catching up, kind of

Our trip to DC was fun. We ended up not going on the Duck Tour because the weather was so iffy, and spent two days inside museums instead. We went to the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of American History on Monday. I liked the exhibits about the First Ladies quite a bit, but as usual was frustrated because I couldn’t see their dresses very well because the display has to be so dark. But the information about what many of the First Ladies did was well done and extremely interesting, particularly, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt. Edith Wilson didn’t fare so well.

Tuesday was spent mainly at the National Museum of the American Indian. The architecture of this museum is breathtaking. I told Stanley that the museum, both inside and out, reminds me of the canyons in Arizona. The exhibits need a lot more work, but it’s only been open for a few months so the sparsity of information is understandable. The introductory movies we saw are pretty pointless, and we didn’t see entire tribes (such as the Chippewa, or the Indians of Connecticut), but imagine they’ll show up there sooner or later.

We managed to get to the National Gallery of Art, which, we were informed, is NOT part of the Smithsonian, to see the Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre exhibit. I didn’t know he did so much work on cardboard, at least, we surmised, until he sold a few paintings and was able to afford to buy some canvas?

The trip back was long, fairly decent. I missed the Garden State Parkway turn from the NJ Turnpike, but managed to find the Palisades Parkway so we didn’t have to go over the George Washington Bridge, much to Stanley’s relief. (I’m the navigator, so it was my fault that we missed the Garden State, naturally.) Not much traffic until we hit Fairfield County just about rush hour.

We unpacked the car, played with the kitty for a while, and decided we’d go up to Natick and pick up Ginger that evening (we both missed her). That con artist of a red dog refused to eat anything except her Greenies while she was with Maureen and Ben, so she got more Greenies than she should have. She never eats when we’re not around, like some weird doggie penance for whatever she did that drove us away. She can stand to lose a couple more pounds. It was so good to see her. We should have stayed the night, though, because we drove back through a nor’easter and Stanley was so tense I could’ve bounced a bowling ball off him. Got home and we were both numb. But slept quite a while. Ginger moped for two days. The cat is even more manic, if that’s possible.

Stanley had his physical on Friday and so far, so good. He gets his blood test back next week and then will duke it out with his doctor over whether he has to go on Lipitor or not. I said if his test results are ok, I’d back him not going on Lipitor, but if the cholesterol is high, I’ll shovel them in by force if necessary. I don’t particularly want to watch him undergo bypass surgery ever again, let alone any time soon.

Kate went to her first prom last week. Stanley got some great photos of her. I put three of them in the gallery, which I spent half of Saturday fixing (and it still doesn’t look the way I want it to—but whatever, it’ll do for now. At least it’s working again). Click on this thumbnail to see the large version of this picture.

I also put a bunch of pictures from our trip in the gallery, heading of “dc.” Stanley took many more—these are mostly pics that I took.

Saturday night, my sister Jamie called. Bad news: my Aunt Jo died. I feel badly for my cousins Bruce, Jeanine, and Nicolette. I was hoping to see Aunt Jo at my parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary party last November, but she must have been ailing then because she couldn’t make it. I really liked her, so I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to see her recently. Life is too short, that’s for sure.

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