Papel Chiltepin: Chicago

Last weekend I Megabused it to Chicago to visit my dear friends M.G. and Eva. I stayed with M.G., her boyfriend Matt, and their cat family in Oak Park. The last dregs of summer warmed the air with the fiery bloom of autumn in the trees.

What a relaxing trip! I spent the evenings curled up on M.G.'s couch looking at Matt's awesome drawings, admiring their cats (Sebastian, or C-bass; Mama Cat, and her daughters Muffin and Lizzy), and laughing with M.G. and Matt--laughing a lot. I love good laugh fests, and those two are pros.

On Saturday M.G. and I went to a feminist bookstore in Andersonville called Women and Children First to get books signed by Jane Lynch. Once we made it to the end of the line we could see her (she is strikingly tall) and hear her talking. She sounds exactly like she does on T.V. and in the Christopher Guest films. She also cracks teasing, jovial jokes like some of her characters do. She's from Chicago so some of her family members were hanging out, including two of her nephews, one a "ginger," as she called him, so I hoped she'd make a similar remark about my hair, but she didn't.

Of course food was a prime feature of my trip, including my first restaurant-style Mexican food since leaving Tucson, the yummy vegan "Aztec" salad at Native Foods ( a restaurant M.G. and other friends and I would frequent in Palm Springs when we attended Redlands), and a yummy snack at an organic Algerian coffeehouse.

Since M.G. is in library school, as I call it, I also visited the libraries in Oak Park and at Dominican University. I give them all my stamp of approval.

I had a quick visit with Eva before heading back on the El to Union Station, and a frantic walk to the bus stop, fighting my way through (sadly not with) the Occupy Chicago protesters.

The visit reminded me how much I miss Chicago and how I wouldn't mind, may even love, to live there someday.