had every single room on the top floor of our house empty (except the kitchen and bathrooms) and still no lip balm.

So yesterday, I’m fishing around in Auggie’s toy basket in the living room, looking for missing pieces to this wooden puzzle deal, when I see the beloved green stick down at the bottom. Eureka! My lips rejoice!

Sorry, but I get all attached to lip balms. I just recently made the switch from straight Carmex, which has been my constant lip salve since, like, junior high. Major turning point.

Anyway, I’ve been getting strange looks from the people who have come over to see the newly-refinished floors. We have most of the (mismatched) furniture back in our bedroom, yet there is only the lone mattress on the floor. There’s a perfectly logical explanation for this, which of course I will bore you with. (Ugh, how many sentences have I ended with a preposition thus far? Please forgive me, O AP-style gods.)

I think I’ve mentioned (like 100 times) that we’re going to IKEA this Sunday while we’re in Chicago. One of the things we’re salivating over is a new bed. Up to now, we’ve only had our fabulous pillow-top mattress and box springs on a bed frame (let’s see the hands of all those pillow-top believers out there). How ever have we made it this far?? I mean, we’re practically savages! No headboard! Footboard? Not even in our dreams!

Well, most IKEA beds are designed to be used with only a mattress, so we wanted to make sure that our mattress alone would be comfortable enough to preclude buying a new one at IKEA. So far, so good. Plus, Coco is totally loving the low bed that she can hop into willy-nilly. In fact, she disappears for hours at a time, only to wander into the kitchen all bleary-eyed like, ‘Dude, I just had the best nap.’ Much like I was during my freshman year of college.

My, I’ve been so caught up in homicidal fantasies about Inept Kenny that I can’t believe tomorrow is already Thursday! I have a million things to do. Deep breaths… Deep breaths… You would not even believe what Mr. Jerry-is-my-hero-yet-I’m-a-total-capitalist-salesslug tried to pull tonight. You just wouldn’t even believe it. Tim and I have been chuckling to ourselves all evening long, just thinking about it. Suffice it to say that Kenny was treated to quite a bit of salty language on my part tonight. Then I got to call his boss and tell on him.

Neener, neener, neener. I almost said, ‘I’ll have your job!’

Tell me if you think this is scary:

For our trip to IKEA on Sunday, I have taken digital photos of every single wall in our house (except for the garage — should I do the garage?). I will then enlist Tim to help me take all relevant measurements (wall height and width, distance from the floor to the bottom of the windowsill, area available between our bedroom window and the farthest point the closet door swings out, etc.) and write them on the printouts of the photos. Finally, I will place said printouts in a handy binder to tote along to the store.

I’m going to frighten the nice salespeople, aren’t I?

And what is up with everyone being all smart, all of a sudden? I could barely follow Mimi Smartypants today. My brain is all limpy or something.

I got an “I lost 10 pounds!” ribbon today, thank you very much. It seems that my worries that I would balloon back up while visiting my mother last week were unfounded. I actually lost 4 more pounds. Yippee! Now, I’ve lost a total of 10.6 pounds (not that I’m counting or anything). The lady who weighed me made a big deal about how heavy jeans are and that I’ve probably even lost more, but I don’t know. Sounds like something fat people tell themselves to make them feel better.

All I know is that my jeans are getting big! And I tried on pants this weekend, only to have to go back for a smaller size. Yay, me! I haven’t been this skinny since Tim and I were training for the 10K we ran back in 1999. Of course, I have had a child since then. But still!

Oy, but I still have a long way to go until I’m within my “recommended weight range.”

I have so many things to do right now. I’m in one of my can’t-deal-with-it-now-so-I’ll-just-procrastinate kinda moods. Like I said, limpy.

So the ineptitude of our mortgage company continues to grow each and every day. I swear that I’m going to have an ulcer before we close on the damn thing. You know, I’m not one of those “I’ll have your job” kinda people, but I really feel like the guy we’ve been dealing with should be fired for incompetence. I ended up calling one of the owners of the company yesterday and telling the whole sad story to him. Now he has taken over our file. I hope I never have to speak to “Grateful Dead bears ring-wearing dude” again. I should have known better.

