Transplanting a Seattleite

At least I got to sleep in, which was greatly needed because yesterday I ate too much in an effort to not completely lose my shit, and wound up having reflux and needing to sit up late. *sigh*

I drove A. in to school today.

I walked with M.

I had a zoom meeting with C. from the architect. He wanted to go over the pool room finishes. I think he was still spooked from the siding exercise, and wanted someone to look at the visualization. Which was insane, because he’s supposed to be doing this _to help me_, and he’s basically getting me to sign off on it before _presenting it officially to me_. LOL. That firm is such a hot mess. It was actually mildly helpful. He somehow got the idea that the narrow end of the pool had the tondela blue tile, which is purely a in-pool specific tile. The wall in that area is the Forbo Onyx like the rest of the room. He also somehow got the idea that the Forbo Coral Marine for the ramp would also be used for the stairs into the pool room, and for the doors to the exercise room and the pool bathroom. I have no idea. I mean, kinda makes sense and would definitely strip off crap from people’s feet / shoes? But it can be a mat, and should not be installed because the flooring in the pool room continues to the exercise room. Whatever. And obviously, as we have at this point said and written repeatedly, the towel rack idea is on hold indefinitely. But apparently he also got the idea that the bluestone stairs have been replaced by other stairs with the Forbo Coral Marine on top, which seems good? He has it as concrete; J. from the builder was saying could be pressure treated wood. I don’t really care that much and neither does R.

It was only a ten minute meeting tho! Yay!

R. brought A. home. She felt like crap, but a glass of water and trip to the loo and she was ready to go out to dinner, so we went to Crossroads and were seated immediately! Woot! We had the Cafe burger and she go the lava cake. I had a manhattan. Good times. I had a pen so we played hangman for a bit then I sent her the link for Central Mass Safety Council.

Duolingo has added Chess, so I’m doing that now, because I haven’t played chess in a very long time. A. was doing chess.com for a while, but ran through all the free levels and then abandoned it. I suggested she try it again via Duolingo because they break it down into really nice small pieces. Such a great app.

I asked T. about the multiple charges yesterday from some “local match”, and it took a while to extract the whole story, but it looks like a cam girl operation disguised as a dating website. *sigh* I doubt I’ll get the money back, and it annoys me that this sort of thing exists, on so many levels. He canceled the subscription which was through google play. In theory, he was supposed to meet some woman for lunch on Monday; I assume she was ultimately going to have an emergency and need to repeatedly reschedule, however, I was worried she might actually show up and this might turn into an in person interaction involving money. We reviewed the chat they had, and I pointed out the things she said that indicated what was going on “I’m wet already” type of thing.

He also got a phish and downloaded a bunch of those apps that help people take over your computers / device / phone but fortunately did not give them account numbers, passwords, etc. He hung up, and then talked to me about it. They kept calling him, which suggests they did NOT get anything out of him. Fingers crossed. We discussed how to detect scams, like, if your phone tells you this is a suspicious number, don’t call a phone number the text tells you to call about some order you didn’t make.

Pinocchio really doesn’t seem like such a ridiculous story, honestly. The appeals of Pleasure Island no longer seem laughable.

The rest of the drama was H. texting asking for a catch-up call. So I called her like two minutes after getting the text, but no answer. I did my duo, and then played farmville 2 country escape and she called and went on this whole thing about someone approaching her to chat _outside_ and then saying they had a cold when she said she had to go get a mask. And I’m like, you were outside it’s fine. And she basically hung up on me. I thought about the whole thing for a minute, and she texted me, and I expressed the wish that she get some rest. When I was young, I would have thought this was my fault. Now, I just can’t care enough to pretzel myself to fit into someone else’s byzantine set of requirements and demands. She can be as mad as she needs to be, for as long as she needs to be. I’ll still be over here living my life. In theory, I’m supposed to be participating in a team meeting with her and her mother tomorrow. I really do not care how that goes one way or the other. Equally, a recliner I ordered for her mother is supposed to arrive tomorrow, and they absolutely don’t need me for that, as the order is in the name of one with the phone number for the other, so if they want a clean break, they can have it.

