I could not want to pack less, yet that is what I must go do. For two cities of varying climes. For nine days. For me and the kids. Sorry, T, you are definitely on your own (per the usual, peeps; I never pack for my hubs, for the love; too '50s) even though you are not yet home from NY. We leave in the morning for Chicago, specifically for the 64th annual Old Town Triangle Art Fair which opens tomorrow evening with the First Sight party and then runs through Saturday and Sunday. It's one of the oldest (THE oldest?) community art fairs and is widely renowned. Even cooler, one of my favorite friends, Donna, has helped run it for years, and I am terribly excited to see her in action. Not to mention that a good art fair is like crack for me: awesome. So we'll arrive, take the kids somewhere cool, meet the babysitter, head to First Sight and make our way from there. Saturday night shows Blackbird reservations on the books, Sunday brunch with DD and D, Sunday evening an early dinner with a dear cousin and her hubby and then on Monday to Wilmington, NC, for our now-annual beach trip with T's brother, sister-in-the-law, their girls, and T's parents. It was a blast last year and will be again next week.

In the meantime, I need to pack. Grr. Do you know how many dishes I washed after today's luncheon? My kitchen looks like a haphazard Rube Goldberg machine, as everything is stacked precariously to dry.

This is thus because the faculty luncheon was a truly wonderful affair (but did require about 80% of my platters, pots, utensils and so forth). Our set-up crew did a magnificent job, the food was beautiful, the teachers and staff seemed happy and sated, clean-up was a breeze. Folks took leftovers home; I just supped on leftover mujaddara. Plus wine!

What today also signified was the end of yet another marvelous school year. How, HOW, is my little Jack to be a big second grader? I'm so proud of him and of Oliver. Admittedly, however, I almost took back a new Star Wars Imperial Somebody-or-other action figure from Oliver this evening for acting like a lunatic in the bath-tub, but he managed to pull it together.

It's raining out, the trees swaying helter-skelter in the wind's blustery dance. I love to be cozily inside on evenings like this, love listening to the rain and the way its subtle pounding is amplified by certain points on our gutter and deck. Percy is snoring, quite audibly, and Nutmeg is snoozing too. I look around my mess, a clean mess though!, of a kitchen, and I swirl my Pinot (a really good one I opened as a Salut to a good day), and I listen for my boys and wait for T, and I feel content.

Even though I still have to pack.