“Slide” by Goo Goo dolls provides the perfect background music as I write this. At least, I think I’m listening to i101…I only get like 2 radio stations since I live on a military base with like a thousand giant satellites confusing my poor radio.
I’ve found I do some of my best thinking when I’m sitting on the ground. Introspective realizations increase tenfold when I have a giant mixing bowl filled with batter sitting in my lap. Extra points if the batter has raw eggs in it…subtract some if I’m using my finger as a spoon/licking apparatus. Which is to say, most times.
Me: You know what’s hotter than your wife licking batter off her finger while dressed like a space-age lumberjack?
Fred: What?
Me: Everything.
On the menu tonight – Pioneer Woman’s bundt banana bread. It would’ve been regular banana bread, but I realized after I mashed the bananas that I didn’t have a loaf pan (way to commit, Nicole).
Here is a picture of hers. Mine will very likely look nothing like this: 
This is our last weekend together as our Great Lakes family before we start the achingly sad, inevitable split. Our fatherly eating machine, Pantig, will be the first to go. His babies need him (as does his overworked wife, I’m sure), so that’s okay, but he will be sorely missed. To celebrate, I took the boys into Wicker Park to hang with my boy Bucio and deliver him some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (he’s a friend from high school he’s turning 25 he has a twin named Ozzie he has the coolest job and game for miles and miles the end). He ended up showing us a side of Chicago I would be very unlikely of to see otherwise.
Began the evening at the beautiful Berghoff. One unique characteristic of my husband (actually, probably all men, now that I think about it) is that he remembers some of our fondest memories, some of our sweetest moments–by what we were eating. I’ll say “Remember that Valentine’s Day we went to that German place in downtown Austin and it was completely deserted except for us and thousands of twinkling lights on the terrace?” and he’ll say, “Oh GOD that bratwurst–that beer–what amazing spaetzle!”
After that, we fought the freezing rain to go to two different convenience stores. The reason was lost to me since I had 2 cocktails with dinner (Horse’s Necks, to be exact). I remember getting lost in the candy aisle in one…I believe there was also a conveyor belt with wine on it. That might’ve been the Walgreens. I don’t know, convenience stores in the city are like something out of a kitschy 60s movie set on a space station.
Bucio found us refuge in what at first blush appeared to be an abandoned building, but once you overlook the missing railing and creepy little door that leads to a third dimension or something underneath the stairwell, we actually found ourself at an extremely well-disguised VFW (that’s Veterans of Foreign Wars, for all you civvies. It’s like an American Legion).
The Ukrainian bartender with a pixie cut the color of a tube of lipstick one might find at the Dollar Store told us we were too early for the karaoke. A kindly older gentleman found us later and told us there were no rules there. Except for no cursing, cuz they were a family affair. We entertained ourselves with friendly banter and horrible games of pool (the cues had no tips so it was less like billiards and more like playing a table tob game of bowling. While wearing those giant gloves that like Mickey Mouse and Goofy wear).
(Go 00:42 seconds into this for the relevant part of this clip….this is for you, Andrea)
Before we knew it, the quiet questionable room had turned into like the underground meeting center for the most hipster-y hipsters I’ve ever seen in my life. And trust me, that is really saying something. I lived in Austin for 2 years. EAST Austin. In my early 20s. This hotbed of hipsterdom outdid all the time I spent there, and then some. When I felt I’d had just about enough hipster overload and bad renditions of 80s songs by a bunch of drunk idiots, we left the sea of flannel and fake glasses to hang out at Bucio’s.
It was a really pleasant night. I personally enjoy fusing friend groups (though I know it’s frowned upon in many social circles), so it was fun to bring my worlds colliding together and introduce a good friend I’ve known for 10 years to some very good friends I’ve only know for about one now. Everyone got pleasantly drunk (except for me and the minor, since I drove us). McConnell talked a lot, and LOUDLY, as he is wont to do (whether or not he is under the influence is beyond relevant). Eutsler played the guiter and I sang quietly in the corner while everyone reminisced and discovered new things about one another, occasionally breaking the chatter to munch thoughtfully on my cookies.
McConnell: I FEEL LIKE EVERYONE HATED ME. DID THEY HATE ME?
Fred: Probably. They might’ve liked you more if you’d talked less. Or about anything besides the Navy.
McConnell: I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE!
Fred: They gave you like 3 outs for that topic of conversation and you kept dragging it back. Also, you talk really loudly when you’re drunk.
McConnell: NO I DON’T!
ME: OMG shut up. Shut up shut up SHUT UP! EVERYONE! SHUT! UP!!!
Despite the fact that we almost died on the way home – I kid, that’s an exaggeration, but it was definitely one of the top 5 most terrifying drives of my life; it was so cold that the rain on my windshield wipers froze instantly, rendering them relatively useless as they left giant streaky blobs instead of wiping the water away – I cannot think of a single way that evening could have gone any better.
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I could have not accidentally stolen Bucio’s jacket. That could have made it better, probably…..for him.
Wanderlustre 