Home Sweet Home

While this is what we came to see, it was not the highlight of the trip!

 Ahhh, home again, trying to regain the routine.  Last week was a bit dramatic, all revolving around getting ready for and then going to see the Penguins in Chicago.  I was both excited but stressed by the experience, and it's been rough returning back to work, getting caught up on all the domestic stuff, like laundry and cleaning the cat box, to seeing the husband back off to Texas early early this morning.  All of it would have been unquestionably worth it had the Penguins won, and we were the fans who were cheering through the 15 degrees and snow.  But, as it happens, we were the ones sitting sullenly in the stands, trying to decide if we still had any feeling in our fingers and toes, as the home fans bounced up out of their seats to sing along to their annoying celebration song not once, not twice, but five times.  I was lucky to get out of there without frostbite; my luck didn't extend to a win sadly.  Yet, I can't really complain, for all of that, because it is an experience I'll always remember, and I did see some amazing things in the short time we were there.  But the experience got me thinking about all the native Chicagoans my daughter and I met and talked to in the short time we were there, and thinking about what we sometimes miss out living in our own cities.

One thing I was really struck by is how friendly and talkative these big city dwellers were.  I chatted up several people, which is unusual for me because I'm naturally a bit shy, but they were so open and friendly that they invited comfortable conversation, and I found myself asking lots of questions.  Additionally, I have a dear friend who lives in an outlying suburb and works downtown now, so she took off early on Friday and met us at the Art Institute for the afternoon and then her son met all of us for some of that legendary deep dish pizza at dinner, so we got an interesting viewpoint on life in the Second City.  Maybe it's not wholly accurate, certainly not scientific, and I fully accept there are exceptions to every rule, but I got a strong sense that I saw and experienced more of the city in the short few days I was there than many people who have lived in the region for years get to see.  And that's regrettable, because it is a city jammed full of amazing things.   But it's not a cheap place to live.  So, that's one impediment.  We were struck by the lots around our hotel - open air lots that no one bothered to shovel, charging on average $18.00 a day, and from everything I heard, that was rock bottom.  For big events, the price jacks up to twice that.  One can commute in, of course.  Chicago, unlike Pittsburgh, has great mass transit, but it's not free, takes a lot of time, and, I was told more than once, isn't particularly safe after dark.  Then there is the price of admission to whatever you're trying to do, whether it's visiting a world class museum or a sports team.  You think Penguins tickets are expensive?  Apparently not.  So, a large percentage of the community is culled out from many of the things their own city has to offer just because they can't afford it.

Standing out on a glass platform looking down at the street from 108 floors up.  Both beautiful and really scary.

Then there's the time.  Who has time to do much of anything besides work and live?  I mean, I get it.  I'm totally freaked by how far behind I am after just a few days!  If you live an hour away and have to catch a train in and out of the city, you leave work at 5:00 like you're loaded on a spring, run to catch your train, take the long trip home, only to be faced with fixing dinner, helping kids with homework or whatever, trying to catch some sleep and then getting up and doing it all over again.  Who has time to do more during the week?  So, they spend their weekends like I do:  running errands.  And, as a result, many of these good, hard working people miss out on some of the most amazing things in the world:  some of the very few things I got to see and do because I'm a tourist.

Cloud Gate in AT&T Plaza

Outside the Art Institute of Chicago

I wrote once in my other blog that we ought to live our lives like we're tourists.  I believe that now more than ever.  I get how hard it is for all those reasons I heard from those friendly Chicagoans, but I also know that in years to come it's the encounter I had with a beluga whale at the Shedd Aquarium that I will remember, not the extra work hours I had to pull during the days before and after.  And for those of us who live in cities like Pittsburgh where the cost of entry is far more modest, we need to take advantage of our own city, because it's full of many wonders as well, maybe a bit smaller than the nation's third largest city's facilities, but pretty amazing nonetheless.  I came home feeling like maybe I lost a hockey game, but won a sense of just how lucky I am to live here.  I plan on taking lots of my own advice.