We Left the Dog and Her Kid in the Hotel and Went to a Concert

Mother Mother was the first post-pandemic concert that I braved back in 2022. Cavetown was my kid's favorite when she was thirteen, and then she got me into him, too. So obviously, when the two bands announced that they were going on tour together this year, we had to go!

One thing that I feel like I have learned from the past couple of years of concerts is that I am too old and creaky to be battling these tweenagers and twenty-babies for standing space. I'm also short, and old enough that I get mad when I can't see. So for the very first time, I did something that I would probably have sneered the sneer of the poverty-stricken and able-bodied at when I, myself, was a twenty-baby:

Those are genuine VIP/Early Access armbands right there! We were front of the line along with all the other middle-aged moms and dads and their own lucky tweenagers and twenty-babies, all checked in and security screened and lined up ready to get our access to the pit a full 30 minutes before the billion other ticketholders... and then we were told that a storm was coming through and they made us all evacuate.

Let me just say that although the actual employees who worked at our venue were awesome, Live Nation's inclement weather plans suuuuuuck. They had a much more famous fumble that same night, when a sold-out Noah Kahan concert got cancelled after the crowd was already there, and nobody knew what was going on and nobody knew how to evacuate and nobody had cell service and everyone was confused. In our case, the entire crowd of Early Access ticketholders, and an ever-increasing crowd of regular ticketholders, walked behind a single employee who guided us A FULL MILE in the hot, muggy weather via various sidewalks and footpaths to a parking garage near Soldier's Field, where we all just sort of dispersed ourselves inside and milled about:

All those people facing left are mobbing an honest-to-god Snapple machine just outside the frame. I swear that I had not so much as seen a Snapple in twenty years until that afternoon, when I saw about a hundred come out of that machine. Whoever owns that Snapple machine had a GREAT day!

Here's me, looking like I could really use a Snapple:

We hung out in the parking garage for nearly an hour, during which time it never rained, and then we all hiked in a big mob the mile back to the Huntington Bank Pavilion, where absolute chaos was in progress. There were multiple lines, but it was unclear who had organized said lines or how they were structured or where they went. The VIP line was long gone. Mostly there was just a big crowd of people milling toward the one entrance, with everyone being confused and having different ideas about what everyone else was meant to be doing. 

Matt and the kid and I sort of milled purposelessly along with everyone else, and then someone said that someone else said that they were letting people with VIP wristbands through another entrance, so we went over there and milled about, and indeed, every now and then an employee would call for VIPs, and we'd all hold up our wristbands and mill our way to the front, and she'd let us through a few at a time back through the security line and back into the venue.

Thoughts and prayers for the VIP Early Access ticketholders who hadn't checked in and gotten their wristband by the time we were evacuated, and also for the regular ticketholders, because I saw on reddit later that many of them were still in line to get in long after the concert had started!

But silver lining: what with all the chaos and milling about and what-have-you, the three of us somehow managed to get spots right at the barrier in front of the stage. The only person I had to try to see over was this cameraman!

My personal rule for being right in front of the stage is that if you're there, you do the work. And so we manfully did our part as the opening act's biggest fans, as well:

Fortunately, it wasn't a challenge to be the biggest fans of Meet Me @ the Altar, because they were so good!

Here's a look back at the crowd between sets, when reddit tells me that about half the ticketholders were still waiting in line outside:

I'm SO glad I'm not standing in the back, craning my neck and sharing sweat with strangers on all sides. Such is the burden, and the beauty, of old age.

And here's what we were all waiting for!

I wanted to enjoy my favorite songs, but I also wanted to get some videos of my favorite songs, but I also wanted to sing along to my favorite songs but I learned at the last Cavetown concert that singing along while I video is suuuuch a bad idea because shockingly, I am SUCH a bad singer! I am an enthusiastic singer, but I am apparently reliably flat! So my strategy was to get at least a verse or a chorus of my favorite songs on video, then enjoy the rest.

I mostly refrained from singing while I was videoing, but I did not refrain from dancing, and I do not regret this. Enjoy the camera shake!