I would fire him.

Here’s an e-mail I just fired off to my local Senator:

My husband and I are in the process of refinancing our home, in order to take advantage of the lower lending rates. When the mortgage company pulled our credit reports, there were many erroneous entries under my name from one of the credit reporting agencies, Experian. The entries belong to my mother-in-law, Elizabeth C. I am Beth C, so the mistakes are understandable, I guess, even though we each have distinct Social Security numbers, of course.

Now I am trying to get the erroneous entries off of my credit report. Apparently, since we paid a third-party company to pull our credit histories from all three agencies at once, I now have to shell out $14.95 to Experian for a report from them. How can this be? Normally, I would write to Experian to complain, but they do not provide any means of doing so, it seems.

I know there are much bigger problems with this country right now, but this is completely frustrating. First, there are three credit reporting agencies, each with different information. Why? And when the information that they provide is so important, why is it so often incorrect? And why do I have to pay for this information? It’s mine, isn’t it?

So, as it stands right now, if I want these incorrect items removed from my report, I have to pay Experian for a brand-new report. Then, I have to “request an investigation” of each and every erroneous entry. Otherwise, I will continue to receive a lower credit rating (which adversely affects my buying power, and, in turn, the country’s economy). I am at the mercy of Experian, and that makes me very uncomfortable. This is America. I should be able to handle this myself, without paying money out of my pocket.

If there is any way that the United Stages Senate can help remedy this antiquated method of providing credit information, I would really appreciate it.

Respectfully yours,

Beth C

That should get ’em moving, eh?

We’re back! Sorry for the lack of updates, but I just could not stand to do more than check my e-mail on that dial-in modem. That took nearly 20 minutes as it was!

The floors look great, thanks for asking. I can’t believe how beautifully they turned out. Sorry that I can’t work up much more enthusiasm right now, but we are both totally wiped out from moving all the furniture back. That’s especially sad, seeing as how we have only moved about half of the stuff back.

See, we’re going to Chicago next weekend, and while we’re there, we’re going to check out the IKEA store up in Schaumberg. Whee! New bedroom suite here we come! And new desk! And closet storage stuff! And rugs!

Anyway, we don’t want to move a bunch of stuff back upstairs, only to move it back downstairs next weekend. Capeche?

So what can I tell you about last week? It was really hard. I really missed Tim. Auggie was a major pain during the night, waking up and not going back to sleep until I brought him into bed with me.

I couldn’t believe how bad I was at that! You see, Tim usually handles all the nighttime stuff. I roll over in bed and cover my head with a pillow. Away from home, it’s especially challenging, because you’re not only concerned about the baby, but also the gracious people who are hosting you and said baby.

So I didn’t sleep well. At all. Which is not good, especially considering that each morning I woke up to another 24 hours of permanent mommy duty. My mom was a huge help, but she had stuff of her own to do.

So we did a little shopping, visited Grandpa and Granny, got to see little Cammron (who is doing famously) and generally had a pretty good time while we whiled the days away, waiting for the house to be ready.

We visited the nursing home where my mother works as an ombudsman (yes, she is a saint) and Auggie put a smile on many the face among the residents.

It’s so good to be back home. I apologize for boring the pants off of ya’ll, but I think I’ll go “press some sheets” as my dad would say.

Wow, super cool, the Google robot has finally crawled through to bookerdog dot com. Yep, when you type in bookerdog to the search engine, we’re the top hit!! Judging from their cached page, it looks like it happened sometime between the 11th and the 13th because it shows the Baseball blues post. However, if you just type in Tim Clauss into the search, you won’t find us right away because apparently there’s a Tim Clauss who was the co-author of one of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books, so he get’s like 5 pages of Google results. Beth’s name fortunately brings it up as the second entry.

