2009
cause the days change at night
maura @ 10:38 pm
Woah, has it really been 2 weeks since my last post? Time flies when there’s teaching teaching teaching and then bam, Spring Break. Now the teaching is over (though Spring Break isn’t quite yet) and I’m a little sad, just like last semester. Curious, it is (see Yoda reference below).
Thanks to the spring non-secular holidays, Gus’s Spring Break was extra-long this year, so we hightailed it to Our Nation’s Capital for a few days to reprise our vacation 2 yrs ago. We even stayed at the same hotel! It was nice to be sort of familiar with everything. And we finally figured out the metro. Such a weird system, with the whole pay when you exit thing and how 2 people can’t use the same card and the fares are different between locations. Duh!
The trip was pretty fun. We did a few new things: Lincoln Memorial, which I found so moving (realized I had never been there), Vietnam War Memorial (ditto), pedal boats in the Tidal Basin to ogle the Jefferson Memorial (tho someone w/short legs was a pedal slacker), and the Museum of American History (which had been closed 2 yrs ago). Gus was tired + crabby for the latter so we let him play his DS while Jonathan ogled Julia Child’s kitchen and I grooved on Within These Walls, a reconstructed historic house with info about 6 families that lived there from the late 18th-mid-20th c. Go, historic house nerds!
We also hit a few of our old faves from last time. The cafeteria of the National Museum of the American Indian has dee-licious food (mmm, fry bread. and fiddlehead ferns!). Maybe one of these days we will have time to visit the rest of the museum, too. And it’s right next door to the Air + Space Museum, which you may have heard is the most visited museum IN THE WORLD, a fact which I could not help myself from mentioning about a jillion times as we slowly swam through the ridiculous crowds of people inside.
Gus reeeeeeally wanted to see the planetarium movie about black holes, so we did. It was narrated by Liam Neeson and I spent the first part of the show feeling really bad for him. But then his voice got all spooky and he told us that many galaxies have black holes at their centers and Gus said “does our galaxy have a black hole?” and I said “uhhhmmm…” and Liam said “there is even a black hole at the center of our own galaxy!” and Gus grabbed my arm so tight it hurt. So Liam Neeson, I am sorry for your loss, but thank you very much for freaking out my child. Stupid black holes.
After that we had to get ice cream, even though it was 50 degrees and raining, because we wanted to drag Gus to the Hirshhorn to see some modern art, which we <3 and he despises (“I hate art!”). The pin book wasn’t on display, but we stumbled (literally, as we had to piggyback Mr. Crabby + Scared of Black Holes throughout the museum) upon a great exhibit of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois’s work. My most favorite of her pieces were the little rooms made up of wire cages or spirals formed by wooden doors joined together with cool furniture and other weird stuff inside, sometimes only visible through a window or via a mirror. Red room (child) was the neatest, with spools of thread and wax hands. Creepy.
Gus was mostly happy just to swim in the hotel pool, eat Frosted Flakes at the free hotel breakfast and watch cable (he discovered Clone Wars on the Cartoon Network — see, there’s the Yoda reference!). It was kind of weird to see real TV (esp. Fox News at breakfast, ugh), but it’s good to experience it every so often if only so we have the chance to engage in what passes for media literacy education in our house. When loud obnoxious kid commercials come on (like a horrible one for a card game called, appropriately enough, Chaotic), Jonathan and I mock it loudly and whine to Gus to buy it for us. He’s also started reading advertising claims to us (from all media): “Mom, is this really the best yogurt you’ve ever tasted?” which is hilarious.
Also one night in a totally hilarious, Bart Simpson moment, Gus called Jonathan “farty fart mcweiner butt.” And we completely blew it by laughing until we cried. Oh well.
6 comments on “cause the days change at night”
The food is soooooo good. To be fair, we didn’t discover it ourselves, it was in a tour guide we borrowed from our neighbors the last time we were there. They’ve got the cafeteria divided into 5 different areas w/foods from each: South America, Mesoamerica, the Southwest, Pacific Northwest and the Woodlands. In our zeal for venison + fiddleheads from the PNW we nearly forgot the fry bread, but Jonathan remembered at the last minute, phew!
Damn! Gus nailed it on the head! “Farty fart mcweiner butt.” hehehe
In a few years you can go back and freak him out good with the Holocaust museum.
I missed the Museum of American History last time I was there, but re: historic house nerds – how much do you love that PBS series 1900 House, Frontier House, Colonial House etc.? the Texas one was a little lame but all the others are AWEsome.
We are so bad w/TV, I always forget to watch those. But we have a better TV now so I should check them out.
That Holocaust Museum always has such a giant line! It’s right next to the Bureau of Engraving + Printing, which we want to tour (to watch them make the money) BUT the tickets are first come first served and apparently are all taken by like 7am. Which does not typically fit into someone’s Frosted Flakes + Pokemon cartoons (ick) morning schedule.
[…] including one that’s a series of glass boxes w/stuff inside that sort of reminds me of Louise Bourgeois. I didn’t have time to look closely (9am meeting) or take pictures today but will soon. And […]
Was the Fox news on in a community setting? That’s a pet peeve of mine — they always have it at the Gym (or even worse, the 700 club).
I’m totally going to the National Museum of the American Indian next time I’m in DC, just for the food.