The kid and I spent the time between sets mostly gossiping, peoplewatching, and discussing how her older sister would have HAAAAATED being there with us. 

My partner was as miserable as she would have been, but he's a team player and is generally happy to hang out with us and hold our bags and hit the merch tent with screenshots of what we want, etc. He's the perfect concert partner!

The next week I would be in my doctor's office trying to get an audiologist referral, and when she asked me if I'd been subject to any especially loud noises recently, I would say no, but then when I got home I'd remember this moment and have to mark the "You accidentally lie about something" square off my Doctor Visit BINGO card. To be fair, my hearing has been deteriorating for a couple of years now, but also... um, as a matter of fact, I HAVE been subject to some especially loud noises lately, and I couldn't have been more excited to have been so!

I'm more of the Mother Mother fan and the kid is more of the Cavetown fan, but I still couldn't help sneaking peeks at her during the Mother Mother set so I could watch her having fun. It's objectively SOOOOO creepy to stare at people's faces, but I am fully leaning into my Soon-to-be Empty Nester Midlife Crisis Mindset, and I am soaking in that baby's face!

Also, can I just be extra middle-aged here and say that I love that she doesn't have her phone in front of her face? She's being much more Present in the Moment than I am, since I'm the one snapping blurry little pics and taking shaky little videos!

I was SO excited about this double headliner, and I definitely loved it, but just between us, I preferred the 2022 concert when Mother Mother was the sole headliner and played a super long set that included every single one of my favorite songs. Here, their set was still over an hour, but they omitted a couple of songs I love and condensed my absolute favorite song into kind of a medley. Here's a snippet of me cherishing the couple of verses we got to hear:

But here's the proper whole song so you can cherish it, too:

Nevertheless, we did get through a goodly number of my favorite songs:

Just picture me incandescent with joy!

Almost as soon as the concert had finished, the storm that we'd evacuated for earlier finally hit, and it absolutely dumped down. I have never experienced rain that intense! It was like actual buckets of water being poured directly on our heads, and it was super fun figuring out where to get the bus in the dark and the crowds and the buckets of rain and, it turned out, the fact that they'd closed off the street that the bus stop was on and so decided to just put the bus stop... somewhere else. 

And then it turned out that the bus also wasn't making proper stops, but was just stopping whenever someone dinged the bell? And not even at the next bus stop after the ding, but right when you dinged the bell the bus would screech to a stop and out you went into the maelstrom! So we accidentally got off several blocks too early, which wouldn't have been a big deal if it hadn't been, you know, DUMPING DOWN ACTUAL BUCKETS OF WATER ON OUR HEADS. We ended up scurrying between awnings, stopping under each awning to catch our breath and be upset, and then scurrying for the next awning, occasionally ending up under the same awning with other sodden souls. At least I wasn't worried about being crimed, because how could one possibly manage to hold us up in such a downpour?

The older kid did NOT appreciate being woken up when the three of us poured ourselves, dripping, into our hotel room, but OMG I was so happy to exchange my wet clothes--wet down to the undies, y'all!--for a hot shower, a pair of sweats, my brand-new concert T-shirt, and a heaping pile of McDonald's. 

The next time the four of us take a road trip together, it will be to drop them both off at their colleges!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, confrontations with gross men, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

We Took the Dog to Chicago

Chicago turned out not to be very accessible for canine tourists, alas.

Luna did seem to enjoy walking the city streets, other than when the noisy "L" was passing overhead. So the big kid got to do a decent amount of sightseeing just by wandering the streets around our hotel and letting Luna sniff all the fascinating urban sniffs:

And although the W Chicago tacked on an absolutely ridiculous $125 pet fee for our two-night stay (which I did figure out in advance of our reservation, but also close enough to it that I'd already reached the "throw money at the problem until it goes away" stage, meaning we decided to just eat the cost rather than rework our entire Chicago itinerary), Luna--and the rest of us!--were super comfy there:

I'm pretty sure this is her first-ever elevator ride!

