Veggie Fest

I came home from work tonight to find M & L engrossed in D & D. I've lost the dining room table again.

I’ve spent the last couple days, instead of blogging, trying to upload a one-minute video to blogger. Still no success, and I’m fed up with blogger. As soon as I have a bit of downtime, I’m going to research some of the other blog apps, to see if they have more reliable video upload abilities.

Saturday we got up and went to Naperville for the Veggie Fest. It was quite a big event and was much bigger and more crowded than I had anticipated. I have never, ever wanted to move anywhere near Chicago until Sat. It was so nice to be in an area that clearly had a much more evolved populace. I was having little fantasies about living in that area. The lack of intelligence and culture in the Jvl area is really, really starting to get to me. A lot.

It was really hot, which made us less hungry and therefore less able to eat our way through the food court. Everything offered was vegetarian, of course, and some was vegan. I definitely would have preferred an all vegan food court. There is a Vegan Mania event in Chicago this Oct., and we will most likely attend that, too. There were many vendors and it was hard to choose what we wanted. The kids played it safe, going with veggie burgers (what a waste!). M & I got masala dosa. M, being a much more ambitious eater than the rest of us went back later and got another meal (pad thai? I think). The kids each got a snow cone, and H and I enjoyed some smoothies (which I could live on) that were among the best we’d ever had.

The only down side of the event (besides not being vegan) was that it was sponsored by a spirituality center of some sort (New Age crap, it seemed). There were several vendors of that genre there—many more of them than there were of animal rights or other groups focused on making the world a better place. These groups seem to be so overly invested in the navel gazing that they do at length and then discuss, that they don’t have time left to try to make the world a better place. (I spent my time in the world of woo. Then I woke up, stopped thinking about myself, and went about the work of trying to make the world a better place.) We certainly didn’t have to stop at any of those booths, but it was disappointing to see so much space wasted on shallow fairy-tale type pursuits and superstitions.

They did have many good vendors and a lot of games and crafts for kids. We played a vegetable & fruit game (trying to figure out what the 20 exotic samples were). We knew most of them but got fooled by the largest beet (by far) we've ever seen. The size threw us.

We had a good time there, overall, and headed back north in the mid-afternoon. We were scheduled to meet my parents at the Rkfd Borders and arrived late. We hung out there, while L pulled her divide-and-conquer-routine, scoring herself double the books she was told she could get. She’s learned how to exploit the fact that M & I always separate at the bookstore and only reunite at the cash register, when he piles his selections on the counter. She gives him her allotted number of selections. She also gives me her allotted number of selections. I hadn’t jumped her for this, because I was actually impressed by how clever she was about the whole thing. I need to address it now, though, because it’s not good for her character to allow this to continue.

We returned Saturday night to a long night of chores, as our normal all-day Sat. chores were still there waiting when we got home. Sunday I finally moved on to the next project on my list, ripping the carpet off the basement stairs and painting the stairs. I finished the long run of stairs but will have to do the short run of four that remain next weekend. It’s a little tricky, because all of the animals have to be kept off the steps for the whole day. They don’t like being kept out of any area, so they spend the day obsessing over ways they can get past the blockades.
The task wasn’t fun, and like every other project in our house, turned out to be more than I anticipated. Under the carpeting, which wasn’t particularly easy to get off, there were treads glued onto the wood steps. They were old and a couple were coming up around the edges, so I knew I had to rip them all off as well. That was hard work! After I finally got them all pulled/scraped off, I had to sand the steps, so they were smooth and even for the paint. After a couple of disasters that involved walking on the wet paint, everything was finally dry and looking good last night. Now that I think about it, I will probably work on the smaller run of steps this week instead of waiting for the weekend.

It is nice to return to normal this week, now that dance camp is finished! I did miss my little chatterbox on the ride home, but definitely didn’t miss all the extra driving time and extra time spent in rush-hour traffic! Maybe THIS will be the week I finally make it out to the garden to reclaim it from the weeds. Then again, my hands are pretty crippled up from doing the stair project, so I may have to resort to weeding with my teeth. Maybe I will wait until next week to garden.

L painted this pot last week in dance camp.