bikes
Sunday, Dec. 05, 2004, 12:03 PM

Busy afternoon yesterday.
We went to Highland Park to get Spouse's computer game, and to Glenview to brave the crowds at Trader Joe's. And then we tooled over to Maurice Lenell to hit the cookie outlet. Papa had asked us to pick up some tins of cookies for him the next time we went to the city, so we got him a couple, and one for Spouse's mom. After that was taken care of, we had to run to Chocagoland Hobby for some special wire Spouse needed for his trains. By that time, we were getting pretty hungry, so we decided on Italian and went to Niles. Ate at Graziano's, and the food was great. Excellant bruschetta, chicken-toretellini soup, and I had a wood-fire pizza with prosciutto, eggplant, roasted peppers, and portabello mushrooms. Spouse had an enormous plate of veal parmesan with fettucini, and we ended up bringing most of our entrees home, because the portions were enormous. We stopped and dropped of his mom's cookies, and then came home.
Like I said; busy afternoon.

Today, it was time to get up and perform one of our annual rituals--the toy drive. But we have a new charity this year. There is a little girl in our area who is a cancer survivor, and she has organized a toy drive for kids with cancer. When we heard about her, we thought it sounded like a really cool thing to support, so we set out toy shopping this morning.

We usually get one 'boy' toy and one 'girl' toy to donate, and as we've done better over the years, our budget has gone up, so we were looking at a variety of toys in the $15-$20 dollar range. But as I was scoping out various playsets, Spouse disapeared. Pretty soon, I heard him call me, and went over to where he was standing.

He looked at me kinda funny, pointed, and said "You're gonna tell me I'm nuts."

Bikes. He'd found 20 inch boy's and girl's Huffy Bikes for about $35 apiece.

I told him "I'll tell you you are nuts, but I won't tell you no."

The hardest part was getting two fully assembled bikes into the back of his Grand Prix. But we did it.

When we dropped them off at the fire station where they were collecting, the fireman was a little taken aback, but he waved us into the office with them, where they would be secure, and thanked us. And we were off...I like being Mrs. Claus almost as much as Spouse likes being Santa.

We were talking in the car, and he got a little choked when he said it wasn't that much really, and when he thought of those kids, he just wanted to do something nice for them.

Have I ever said that my sloppy, stubborn, control-freak, infuriating husband is my hero?