It's a lousy photo AND I nearly dropped my phone out the window, but look! We could see the Sears Tower from our room!

I know it's not the Sears Tower anymore, but also it is.

It turns out, though, that Chicago's two biggest tourist parks, Millennium Park and Maggie Daley Park, aren't really parks at all, but "parks," and dogs aren't allowed.

Which, before you accuse me of not doing my research beforehand--y'all, I ALWAYS do my research. You shouldn't have to go to a park's FAQ page and dive down to point number five out of seven just to find out whether or not dogs are allowed. 

Anyway, here's us having sneaked Luna over to The Bean regardless of the rules, sitting her down for our family photo:

It was also honestly too hot for dogs there, anyway. Luna only reluctantly drinks water when she's out and about, so we always have to keep an eye on how hot she's getting. Here's her illegally getting a little shade under the Bean!

And don't think that you can just walk across the beautiful pedestrian bridge and go visit Maggie Daley park instead, because dogs aren't allowed there, either! I mean, we definitely did walk Luna across the pedestrian bridge, but we definitely weren't supposed to. We didn't go all the way into Maggie Daley park, though, and somehow we managed to stay out of tourist jail.

I probably would have been very bummed if all the rest of us haven't already been to Chicago several times and seen most of the tourist sites in the area we stayed in. And knowing ahead of time that the "parks" weren't parks actually probably would have been a good enough reason to change our reservation and rebook a hotel in a different, dog-friendlier location.

But ah, well. It's not every dog that can say that they've sniffed the Sears Tower!

Now to leave Luna and her kid back in the hotel while the rest of us go to a concert!

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We Took the Dog to Pullman National Historical Site

I didn't actually know that this national park site existed? 

I don't know how I missed it, considering that once upon a time I literally put it on my very own map of national park sites that host Junior Ranger badges, AND it's right there in my national parks passport book as one of only two national park sites in Illinois, but still. That just meant that it was a fun surprise to notice it as I was planning our itinerary from Indiana Dunes to Chicago.

And once I've noticed it, of course we're going to go!

Alas that Luna couldn't actually go inside the Pullman National Historical Site's Visitor's Center, so thank goodness for nearby coffee shops with outdoor seating. My partner and one of the kids went off with Luna for lattes, while the other kid and I took our passport books inside for some learning!

This is probably one of the most educational national park sites that I've been to, as before we walked in I knew pretty much nothing about Pullman other than their train cars existed, and now?

I have OPINIONS.

So, the Pullman cars were cute and fancy, which is the one thing that I already knew:

But the Pullman GUY?!?

Just, whoah. 

So, okay. Pullman did his thing and got lots of money. And then he was all, "Hey, it sucks how when I pay these people money I no longer have that money. And it also sucks that for some reason I'm not in charge of every aspect of their daily lives, from what their houses look like to what they watch at the movie theatre. If only there was a way to fix both of those problems simultaneously..."

To solve all his problems of not having all the money and not being a megalomaniac, Pullman built himself a company town/utopia and got a bunch of his workers to live there. For the low, low price of rent that was vastly more expensive than rent in the surrounding neighborhoods, the Pullman townspeople got to have their living spaces legislated to fit Pullman's ideals. Rather than a utopian town, he basically invented the world's first HOA with him as its benign dictator?

Which sucked enough, but then when economic hardship hit and there weren't enough train riders to keep up Pullman's preferred level of profit, he instead made up the difference by reducing his employees' wages but NOT their overpriced rent. Things then proceeded as you might well have expected:

Who knows what might have happened if there hadn't been so much internal racism within the movement, and if Grover Cleveland hadn't trumped up a reason to force the strike to end and punish the leaders, but here were the good news/bad news results:

Look for the union label, Friends!

It also appears that I'm not the only person who came away from this history with the determination that I wouldn't spit on Pullman if he were on fire:

Concrete and steel rails and lead coffins, indeed!

