Do you like degs? And Other Hungover Tales

Another weekend just flew by. I think this one went by a lot faster because I never slept. Sleepless weekends = salty Monday morning Kate. Hey now, everyone watch out, Editrix is surly.

Some of the most outlandish and unbelievable things happened this weekend. Of course, a lot of those incidents involve the shenanigans of complete and total strangers. You know what I'm talking about. I'm referring to my insatiable Disturbia tactics where I secretly spy on people bustling around the Chi just so I can write about them later.

Where do I begin? Let's start with last night, or rather, this morning. 11:35 a.m. and I'm woken up by a slightly better than comatose, ashen Pegster. Fling my covers off only to discover that I'm wearing a work skirt as my pajamas. Huh? WTF? ?????? That's when I knew something ridiculous happened to me last night. In my stupor I threw on a tee shirt and ripped this skirt off of a hanger, slapped it together and called it pajamas.

But phew, that must be the worst of it. Slightly embarrassing, totally hilarious, let's laugh it off and call it a day. Nope! Not even. Peggy then informed me that she found me in my family room around 7:30 am when she woke up and discovered that she had been sleeping alone the entire night.

Concerned (and in between bouts of extreme hurling sessions in my bathroom) she looked around the corner and found Ms. Editrix in Chief sleeping sitting up straight on her couch in quite possibly the most uncomfortable position ever. This is also is an example of cruel irony since a few hours previous Fort Knocks, Peggysaurus and I were discussing how awful it is to fall asleep like that in terms of neck pain. Sweet.

She tries to wake me up but to no avail. But wait! Suddenly I'm awake....but my state of mind is extremely questionable. I then ran over to my tv and started pushing all of the buttons to which Peggy just stared at me dumbfounded. She let me do this for a minute or two and then put me to sleep. I staggered diagonally across the room and faceplanted into my bed, but only after making that priceless pj selection.

It wasn't until about 10 hours later while dining with the Art Institute lions at the Michigan Avenue Bennigans outdoor patio that Peggy leaned forward in her chair and excitedly proclaimed: "Don't you realize how funny that was? We both put each other to bed the same night, but only a few hours apart." I found this to be quite amusing. I tucked her pretty little head in around the stroke of midnight, and she scooped my outrageous drunken self off the couch 7 hours later.

So great- I think that I've now assessed all the damage and things seem pretty alright, save Peggy. She is beyond worse for wear. I find out that she neglected to eat dinner the night before and I'm convinced that this is what did her in. That poor girl was sick all morning and around noon, I knew we had to get her outside.

We needed food, but what? Where? Gold Coast eateries are jam packed on Sundays so I knew we were in for it. A languid Peggy trailed a few steps behind me as I led her to Tempo, which has great breakfasty foods and a great outdoor seating area. Donning our sunglasses and trying to hold it together, we finally get there to hear that the wait is 20 minutes. One look at Ms. P and I know that's not an option. At this point she is beyond hungover, breaching into the realm of tortuous hangoverness in which you literally cannot function as a human being. Talking, moving, stimulation all out of the question. Pretty soon I'm going to have to carry her if we don't act fast.

We abandon ship at Tempo and reverse back to the the G. Coast Viagra Triangle around the corner from me. It's a beautiful gorgeous fall day and the center of the "triangle" is peppered with couples walking their dogs, men and women reading the Sunday paper, people buying iced chai tea from the coffee kiosk, and gussied up children throwing pennies into the Grecian looking fountain. Never mind this tranquil and pleasing sight though. Peggy is reaching critical mass, and pretty soon we are going to have a nuclear meltdown. Then I spotted Corner Bakery and knew we were golden.

I should seen the premonition of disaster when Peggy asked me if there was a bathroom in there "just in case". Sounds a bit dicey, I thought. Fresh air will do the trick.

Oh look! There's a free table, umbrella and all, right next to the coffee vendor in the Triangle Park. After snagging this great table, we each sat in silence for a long time as we stared at everyone around us. I knew conversation was out of the question; after all, when I'm that destroyed I would get sick if anyone forced me to say anything.

