Happy Fall

Here’s something I haven’t seen in a long time. In Chicago, cars are often buried in snow—not leaves.

Dropping my daughters off at school on Friday, I just loved seeing whole lawns and sidewalks covered in golden leaves. This is how Fall is supposed to be! I think all the leaves fell from these trees in a matter of hours. Later that day, one of my daughters got off the school bus talking excitedly about how great school was, because “all the leaves fell off the big tree, and everyone was playing in them!” She even confessed she made a boy “scream like a girl” when she threw an armful of leaves at him.

Yet by 8 a.m. on Saturday, I heard the leaf-blowers going full blast, waking up the neighborhood.

Aww. . . can’t we just let nature be for a while?

Attention NYC Bloggers

The three moms who started up the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog (see button, left), and D.C. Metro Moms Blog are seeking a few more mommy bloggers in NYC so they can launch their latest collaborative mommy blog—New York City Moms Blog. If you’re interested in joining this project, or know someone who might be, click here.

Pressing Question

Which of the following will win the dubious honor of being the last piece of Halloween candy left in our house?

1. A peppermint hard candy
2. Gummy Foot
3. Bite-sized Snickers with green Shrek filling

CPL Love

I’ve been a heavy user of the Chicago Public Library for years. The 30-book-per-card limit sure has come in handy at our house, ever since the toddler days when our daughters couldn’t get enough picture books in their diets. Hubby and I can’t afford our own reading habits, let alone two more voracious readers. CPL helped us through the girls’ easy readers phase and now the series fiction phase. I’ve never minded paying library fines (or library taxes). I just figure it’s my way of supporting this venerable institution.

But CPL sent me a present anyway. Over the summer, I entered a contest at my branch and ended up winning the beautiful Encyclopedia of Chicago. Just in time for History Fair!

November Is the New October

Hey, it’s November 12th, and it’s 65 degrees outside here in Chicago. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and I’m actually heading outside to water my shrubs and trees. Bizarre. . . . but not the most bizarre. One year I picked the last bouquet of bachelor’s buttons from my garden on Dec. 5th. And another year it hit 70 degrees in February, so I took my daughters to the beach!

Three Questions & One Cool Techie Toy

At a recent Staples-sponsored tech workshop led by a blogger I’ve come to know, I discovered that not only am I the only blogger without a business card, I’m also the only blogger without a laptop. So I’ve had to ask my luddite* self:

1. Do I want a blogger business card? Not really. I’m not doing this to earn a living, and I’m not that interested in forcing my thoughts on anyone. Heck, most of my friends don’t blog, don’t read blogs, and barely know what a blog is. Honestly, I blog because I’m actually kind of fascinated by the idea of my random thoughts floating out there in the blogosphere for anyone to catch. And I like catching other people’s random thoughts, too. It’s good weird fun. Plus, I can always remember the blogs that truly intrigue me. For instance, at the Staples event, I met a lesbian evangelical Christian blogger with a lot to say.

2. Do I want a laptop? No, no, no and no. I mean, I can pretty much assure you that I will never be live-blogging anything. I would be so very bad at that, and other people do it so well. And, for the record, I have a miserable history of note-taking in school and videotaping any live event.

3. Could I be a better blogger? Not right now, and that’s the beauty of it all. I am the blogger I am! Getting a business card and a laptop would definitely put pressure on me to blog more frequently. But I already have enough pressure in my life. The appeal of the blog to me, in the end, is “No Pressure.”

*Full disclosure: I do covet a certain GPS device.