But then there's also the thing where he hired formerly enslaved people as porters and waiters and valets, and that was actually really great because it paid decent wages (if you weren't also paying rent in his company town...), it utilized skillsets that translated pretty well from what many of the employees had been required to do while enslaved, so it lessened the learning curve while helping them transition into a better economic position, and most importantly in my eyes, it let the employees travel, giving them access to more cultural diversity and geographic options. 

So I dunno. It's complicated.

The kid and I did all the cool stuff in the museum-- 

That's a Polish-English dictionary on the left, and an employee's logbook on the right. It was interesting to see in several exhibits how the employees negotiated cultural and language differences. 

Then we went outside to check out the historical buildings, many of which are still in the process of being restored:

Along the way, we spotted some celebrities!

As everything did on this trip, our walkabout quickly turned into a Luna photoshoot:

She's just too photogenic not to!

It was a little weird that the Pullman National Historical Site doesn't own any actual, you know, Pullman cars, but it was cool how they had the old train tracks marked off and some of them turned into green spaces:

As far as the gift shop, I dragged myself away for the low, low price of just two passport stamp sets (the 2022 set features Pullman!) and a postcard with a Eugene V. Debs quote on it for the younger kid to put up in her dorm room. You're never safe from the insidious spread of socialism!

Now, onto our next destination!

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We Left the Kids at Home and Went to Chicago: Day 3 at the Museum of Science and Industry

I know I said that I vowed to myself that I wouldn't spend my entire time in Chicago in museums (again), but I can't travel someplace with awesome museums and go to none of them!

Matt and I really like Marvel stuff, comics, and costumes, so we were stoked to go to the traveling Marvel exhibit in the Museum of Science and Industry. It was especially apropos since our hotel's TV had randomly been playing a constant stream of Avengers movies on two different channels the entire time we were there--like, if you wanted to turn off one movie because you hate the sad part with Bucky, you could just turn to the other channel with a different movie and enjoy the antics of Thor for a while.

Here are a billion photos of exhibit!

first Marvel comic

Here are the interior pages of the first Marvel comic, including Namor's origin. I LOVE the Sub-Mariner, firstly because I love to pronounce his name wrong, and secondly because his inconsistent plotlines over the decades have turned him into a chaos goblin. When you encounter him, is he going to try to genocide you for the good of the ocean or invite you to his underwater palace to marry him? 

Matt had to be cajoled into taking this photo, but the dudes in line right behind us did the exact same pose so see, it's NOT weird!

Fantastic Four #1

Here's some original cover art. I really like the way that additions were literally pasted onto the page.

Sometimes those additions are ripped from the headlines!

And they got the quote right! I wonder when popular media began to incorrectly quote Armstrong, because it was definitely said the wrong way when I was a kid.

Some more original art. You know how much I love Captain America!

test artwork for Into the Spider-Verse

This is the first Spider-Man cover. They had a really cool display contrasting it with the original cover art, which is very different, and the critiques of Spider-Man's posture in that art that caused the changes.

cover art by Todd McFarlane, who Matt really likes

I, meanwhile, had NO PROBLEM doing the upside-down Spider-Man kiss pose, even though I look like an ass.

This costume was really cool. The sign said that all the little bumps on it were 3D-printed, but it didn't say if the signs of wear were intentional or resulted from literal wear-and-tear during filming. I'm so curious!

Winter Soldier costume! Thanks to the museum lighting plus my phone's camera, I can't get the tone right here. Bucky wears BLACK techwear, not grey!

I'm obsessed with the Bucky/Captain American plotline in the films. I hadn't read any Captain America comics before I watched the first Captain America movie, and I kind of suspect that Matt kept any comic-related spoilers away from me on purpose, because I got SO sucked in! 

I mean, I possibly got sucked in because I kept waiting for Steve and Bucky to kiss at any moment, but whatever. 

