What To Remember

Wednesday was an interesting day. In some way it was a disastrous day, and in others a very special day. I spent some time in the morning trying to fix a problem with the contract on our rental car, which involved two shuttles to the rental car company and two shuttles back after they told me they couldn't help me (all this after the office in St. Louis told me I needed to go there for help). On the whole, not so good for my blood pressure, but my eye wasn't twitching yet and the day was still fairly new. Next we went to IKEA to look around. Wahoo! However, the joy of IKEA was cut short when I went to pay for I don't remember what and discovered my debit card was being declined. Since I knew how much was in the account I called the Credit Union to inquire and they told me their whole system was down and unless I could find a local shared branch credit union, there was no way I could get money at all-no debit, no ATM, nothing. On the whole, not so good for my blood pressure; my eye was beginning to twitch. The Credit Union tried to give me directions over the phone to a local shared branch but after nearly an hour of searching we had to drive back to our hotel and find a location and directions using my laptop. We got stuck in traffic and so that took about another hour. On the whole, my blood pressure could have been counted by timing the rapid-fire twitching of my eye. By the time all this was done it was 4pm and we nearly decided to scrap our plans for the day. However, my daughter strongly exhorted us to stay the course and head to the beach and to Navy Pier. We got to the beach about 5pm and then left for the pier about 6:30pm.

Despite the first appearance of the picture, Jake isn't have a coronary or threatening anyone with bodily harm; he's making muscles to show his formidable strength. I was careful to be duly impressed. The other picture is a picture from the top of the ferris wheel at the Navy Pier. It goes up 150 feet and gives you a spectacular view of the Chicago skyline and the beach. We played games, had some snacks, ended the evening with fireworks, and schlepped two very tired children back to the hotel.

As I was thinking about yesterday and listening to Katie and Jake talk about everything we did, I realized that they didn't say a single word about the hours they spent in the back seat waiting for us to get where we were going. They never mentioned the shuttle rides or the unsuccessful search for a Credit Union. They didn't even talk about the nasty traffic and the guy in a blue Volkswagen Passat who nearly put us all in the hospital. They remembered the fun we had and the time we were able to spend together. I know that some day they will grow up to be much more sophisticated and be able to more fully appreciate the frustration of such days, but not yet. And why should they? It won't change a blessed thing. So for the time I'm trying to grow up a little to be more like them-simple, joyous, child-like.