Not a bad Saturday! After my short visit with the groovy people in #squeeze, I took off for the northwest suburbs in the rented Chevy Malibu. I managed to find a very cute fleece for the baby (forgot the digital camera, no pix of this cutie pie -sorry) at Kids R Us. However, when I asked them for a gift wrap, the guy showed me a box that had a picture of balloons on it, that came with a piece of yellow elastic that was supposed to look like a ribbon. This is not what I was expecting. I bought the box though, put the Fleece along with the tape and book set in the box, and then went to Target Boutique to get some wrapping paper and a card.

Having been a girl scout, I left for the 'burbs prepared for the "store doesn't have a wrapping service" senario, I had a pair of scissors and tape in my bag. You should have seen the looks I was getting from passers by as I proceeded to wrap the box on the hood of the car. Apparently, this just isn't done.

The party was at Agnez and Dariusz's house - a very lovely townhouse with a private back yard. The baby was as adorable and cuddly as ever. I saw France - a friend of Agnez's that I'd met before, who is not only called "France", but is also FROM France. I was VERY glad to see her, because when the friends and family started arriving, there was nobody left to speak to. Everyone else in the house was speaking Polish. I kind of wish I could do that, it sounds like a very cool language.

It got a little uncomfortable when France and I ran out of things to say. She has two adorable children, ages 4 and 6, and we used them to round up the other children to do some finger painting. The highlight of the afternoon had to be the piñata - all 6 kids had turns whacking the thing. For the first round of whacking, everyone was laughing, cheering the kiddies on. "You can do it! Hit it hard!" "Congratulations Felix! Congratuations Matt!" But after about 15 minutes of this, even the parents were getting bored and more than a little annoyed.

So someone came up with the bright idea of cutting a hole in the side of the thing, to try to make it easier to break. It turns out, the thing was made of solid cardboard. So we ripped the head off the thing and poured the candy all over the front lawn.

As if I needed one, I also found another reason to join Stennie's battle cry: "CANCER SUCKS"! I met a woman at this party whose 16 month old son had just died in July of lymph node Cancer. He was diagnosed at 6 months of age. I guess being at the party was theraputic for her, I don't know. She seemed very calm, and didn't look like someone I would recognize as sad, but was by no means happy. I am so glad I will never be in that woman's shoes. I don't think I could be that strong.

My drive home was quite pleasant. I took the road that goes through the neighborhood I grew up in, passed my Jr. High and past the movie theater that is now a megaplex, where I used to while away Sunday afternoons in high school with my friends. I also caught a radio station that was playing a block of 80's music.. which is when I did my growing up in suburbia, so it was all very nostolgic.

As soon as I was out of the 'burbs, I started hitting the "seek" button on the radio, only to find that NPR was playing a reading of Woody Allen's "The Kugelmass Episode". That guy has an amazing imagination. But that is a topic for another blog.