Disjointed musings

• I forgot to share the best book of the bunch when I was writing about our current reading yesterday. We just finished the book, Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O'Brien. We loved it. Many, many people wish we could live with a barn owl. (I'm not one of them, as the whole feeding mice issue is beyond my abilities at the moment.) Of course, it's an animal book, so he dies at the end. It was of extreme old age, though, so nothing horrible happens in the book. It's just a lovely story and will leave you with a great appreciation of owls, particularly barn owl. I read this out loud to everyone. While I would not hesitate to hand it to an older child to read, I admit to doing some on the fly editing as I read it out loud, mostly because I just didn't want to tackle certain biological processes. Do read it.
• TM has recently discovered the singer Enrique Iglesias, so we often are listening to Spanish language music these days.
• On the weekend of the Chicago Marathon, a Cubs' playoff game, and a weekend when the president is in town, you would think that we would remain happily at home and not get caught up in the craziness that is downtown Chicago. You would think wrong. I had to return our friendly osprey to the Field Museum. It took far longer than it should due to the traffic and the lost and meandering cars wondering how on earth they are going to ever be able to exit Lake Shore Drive. (All east-west streets are currently blocked off due to the marathon.) That was bad enough for me and P., but when I got home I discovered that J. had decided to be the fun dad and take the littles down to Maggie Daley Park. This would have been fantastic on any other day. As it was, he ended up doing a three hour tour of the city of Chicago trying to find roads that would allow him to come home, with the children never putting a foot inside a single park. I had a nice cup of tea waiting for him.
• As you can imagine, L. is particularly excited at how well the Cubs are doing.
• If you don't see a pair of shoes you want displayed, ask. I took Y. to the store to try to find some dress shoes that would work with the AFO's. When we first looked, absolutely nothing displayed would work, and the options were extremely limited. When I expressed my display and a major retailer not stocking traditional items, she said, "Just a minute, let me check in the back." Ah, that mysterious 'back'. Well, she came out with not one, but two pairs of shoes that were appropriate and would work. When I asked Y. if she liked them, she said, "I don't care. I just want to go home." Yes, she was one of the children in the three hour forced car ride.
• As much as I would have liked the previous item to be the day's last errand, we discovered that Kenzie was out of food, so back to a store I went, this time with G. in tow. We, of course, had to spend some time looking at the animals. She was particularly smitten with the bearded dragon with the meal worms which were the lizard's food, running a close second. I do not know why our household creates children with such a love of lizards and creepy crawlies. I do not exactly love them.