Suddenly the non-moving Peggy propels herself out of her chair, mumbling jibberish at me and takes off running. I turn around and see Peggy retching into a garbage can on the corner of State and Bellevue, bye bye blueberry bagel. Just when she thought the pain was over, the humiliation can start, no, just kidding, she turned and ran back for more, a glutton for punishment. The lights change and people dressed in their Sunday best use the crosswalk next to my poor friend who is throwing up her dignity into a City of Chicago trash can. Her grand finale was topped off by Frank Sinatra's voice crooning from the coffee stand speakers "On State Street that great street..." If the whole situation wasn't so awful the irony would have caused me to fall off my seat with laughter.

After getting over the mortification that she just publicly tossed her cookies in one of the fanciest upscale parts of Chicago, we opted to stay and hang out for awhile. The trash can incident made Peggy immediately feel a lot better. As she ran across the street to Dublin's to get some soup to go, the garbage men came by and emptied the offending trash can. I couldn't even look when they picked it up.

Since the worst was over, I started my usual spy games. I saw a lot of dogs today and I'm convinced that Gold Coast dogs (great hotdog place...yum) are a new breed...of dog. One dog had it's own Burberry print necktie, another had a little Cindi lou Who mini-ponytail that stuck straight up in the air. I even saw dogs that had better hair than most people I know. Right next to our table was a little watering hole for these posh neighborhood pooches. They had their own Hinckley-Schmitt type water device and a little doggy mat to stand on as they lapped. Hilarious. What else would you expect...especially when the coffee shack only has bottles of Coke, and the water option is Perrier.

Turning my head in the other direction, I then saw a man wearing half of a business suit. Let me be more specific - he was wearing a suitcoat and boxers. That's it. Just strolling confidently down State Street, without a care in the world, sans pants. I don't know what's funnier, that sight or the fact that no one even seemed to notice.

Her hangover finally broke, and we skipped along to Oak Street Beach and later on Holy Name for an early evening mass.

The spying continued as we ate our dinner on the Bennigan's patio. In a span of 30 minutes we had already witnessed three separate guys climb up on the huge stone lion's backs, screaming in victory. A white convertible pulled up at the light and two dogs sat happily in the backseat, one of which stared at me head on the entire time. We're best friends, duh.

We then ambled down Madison and put Pegs in a cab so she wouldn't miss her train. I turned onto State and waited for my cab and I hear screaming, yelling, horrible words piercing the night. I turned around and saw this scared looking girl walking hurriedly down the street with a guy walking a good 20 feet behind her yelling: "HEY! You're an f---ing b*tch! You hear me? B*tch!!!! I want to come over there and beat the living sh*t out of you! I want to punch you in the face until you bleed! How do you like that, you prissy little b*tch?" among other horrific things. I assess the situation, frozen on the street corner, watching this go down. She nervously looks away from him and keeps walking. I'm expecting him to come charging over to grab/strike her and wondering what I could do to stop it. No one's around, it's nighttime, and this guy is big. He would probably jack both of us girls up with a single swing. Luckily the man veers left, she keeps walking (running) in a different direction, and his disembodied voice continued its threats until they eventually faded out. Reminds me that you can never assume anything about this city. Assume that you are always safe in certain places and that's when you will be very wrong.

My cab driver was listening to a tape discussing various chapters of the Bible. We sat in silence and listened to a breakdown of the First Letters of Paul to the Corinthians. The discussion of this epistle relaxed me and made me clear my head. I gave him a big tip. I wish I could have him drive me around another time. His persona was so peaceful. I am just intuitive about stuff (oh, how INFJ [tsn....f] of you, Katie) and he exuded that. It made me feel better.

It's now 12:30 am and I should have been sleeping for two hours by now. Whoops.


Goodnight Chicago. I wonder what you'll have in store for me this week.

Next entry: Brandon Smith.