Note to Self: Dempster Hosed

On Thursday afternoons, The Girl participates in a 3-way kid swap with two of her friends. Today was our turn to host. Before we could open our home to a gaggle of 4-year-old girls, however, we had swimming lessons for The Girl and an errand to run.

It was very important to The Girl that Grandma Texas come to watch her swimming lesson at the Leaning Tower Y in Niles. She did, and The Boy, The Tot, Grandma Texas and I watched the lesson through the glass wall between the pool and the SRO entrance lounge. The Boy and The Tot declared that they were hungry, so I spent my last $1 in cash on a bag of Cheetos from the vending machine.

After class, I got The Girl dressed and to the car, and we headed north and east to Vogue Fabrics in Evanston. The Girl was starving after her lesson and complained loudly that she needed a snack all the way down Dempster, which was completely backed up due to traffic. My snack destination of choice was Breadsmith, near Dempster and McCormick, but The Girl could not wait, so we pulled into the Starbucks drive-thru in the converted Skokie train station and ordered up 3 apple fritters (the kids), a blueberry muffin (Grandma), and a tall nonfat vanilla latte (me). After that, the traffic on Dempster wasn't quite as irritating, although we were still running up against the time contraints of both Grandma Texas's friend coming to our house in the city and the start of the girlie playdate.

I needn't have worried about Grandma Texas's friend, who came from the south suburbs, got stuck in Taste of Chicago traffic, and made every wrong choice possible in the drive up. It took her 2.5 hours to make a drive that should take about an hour.

Fortunately, we found Vogue Fabrics with only a little help from the folks at Verizon Information, parked easily just across the street, and zipped in and out of the store. If you need oilcloth for any reason, they have some great patterns at this location. I picked out a cute black and white pattern that is more grown-up than the juvenile/retro patterns I was expecting to find (and found) based on oilcloth mats available at Land of Nod, etc. We made it back to the city with time to spare.