It's Unconditional... On My Part

So it was a relatively uneventful day. The Tuesday before a long weekend usually is. I checked out of work early this afternoon to cash the check and do some shopping. Mom's been laying not-so-subtle hints all year about how she's never had a real spice rack. She actually laid it down so thick that at one point during the summer I offered to buy her one if she could find out where the hell our baby pictures are stored. When she started crying about the pictures getting lost with all the constant moving I realized I went too far.

So I went to Macy Field's after leaving work to start pricing on them; Friday I head to the Spice House to see what they have to offer. The plan is to talk my brother and sister into pitching in on a bakers' table and I buy the spice rack. That is, if both of them are even speaking with Mom by Christmas. She's been giving them both the cold shoulder for a few weeks. While I'm certainly not a fan of what's been going down among the two of them, they're both grown-ass adults, ostensibly, and should be held accountable to find their own solutions to their problems.

My friend Harry comes into town for the weekend, as well. I'm hoping to pry him away from his wife long enough Friday to get our noses reddened on glogg at the downtown Kriskindlemart in Daley Plaza. Harry's daughter is almost a year old now and it will be nice to see how big Lily's gotten since the birth, and also to see if she's making the transition form a drooling mass of baby.

But back to Macy Field's. The first thing I did was buy a new wallet. I was looking for a nice passcase style one like the one I wore out (an aside: I bought my last wallet at a street festival in New York's Upper West Side after participating in Bike New York two years ago. It survived my capsizing a kayak in the Chicago River, long bike rides and countless sweaty nights behind the bar at HotHouse. When I started contemplating whether or not to piece it back together with duct tape I figured it might be wise to buy, you know, a real wallet. The new one is a Levenger horizontal trifold with lots of space for my identification/credit cards, two money slots, and a lifetime warranty. That was worth having to listen to the salesman expound [or blow smoke up my ass- he seemed really sincere] about how his nephew is United States Senator Russ Feingold). I stopped at the Down Town Dog store in the basement to get some treats for Emmy. Twenty dollars later- for a tin of mints and these organic treats- I headed to the subway for the ride home.

Emmy won't eat the goddamn things. She'll eat grass, pizza crust, and goose droppings in the park, but she turns her nose away from these new treats. I probably shoudl give her some time to get adjusted to them, but I'm not sure. I had that mint in my mouth trying to get her to take it from me and I think it left a blister on my lip.