Meet the Bridger's.
Sunday morning at Notre Dame comes early, and cool. Ingrid has a fantastic surprise of cheesecake for breakfast. Well...sort of. She had the cheesecake and I had the surprise that we should eat it for breakfast. It took a little convincing but she soon agreed.
I am passing through an increasing number of tollways. I don't really know how to approach them...Not all of the passages have places you can pay, and some do, but then I don't have change, or I'm already in the wrong lane, etc. It's just a lot of added confusion and anxiety that I really don't desire. One hundred+ confusing toll roads later, I arrive in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, at the Bridger's home. It's a fantastic historic home, and the welcoming party is out on the steps, all smiles. We all pile into the Bridger's car and head for a venue that's providing a hearty Mother's Day brunch.
After stuffing ourselves with delicious breakfast/brunch items, and after the ladies had received their "mother's" roses, we moved on. (Sidenote: I was offered a "mother's" rose. Sometimes I'm sort of a mother, to my previous foster kids, to my sisters, and sometimes I have to be the mom to my friends...but right now I'm just a kid who probably needs all of the various "moms' in my life at the moment as I navigate this particular curve in the road...Needless to say, when they came around distributing roses and asked if I was a mother, I politely shook my head and declined the rose. All in good time.)
Downtown Naperville is a gold mine of cute little shops. As the journey goes on and I get more and more poor, these shopping trips still entice me. I'm just more and more empty handed at the end of them.
After shopping we return to Bridger's for a bit of a social hour. I am determined to go to an evening church service and after consulting the internet, determine that there is a 6 o'clock service just down the road. If I hurry I can make it, so I grab my keys and take off.
After driving around endlessly, finding the church, realizing the internet was wrong about the time of the service (isn't everything on the internet true?), and then seeking out my 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th backup churches, I had to give up and return to the Bridger's without any salvation for the day. Grim. But a solid effort.
Social hour(s) continues and some back story surfaces on the Bridger's and how they came to be associated with the Grinden's. Patrick also gives the story of how they came to reside in this particular neighborhood, fondly stating that when they first moved onto this block, you had to be "very careful," as "a party could break out at ANY TIME."
I very much like the Bridger's.
Patty and Lana have decided without my consent that I must stay another night. I had originally only planned on staying Sunday night and leaving Monday, but they have now come to the consensus that I must stick around for one more night. I gladly accept. These are the kind of people one could spend days of adventures with and never stop laughing. I will not turn down this type of opportunity.
Patrick has been joking for some time about the "biker bar" down the block, Orazio Pub. He has linked the motorcycle in the back of my pickup and the idea that "my people" may be just down the street. One way or another this leads to us realizing we have not yet had supper, and then my suggesting we go eat with the bikers.
The food at Orazio is quite good; unfortunately, despite Patrick's description of bikes frequently being parked all around that place, there are no bikes in sight. But our bellies are full.
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