Kind of a nothing day but an evening of nostalgia

 

The Madison Park Apartments
Hyde Park Boulevard at Dorchester Avenue
Chicago

All work and no play, they say, makes you dull. Sort of how I feel today. I read emails, caught up on odds and ends, did a bit on the novel but not a lot, and the day just sort off went by. Jacob and Jordan were up at five this morning so that he could be at Farrington Field by six to go to a golf tournament. He came home and went right back to bed. Christian had an event tonight, so there Jordan and I were staring at each other. “What’s for dinner?” She has mapped out meals from now until Thanksgiving and we’ve done grocery lists—so organized. Only there was no plan for tonight.

She had said a big green salad with chicken, so as she came and went between the cottage and the house I thought surely she’d start to make a salad any minute. Finally, when she came in around seven, I said, “Starving.” (I confess for once I’d been enjoying not cooking.) Then it came out that she was not at all hungry, and Jacob had gone back to bed—they have to repeat the five o’cock thing tomorrow. She was full of apologies, said to eat the chicken, but by then I just wanted something quick and easy. So for the second night this week, I had scrambled eggs. And a bit of last night’s German potato salad.

So there I was, after a nothing day, looking at a nothing evening. But I began a little research for the current Irene novel. If Henny and Patrick are now happily married, they need to move out of two, small but adjacent apartments. I wanted to give them an old cottage in Hyde Park, but the more I looked, the scarcer cottages were and the higher real estate. It’s not at all uncommon for a modest house to be a million and up. Henny and Patrick can’t afford that. So I prowled around and gathered enough information to invent a house for them. I’m rather captivated by it

Built in the twenties, it’s a tall and skinny wood frame structure, with bay windows downstairs and up, dark, natural woodwork and wainscoting, hardwood floors, and pocket doors. Somebody kept all the good features of an older home—it’s hard to find original wainscoting these days. The kitchen however was maybe updated in the fifties, certainly not suited for a chef on the brink of her career. They have a lot of renovation to do, bit by bit.

This is sort of like playing with paper dolls when you were a kid. You get to make up houses, clothing, food, all aspects of life. A lot of fun. It occurs to me that traditionally the main character in a cozy is a single woman, in her twenties or thirties a the most, often with a love/hate romantic entanglement, though those parameters are branching out all the time. Still, I seem to keep marrying off my protagonists. So far, I’ve sustained series with married couples, and I’m counting on it to be true with Henny and Patrick. As she says early on, they are deliriously happily married.

Of course, Irene will be returning from France, this time drawn back by a murder. This time she announces that since she visits so often, she is thinking of taking a small apartment in a residential hotel. (No need to dwell on Henny’s reaction to that.) So I went back online to check residential hotels—and there are none under that classification. I guess I was thinking of the grand old hotels of my youth, where aging widows and spinsters lived and took their meals in quietly elegant dining rooms. The woman I worked for, as a gofer/typist, when I was I high school used to take me to such hotels for lunch. Once, wanting me to impress someone we were with, she suggested I have the calavo pear with tuna salad. I replied that I would if it were avocado, but I didn’t much like pears. She kicked me under the table. How was I to know calavo was another name for avocado? At any rate, those hotels are gone.

On an impulse I searched for the Madison Park Hotel—I grew up in Madison Park—and lo! It’s still there, in all its grand glory, but now called the Madison Park Apartments. No restaurant, but a breakfast bar and they’ve gotten modern with an exercise facility. The blurb says it still has its grandly luxurious lobby and all the amenities. I guess that’s where Irene will land.

Such fun to wander around my old neighborhood, even if only online. And fun to play with paper dolls.

Have a good sleep, everyone.