Update

So apparently I need to update my blog more often as my public needs me....(yeah right). So we just got back from Chicago, which sucked. First of all the guy whose house we stayed at didn't actually live in Chicago...he lived in a suburb about an hour away that didn't even have a Walmart, or a movie theater that I could tell. I then proceeded to spend 3 1/2 days alone in this guys house with nothing but his 400+ channel cable (which was nice) and his stupid cats for company. I'm allergic to cats. The guy's house had two levels. Upstairs were bedrooms, kitchen etc...and this was all hardwood floors. Hardwood floors and leather furniture do not attract and retain hair and dander like carpet and upholstered furniture do. Our room and the television were downstairs with wall to wall carpeting. There were tufts of cat hair floating along the hallway and as I slid off of our bed a ball of cat fur would inevitably follow me to the floor. Our room was also right next to the laundry room/cat haven. Where the litter box and cat food were. The entire lower level of the house smelled of cats and seemed to get stronger the further down the hall you went, culminating in a cloud of gag-inducing cattiness emanating from the cat haven...which was, again right next to our room.
So my husband would get up at 7 am and leave with his friend to go hammer all day at their other friends house/forge. I couldn't go to his house at all because he had two dogs, which I am deathly allergic to. So he would leave, I would sleep in until noon or 1pm then spend the day sneezing and watching endless movies on the t.v. set in my room. That is when I wasn't foraging through our hosts non-existent pantry for some form of substinence to feed myself and my growing baby. I'm pregnant. I need food every couple of hours or I get sick. These people work all day, their children eat at daycare, and then they order food when they get home. There was no milk (hey we at least buy some for our guests), not enough cereal in any of the boxes to fill a cupped palm, much less a cereal bowl, and only a few cans of yucky soup. I ate the soup. Also, being pregnant and on a weird sleeping cycle as its summer, I generally get a little peckish around 1-2pm, again at 5-6, then at 8-9, 11-12, and 1-2. I could eat in the afternoon, then again at dinner, but I didn't want to be found pawying through our hosts meager supplies while they were in their beds for the night (they went to bed around 10pm...waaaaay too early for my tastes). So instead I sat in our room starving, sneezing, and living on benedryl, none of which could be good for the baby.
Dinner: Wednesday night they wanted Chinese. The last time I had Chinese while I was pregnant it made me sick. I mentioned this, so our host agreed to get me a hamburger. Thursday: we had thin-crust pizza, with hardly any substance to it. Friday: we had a bbq with, you guessed it; hamburgers. Saturday; Brian and Patrick were running behind so stopped by a...wait for it...hamburger joint to pick up some food for dinner. By the time we left Sunday I was so sick of this "beefy goodness" that I don't think I'll ever be able to eat a fast food hamburger again. (I'm sure I'll get over it, but I still currently feel that way).
Sunday was "my day" to go into Chicago and see what there was to see. Our host first asked if we would like to stop at a McDonalds for breakfast. Starving pregger that I am, I agreed even though the thought of their usual fare made me quesy. He then proceeded to drive past not one, not two, but four, maybe even five (I fell asleep) of these establishments. When I pointed this out to him he exclaimed; "Oh! I didn't even see them! I was too busy talking my mouth off about stupid crap that no one cares about and breaking traffic laws to notice! And...oh no! There aren't any more until we get into the city. Oh well." At this point I was ready to kick that stupid smile off his stupid pudgy face and grind him into the ground with my heel. But instead I smiled and reassured him that all was well. Upon arriving in the big city the man repeatedly asked me what I wanted to do, was it okay if they took a taxi, where do I want to go....having never been to Chicago I had only a vague idea of what attractions it held and expected him to list a few options. Nope. So after a stomach -turning lunch of turkey on a soft pretzel bread (which has always made me sick, but for some reaon I over looked when ordering), we went to the Art Institute of Chicago where I looked at art that I would have liked to share with my husband and he and his ''friend" gazed adoringly at the rows of armour on display for hours on end. We didn't get to the museum until noon and it closed at five. We finally left around 2:30 and headed to the Field Museum....in a taxi. (which I have no problem with, but our host made a big deal about) After a mere thirty minutes of viewing various stuffed dead things to which I am allergic I was about to collapse from fatigue and hunger and begged a break in the museum's bakery. There I ordered the most delicious tomato basil soup, grilled cheese sandwhich and a carton of milk and sat back and enjoyed the first real meal I'd had since leaving. By the time we were done we had less than twenty minutes to see the rest of the vast four level complex. We didn't see very much. Our host then dropped us at the airport an hour and a half early and I limped around to our terminal (recall that my back has been hurting, that it gets worse with walking and that we had been walking all day) and collapsed on the uncomfortable seats. Good things though: I got a yummy smoothie in the airport and we got to read Harry Potter on the plane there and back. So now I am still recovering from too much cat exposure and malnutrition. The end.

Okay one more thing: These people have two daughters, ages 3 and four months. They both work all day and the girls are in daycare from 7am to 6pm. The daycare feeds them and changes their diapers and oversees the potty training the parents are trying to teach. The kids are woken up at 5:30 am, picked up at 6pm, fed and put to bed by 8pm. These people see their children for a total of three hours a day. How can they expect to have any impact on their lives if the kids see more daycare people than relatives?! This upset me so much that, again hormones/pregnant, it made me cry. The guy kept saying how he loved being a dad and it was so great. I think that's a load of crap and what little interaction he has with his children shouldn't qualify for that title. Okay, now I'm done.