So, the reason that Beth is suffering in dial-up purgatory is that the floor refinishing has begun at our homestead. That’s right, except for a few toilletries, all of the contents of the upper floor of our house are currently in the garage/basement. It’s like one of those snow globes that’s settled after a good shake, only possibly slightly more disorganized. There was some final scrambling on Tuesday night as we finally read through the documents the refinishing company had given us. Remove the interior doors, cover all the vents, do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around. So after I packed Beth into the car I listened and sorta watched the disappointing baseball game, while performing these final acts. The last thing was to put plastic up over the doorways for the rooms that were not being refinished. I then collapsed on the couch to be available in the morning for the arrival of the refinishing crew.

Now I’m a nomad, staying with our friends Chris and Dana, who have been very gracious in offering me a place to stay. Even better is that Chris had a friend give him tickets to the Blues hockey game last night that were in the third row. Since last night’s game was the worst attendance the Blues have had in 5 years, we were able to move up and sit first row right on the glass. This is a very cool place to watch a hockey game from. After starting the game looking like bush leaguers, they got better and better through the game, and won the thing in overtime. After seeing 3 baseball games last week, it was refreshing to be at a sporting event that ends in about 2 1/2 hours. We were back to Chris’ by 10pm.

It’s only then that the realization that I’m sleeping alone sinks in. Nearly every night for the past 5 1/2 years we brush our teeth, settle into bed, do some reading, and talk. Usually it’s nothing serious, but it’s a time when I can have just about anything come out of my mouth and not worry about being ridiculed and nearly always be completely understood by someone who knows me as well as I know myself. When that’s not there, it’s the time when I miss my true love the most. Ahh well, as long as I can get to sleep, I know I’ll see her in my dreams.

I miss Beth.

Coming to you at 21.6 kbs via the slow-poke modem at my mom’s house!

That’s right, we’re rockin’ the 54K down in the Cape. Actually, we’re crying in our proverbial beers here this evening, as the Team of Destiny lost its date with destiny thanks to a heartbreaking flare from the heartless wonder, Kenny Lofton. Is there no justice in the universe? Alas, if the NY Yankees could not do it last year, then surely destiny has turned its back on this most noble of sports.

You’ll indulge me for waxing poetic about men younger than I who make more in a year than I will ever see in my entire life. It’s been a rather long day. After an even longer weekend. And now I can do some relaxin’, rural-style. 21.6 kbs-style. Aww, yeah!

Dang Cardinals.

Sorry for the lack of postage here lately. We’ve been at the ballpark for the past two nights, so I’ve been too tired and too depressed to blog once I got home.

My son is such a trooper. He was a total gem all three nights we had him at the ballpark this past week. Everyone commented about how good he was. Sometimes, I worry that I take him for granted. Some days just seem really hard with him, especially now that he’s starting to show some frustration at not being able to communicate exactly what he wants.

Here’s a shot of the boys with the sign Tim made (all by himself):

We had some good, clean fun with my Uncle Bobby and Aunt Beth the first night, then Uncle Bobby brought up one of his friends the next night. My uncle is one of the biggest Cards fans that I know, so it was really nice to be able to treat him to a couple of games.

Even though we’ve enjoyed going to the games (alas, the Cards lost both nights, however), we haven’t gotten jack done on the furniture moving since Tuesday night. And we’ve decided to just relax tonight. So it’s crunch time tomorrow.

Can I just say how much I love baseball signs? You know, those funny gestures that the coaches make to tell players whether to take a pitch, bunt or steal? I mean, who comes up with these things? Do they watch old Three Stooges movies for inspiration? I always expect to hear “The Curly Shuffle” whenever these guys get going.

Tonight, we went over to Tim’s brother’s house to celebrate his daughter Mackenzie’s eighth birthday. While opening gifts, her six-year-old cousin remarked, upon seeing that one of said gifts was Scooby Doo: The Movie, ‘That is the funniest movie that I have ever seen in my entire life.’ I was like, ‘Wow. That’s saying something.’

Kids.

Tim is poking me with a stick so I will go to bed, seeing as how I have a dentist appointment bright and early tomorrow morning. So why don’t you take the 45 seconds you normally would spend/waste reading this entry and send a note to beth at bookerdog dot com?

You could tell me your hobbies, how you found this site, your major credit card numbers, what is currently playing on your stereo, etc. Do it now!