I really would like to be reviewing the outlets for the new house, but my energy is at this point completely gone, and I’m just going to do laundry, and play my game and read my book.

R. went out to Florence, so I drove A. both ways. My walk with M. was delayed because J. has something scheduled (again) on Wednesday, so we had our chat today after the MEPFP / OAC. So it was a busy day, and between J. losing his temper at me on the phone, and A. asking me a lot of questions during some really unpleasant traffic, plus multiple phone calls with J. from the builder, and with H. (R.’s cousin) and also talking to the broker, by the time I was approaching home, I’d completely lost it.

I remain committed to having a good time, despite the results of the last election, and despite nearly everyone I know apparently being committed to not only being miserable themselves, but also repeating a lot of things that aren’t true, and also assuming a lot of very odd things and acting like those might also be true. I’m really struggling. I know that the problem is that I’ve been trying to do too many things (renovation plus new house construction, plus travel planning, plus decluttering, plus accidentally winding up playing a much bigger role than anticipated in C.’s health issues) and not being able to relax and do calm and enjoyable things. So I’m going to double down on the calm and enjoyable things and start being really aggressive about making R. and A. find things to do together. I tried to facilitate that, and it is just not working. So I’m going to tell them to do stuff together away from me and let them figure it out.

It almost doesn’t matter whether they succeed; they will at least not be around for some amount of my time AND will probably treat me better. And who knows. Maybe they’ll find something they love doing together and decide that’s better than being around cranky walkitout.

I went over some of the decluttering discourse writing project with A. on the assumption that she would ask a million questions and that would expose real problems that would need to be corrected. That did actually happen, altho it was also kind of exhausting and frustrating for me, in large part because I felt like I had to really be very careful about how I responded to her questions and criticisms to avoid upsetting her.

I wrapped up the day by basically hitting the ever extending to-do list really hard, and doing a lot of small things that I had high confidence I could complete, so I would at least feel good about that. And it did help a little.

A. wanted to do something with me today, so we made blondies. Very fun!

I walked with M.

I went to Moodz and got my hair done. It’s much shorter now because it’s warming up. Whenever I do this I think, wow, I’m never letting it get long again, because it looks so nice at this length. And then I decide to grow it out for a while.

I had a delightful long convo with A. (not my daughter).

Not an ex. I’ve already cyberst.., er, yeah, whatever.

Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about this person for about 10 years. 10 years ago, my DisneyWorld trip was supposed to (and did) include my sister and her family, JJ and their kids. It was, in theory, also going to include the H.’s (they wound up getting divorced), an ex, and the person that I am currently researching. None of those people showed up. Planning the trip was kind of surreal, because I was trying to figure out at least dinner reservations for this very large group of an uncertain size, but it kept getting easier as people bailed out on us. I was super relieved the ex didn’t show up.

But J was really distressed that the person I’m currently researching never showed up. That person, DAS, only told J that he wasn’t coming when he found out that he was being included on dinner reservations. At that point, DAS offered up a whole bunch of information: he no longer was living in Florida caring for his aging parents, because his dad had died, and he had moved to NYC to help his sister raise her very young child or children. J was kinda freaked out about the whole thing and somewhat frosty at finding out only in this very strange way.

Over the years, some information came out about J that J had not previously known, or if he had, he’d suppressed it. His mother was not Jewish, so in the view of some, he was not Jewish, but his father was Jewish. The other J, his wife, had a mother who was Jewish, but her father was not. But she counted as Jewish by people who think of things in this particular way. I don’t recall exactly the point at which J figured it all out — it was when J did a bunch of ancestry research, if I recall correctly. Finally, I want to point out that Jewish-but-didn’t-know-it J had a mother who was RLDS. I’m somewhere in this picture too (exJW) so there’s a lot of reason to see all of this as foreshadowing.

