Due to high demand, I am writing about the fun time I spent with mi madre earlier this month. Cannot believe I forgot fill everyone in on what fun we had!
My mom arrived on Wednesday and took the exciting employee bus to meet Martin at his old office building. That seemed exciting for my mom. She got to talk to flight attendants. On Thursday, she did my laundry and watched some tv while I was at work.

Friday was my day off of work so we decided to have a bit of fun and drive to the Chicago Botanical Garden in Glencoe. It is almost due east of my house, but about 23 miles away. Well worth the trip! We explored almost all the gardens and oohed and aahed over the purple lilies, the Japanese garden, and gorgeous English walled garden. We also discovered the beauty of colombines. (We finally found them in seed form at the Lowe's). We got caught in a rainstorm while admiring the beehive they have installed. We found the Queen and then mom bought a pretty tea towel with a recipe for gazpacho on it. After the walk around all the gardens we headed to Highland Park and the semi-kosher Jewel. I bought meat and other delights including babaganoush, hummus and pita.

Saturday was filled with a lot of bending over in the yard. We transferred my seedlings to the ground but failed to get started on the big dreams I have of building a raised garden bed along the back fence. Martin worked in the pool and mom and I planted and weeded and tried to climb a ladder to trim the high branches away from the house. We succeeded, sort of. We also went to Loew's and bought topsoil to put into the hole in the backyard by the drain thing. We used three bags but it still wasn't quite enough. We cooked kosher steaks on the grill and then enjoyed losing our power for about 9 hours. We also watched the first episode of "Swingtown" before the power went out and mom decided to camp out on the basement stairs for an hour while she just "knew" there was a tornado coming!

On Sunday we took the Metra downtown to the Printer's Row Book Fair. We wandered around,looked at a ton of books and avoided about three-quarters of a downpour by eating a small pizza for lunch. Mom bought some small movie posters for dad and then we headed to the CPL building to hear Mark Kurlansky. He writes about the history of foods: salt, cod, oysters. Really good non-fiction. I am really into that these days for some reason. He was absolutely a wonderful talker and very interesting! We bought two of his books that we had not yet read and got him to sign them for us, but not before mom invited him to come to Pensacola for a visit and write about the fishing inductry in Florida. She even gave him her business card.
We stopped in at a local non-chain bookstore and bought Martin a book on airlines and then we wandered back toward the train station. The train was packed but quiet and we decided to sit up top and enjoy the ride.

On Monday I had to go to work, but mom hung out at the house and did her own laundry, watched some Magnum P.I. and read the Moonspinners. We had yummy pasta with sauce for dinner. Tuesday morning I drove her to the airport for her early flight. Even though she was here for almost 6 days it felt much shorter. Next month she is bringing my Dad for a visit so that should be fun too!