Like, I was biting my nails during all the World War 2 fighting scenes, and then Bucky! DIED!!!!! WTF?!?!?!? And Steve was so grief-stricken that he flew a literal plane into the literal ocean! OMG!!! But then he didn't even get to die and be reunited with his One True Love in the afterlife, because he got defrosted a billion years/three days later, and basically sent right back to the fighting that he'd just tried to escape from out of grief! And he's all trying to cope with a whole new world where everything looks different and smells different and tastes different and nothing is familiar and everyone he loves is gone, at the same time as people are, like... making fun of him for it? Like, "Ha, ha! The style of clothes you feel safe and comfortable in aren't stylish anymore! The music that calms you and feels familiar is gross! Go fight some aliens!"

So Steve adapts, because at this point he's pretty much learned that even death isn't an escape, and attempts to move on with his life even while being surveilled and used as a weapon and forced to continue with the dancing monkey act. Did anyone even ask if he maybe wanted to retire and go to art school? Get this guy some GI Bill! And a therapist who's not secretly Hydra!

Anyway, so Matt and I are in the theater watching Steve's Depressing Life 2.0, when up jumps the Big Baddie, the Winter Soldier. And there's a super great chase scene, and some awesome fighting, and the Winter Soldier is all decked out in black techwear head to toe except for his silver Soviet arm and his hair falling in his face. Somebody find this guy a ponytail ring. I'm super into it. 

So in this particular scene that I will never forget until the second I die--like, I will probably be contentedly playing it in my head AS I die--the Winter Soldier is fighting Steve, who's wearing literal khakis and a plain shirt and a kind of windbreaker thing exactly like my Pappa, and Steve's just doggedly fighting on, as he represses all his emotions from his entire life ALSO just like my Pappa.

They're fist-fighting. The Winter Soldier's got a knife. It is GREAT. I am having an amazing time.

We're all up close in the fight, and they're punching each other hard and the Winter Soldier keeps just barely almost knifing Steve in the face and they're tossing each other around, etc. And then Steve throws the Winter Soldier, who hits the pavement and rolls, and in the process his mask gets knocked off and is just lying there on the street. So when the Winter Soldier turns around to face Steve again, we can finally see his face.

And Steve stops, stunned, and is all, "Bucky?"

And from the middle of the packed theater, surrounded by a crowd of strangers, I'm all, "BUCKY?!?!?!?" with my fists to my mouth and my brain on pause and Matt snickering in the seat next to me. It is the absolute only time in my life that I have ever been sucker-punched by a movie twist like that. History's greatest moment of cinema, in my opinion. 

Not gonna lie, though: they really missed out by not staging a display that mimicked the Smithsonian Captain America uniform display in the movie.

Also this reminds me of the Marvel Zombies comics.

Mark 1 from Iron Man

Loki! Don't spoil me for the Disney+ series, because I haven't seen it yet. 

That's me, just trying to fit the reflection of my head into Loki's helmet!

Original cover art for the Vision's first comic appearance. I DID watch WandaVision on Disney+, and I'd be happy to natter on endlessly about it with you!

Mock-ups for the credit sequence in the Winter Soldier movie.

costume for Luke Cage, whose show I have not seen, but I like the idea of creating rips/holes in a hoodie this way. Perhaps with another fabric reverse appliqued underneath?

Eye of Agamotto from the Dr. Strange movie

Wolverine #1

Groot is so realistic!

I really love all the details on his jacket. Those pins!

Check out all the lines of stitching. That's a really interesting way to embellish something, and I'm going to try it!

After Marveling ourselves out, Matt and I checked out the rest of the Museum of Science and Industry--

--and then drove four hours back home to the kiddos. Syd had planned to make us a special lasagna soup as a homecoming dinner, but we all realized around Indianapolis, when she texted me asking where the ground beef was, and I replied that it was in the... wait, where was it?!?... that Kroger hadn't given us the ground beef that we'd paid for in our ClickList order (and that's how I learned the basic skill of actually double-checking your pick-up receipt when you get home from the grocery store!), so we picked up a pizza instead.

Syd made us lasagna soup the next day, don't worry. Tastes just like lasagna in a bowl, 10/10, highly recommend.

Here's the first day of our trip at Indiana Dunes National Park.

Here's our second day on Chicago's Lakefront Trail.

Here's our haunted Chicago hotel.

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