Anyway. J is worried that DAS is being taken advantage of by a crazy / domineering / verbally unpleasant sister and will be turfed out when the kids are grown. I’m skeptical. Kids tend to love the person who raised them, and it takes a lot to erase that. I knew DAS at least a little, and I didn’t see any kids he raised as hating him and being okay with mom turfing him out when they went to college. Also, the story J is telling is one of DAS’ sister orchestrating the care of their aging parents by telling her brother (or brothers) where to go and what to do. Does not sound like a person who will use ‘em and lose ‘em.

I thought, Self, do what you do best. Find out what the hell is going on here. Because it more and more sounds like there’s a religious component here that has not been fully appreciated. And indeed there is. I knew that DAS was vegetarian when eating out at other people’s houses / in restaurants, and kosher isn’t something you do lightly. I was betting on Orthodox in the background and boy did I find Orthodox in the background. Close enough to where everyone was living in Seattle, in Florida, and in NYC to be walkable on Sabbath. So. Gotta have a weird phone call with J. where I tell him that DAS didn’t let him into his house for Reasons and everyone is suspicious of DAS having social connection to J for same Reasons, and it all comes down to none of us are Orthodox, and if you are Orthodox, you aren’t supposed to have close connections to people who aren’t.

Ugh. I guess it’s better than randomly awful family. There’s at least congregational support in the background.

The normal Wednesday phone call has moved to tomorrow, because of a scheduling conflict (not mine). I forgot, but that’s fine.

I drove A. in. She is currently fascinated by the interactions of pharmaceuticals with each other and/or food / beverage. yay! These are important things to learn about in life, and this is way ahead of the game.

Lots of stuff from Amazon arrived today, including the bokashi two bucket kit. So I watched videos to make sure I didn’t screw it up, and decanted the countertop bin (which was full) into the bokashi bucket (which is no longer empty). Now that I know this is essentially a fermentation process and a big chunk of it is LAB, I’m eying my sourdough crock and having thoughts.

I’ve been having parsnip and potato has lately. It’s very yummy. Today, the siena farm delivery arrived so I had salad for lunch, too, and fresh tulips to look at. Very pleasant!

Two pickups today, the bathroom drapes I took down, washed, and replaced with pink ombre drapes as part of redecorating the green bathroom. The other was just some disney toys. I keep expecting people to slow down in the stuff they pick up, but I also keep rotating through the house and decluttering different areas.

Two bag straps arrived today. I’m going to go take a look at the various bags that would be improved by straps and see how the metals compare, and assess how comfortable the straps are. They are definitely long enough, which has been the biggest problem so far.

ETA:

Today’s snack review: South Forty Marcona Almond bar.

https://south40snacks.com/products/marcona-almond-crunchy-nut-bar-12-pack-wholesale

I didn’t buy a 12 pack — Roche Bros. had a sale and I picked one up because it has 0 mg sodium and no milk products. It does have sweetener — it’s kind of like peanut brittle, but with marcona almonds. Marcona almonds are naturally very awesome, and this bar is at least as good as eating an equivalent amount of almonds. Assuming you are okay with the sweetener, then that’s somewhat better. It’s not so sweet it is off-putting. I would absolutely eat this again.

ETAYA:

I went into the garage and stared at shelves in there for a while. I found a couple pairs of ice skates that looked like they were fairly new and more or less R.’s size. I found two empty ice skate boxes (that matches those skates). I also found a NOT empty ice skate box, that is definitely too small for any of us, so I listed that. R. then decided to get rid of his very ancient (from 1983) ice skates, so I listed those. And I also found a bicycle bell that R. says needs repair, and a bicycle bell that was still on its sales card. So I listed that one still attached to its sales card.

I spotted some other stuff that looks like I could list it, but more complicated to get at, and might need some negotiation. I figured I’d start with the easy stuff.

I posted an incense burner that I’ve had sitting on my desk for … years. It was a gift, and I don’t burn incense. I put a battery tea light in it, because it more or less fit and looked mildly cool when lit. But I never turned the light on after a few times. It just sat there, being an incense burner that I had zero use for, and reminding me that just because I’ve known someone for over thirty years doesn’t mean they know me very well at all.

Anyway. These days, when my eyes land on something like that, I ask myself a simple question:

“I wonder how fast and how many people would respond if I put it on FB Marketplace for free?”

