There was a flood watch in Chicago and if we got that much rain in Utah, I can tell you we wouldn't be breathing wildfire smoke right now.
We went out into the city, confident in the fact that we were not made of brown sugar. Adam had his newly acquired Buc-ee's hat and I had packed an umbrella (as an enthusiastic weather watcher). I was sharing my umbrella with Mark and I am shorter than him and in a Little Red Hen moment, I was making sure it covered me, thank you very much. He asked if he could hold it and I declined, knowing that then I would be the one partially covered. I guess this is to say that me being a selfless mother only goes so far.
We walked to Willis Tower and took the fast ear popping elevator ride to the 103 floor. Like most things on our trip, it did not disappoint!
We even found our hotel room!
Gathering our courage, we went out in the glass boxes that stick out from the building.
One and a half inches of glass did not feel like a lot of glass.
Not shown in the above picture is me digging my fingers into Mark's arm, like he was going to save me if we fell. It was completely out of character for us, but we bought the tourist picture they were selling. We definitely all three have nervous smiles, but I'm happy to have the memento.
The rain intensified
...and we went back to the earth. Back on solid ground, we ducked into the Rookery, where Frank Lloyd Wright had redesigned the lobby.
There was an eyeglass store and a gelato place there. How do you just go to work in such a building?!?
We spent the rest of the day at the Art Institute of Chicago. In my immunotherapy haze, I had looked through every piece of art they had (there were thousands, but I didn't have much else going on) and decided which things were must sees for me. Mark had other ideas and wanted to show me this or that. He was very interested in the ancient stuff. I was interested in it too, but I knew that I had limited energy. I told Mark that I had to budget my steps. So we parted ways and Adam and I looked at everything I had earmarked and of course a lot more as well. Mark would reconnect with us periodically and despite being extravagently fatigued, I really loved it. Adam left at one point and traversed back to our hotel in the rain to check us out of our rooms. He is always the hero we don't deserve but the hero we need. I didn't take many pictures of the art--the pictures on their website are better than anything I could take--but I was entranced by American Gothic and Nighthawks and so many Monets and Van Goghs and Renoirs and too many to name. I love art museums!
We did take a picture in front of this Georgia O'Keeffe.
I loved it all and I wish I could go back again and again and again and spend time in every part.
We walked back to our hotel to get our stuff that was being minded by the nice people in the lobby. It had stopped raining, but Adam took this picture of me drying out my umbrella because it was still sopping wet after sitting in its plastic bag in the coatcheck of the museum. Mark is wearing his Sasquatch Buc-ee's shirt. When Mark was little, we would tell him that he was actually a Sasquatch and we had traded him for our actual son, Timmy. Who knows how that started, but Mark will forever be our little Sasquatch.
We took the train to Midway--it was raining again.
We rented a car for the next day's adventure and ate more deep dish pizza (not as good as the first version). We stayed at a hotel near the airport and I went to bed immediately. I can't even describe how tired I was.
