For their one-year anniversary, Samantha had purchased James tickets to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. The game was on Wednesday, but she decided she�d rather go shopping with me and gave Aaron her ticket. By the time I woke up the boys were long gone so Samantha and I took our time getting ready and headed out on the town. I had forgotten that Chicago is the Windy City and was freezing my ass off by the time we arrived at Nordstrom Rack, where I picked up a pair of Etienne Aigner sandals for $36 (a decision I would regret mere days later when I wore them to work and they promptly destroyed my feet, though I am still thrilled with the discount). The next stop was Forever 21, a store I have entered exactly twice in my life but have never once bought anything (for the clothes are cheaply made and designed for teenage whores). Due to my lack of desire to remain outside for even short periods of time, I browsed through every strip of fabric in that store and came out $15 poorer and a beige camisole and zip-up sweater richer (I was not feeling too terribly colorful, or maybe I was just in a naked mood). Samantha asked if in California they offered tops emblazoned with the term �Chicago,� as they offer several tops advertising California. I told her no; Chicago is a place no one wants to see displayed on a girl�s pre-pubescent chest, but California is. Eat that, Midwest.
We hooked up with H&M on the recommendation of Sanam. H&M had little and, indeed, nothing to offer me and we left quickly. Samantha said that we had gone to the bad H&M and that the better one (as I would discover later) was too far away to walk and we were both too broke to come up with $1.75 cash for the El (which, idiotically, does not accept credit cards). I was reminded of the Family Guy episode in which the Griffin clan endures the y2k disaster and creates a new town where they will have two Denny�s so that they can say, �Let�s not go to that one, let�s go to the good Denny�s.� AND IT�S TOTALLY TRUE. In Redding there exists two Denny�s within a mile of each other and often I was more in the mood for the Ghetto Denny�s rather than the more High Class Denny�s located across from the local Ross (of which we regrettably have only one). It was in the Ghetto Denny�s that I discovered the second person who was as obsessed with Charlize Theron as I was at the time (my junior year of high school). We discussed our obsession with the then-obscure actress over mozzarella sticks. How does my brain store this information but cannot for the life of it recall the Pythagorean Theorem? I blame marijuana.
Eventually, Aaron and James got ahold of us and informed us of the already well-known fact that it is cold outside and they are leaving the game early. We agreed to meet at the Marshall Fields where Samantha and I browsed make-up and handbags (she already had all the L.A.M.B. bags she needed and though I desperately needed, and still need, a new bag I could not find one to fit my fancy) until they arrived. I wandered off to the vortex that is the shoe department while Aaron and James debated the value of Ben Sherman polo shirts versus Le Tigre polo shirts. After trying on a few wedge platforms in vain, we took off to find some food, for it was, at this point, late in the afternoon and I had not allowed a drop of nourishment near my body. To the Corner Bakery we went.
We took a detour so as to take advantage of the tourist offerings of Chicago. We happened across two giant screens that featured faces that slowly morphed from smiles to kissy-faces to a different person altogether repeating the same expressions. In the summer, these screens, which face each other, spit water towards the center of the courtyard separating them. It was not yet summer so we balked at their creepiness, took several photos, and moved on.
After indulging in overpriced sandwiches (I have a sneaking suspicion that I developed something of an eating disorder this trip, as I only ate half of whatever I was served and could not bear to eat more though I was hungry and often contemplated disposing of whatever I had allowed into my body in means that may not be considered healthy and Maddie please don�t go into the �it�s not a real eating disorder unless you�re me� diatribe that is so popular on the ed-ana-etc communities you used to frequent) we walked to our temporary home to sleep off the day. Some four hours later I awoke and it was decided we would not be going out officially but that we did require some sort of sustenance. Aaron, who is a chef though he rarely cooks at home but is still completely obsessed with food in spite of being at least thirty pounds underweight, NEEDED to have Chicago-style pizza before we left so we tracked down the proper fee and ran to the El to hook up with Pizzeria Uno, which I believe takes credit for the style of pizza famous in Chicago.
And then they ate. And they ate. And they ate some more. I made it through three-quarters of my slice of four-cheese-and-pesto pizza before rolling my eyes to the ceiling and declaring the pizza victorious. It should be noted that though Aaron and I had two beers each, James and Samantha had none (for Samantha is underage and I don�t know what James� deal is since all of Aaron�s stories about James somehow involve the phrase, �So we were drunk...�)
Once we made our way back to the apartment it was discovered that a chair could be turned into a make-shift futon, so Aaron slept on that while I took the couch and we crashed to the tunes of these guys (whose songs have been stuck in my head for approximately eighteen hundred hours, but in a good way).