And it occurred to me that I didn’t have the slightest idea. So I posted it. And like, a half dozen people immediately expressed interest, but when I followed up, crickets. Finally (as in, maybe 12 minutes into this process) someone committed to picking it up tomorrow. I feel confident that whether that person appears or not, it’ll be gone in a couple of days, max.

But that many people that fast was a little unexpected, so I belatedly did a little research. This looks like a Pier One type object, but some of those Pier One type objects got weirdly valuable over time. It is heavy, probably bronze, and says “Made in China” in block letters (English) on the bottom. Supports the Pier One type object hypothesis. It’s a “double ear” pagoda, but it’s round on the bottom so not a cool animal or anything, and it’s only 6” tall. It’s definitely not an antique — if it were, it wouldn’t have English on the bottom. Google lens found me larger / older / nicer versions of the same thing, and Amazon found me crappier incense burners that look quite different. All of which supports the Pier One hypothesis.

The 3rd (?) edition of the Clearing Your Clutter with Feng Shui book was $4.99 on Amazon, so I bought it because I really kinda wanted to revisit that. I read the first one in the late 1990s, and haven’t ever reread it. This isn’t exactly rereading. It’s not starting off great, and I expect it to get much worse as it goes along, so this could be quite a ride.

ETA: Someone came and picked up the offending pink purse that A. kept trying to use and failing (it has that cute but useless shape where the opening is really small, and it gets wider towards the bottom), a lilac handbag which has too short of a strap for me to ever use, and the purple beaded bag like the black beaded bag that came from R.’s aunt and which has never been used. I had originally put A.’s bag out to go to Savers, but like many things, I’ve pulled it back into the house and listed it and it went away that route instead. R. commented that it looked like a very high quality bag, and I remarked that I didn’t keep crap around the house, with the exception of a stuffie that is nearly as old as I am and some paperbacks, ditto, that I keep for sentimental reasons.

I distinctly remember being 19 years old and telling my boyfriend M.J. how I wanted to someday live in a home — it didn’t have to be big, and it didn’t have to have much in it — in which every single item in the home was really, really nice and quite valuable. I think at the time that meant about a hundred dollars (hey, it was the 80s and I was poor). I did recognize at the time that this could not include items of pure utility, but my general thought process was, if you bother to own it at all, and you could have it be the really nice version of something, that’s what I wanted when I was a Real Adult.

I find that kind of memory deeply uncomfortable, altho I’m not entirely certain why.

Anyway. I really only wear crossbody handbags, and I’m tall-ish, and big in a variety of dimensions. The strap cannot be short. Once I realized just how annoying too short straps were on handbags, I decided to Fix That. Step one was buying Tom Bihn bags, and that indeed was a good choice. I really should have listened to K. years ago when she suggested them. Step two was a tape measure, to work out the minimum, and the desired lengths. I was telling R. about some of this today, and he was, why can’t they just make them longer so they’d work for everyone. And I said, look, fashion has long tail energy, and the heaviest consumers of handbags are short, thin women, who often carry a handbag NOT crossbody, and tucked right up under their armpit. If you make it long enough for me, and you halve that length, that won’t work on her. It’s hard to make an adjustment that can do more than half.

Step three is successfully acquiring attractive replacement straps. The bag obviously has to permit replacement straps (not all bags do), but while it’s possible to get straps, it’s not always easy to find ones that coordinate and the metal hardware works aesthetically as well. But I’m going to at least try; I’m waiting for an Amazon order with a couple straps that should at lest be long enough. The good news is that I now understand in a lot of detail what does NOT work for me, so I’ve at least mostly quit buying the wrong things. Mostly; there’s a baggalini I’m still regretting.

A really long time ago, Real ID as a law was passed, with enforcement due to start as the perpetrating administration wound up. This is entirely on brand for how American politics work. A big chunk of the perpetrating party was wildly anti-guvment identification, so it was much easier for that party to pass the law and then dump enforcement onto the other party. No one wanted to really enforce it, until this month. And now, we’re finally doing it.

Even longer ago, in 1991, I got married for the first time (big mistake). Marriage certificates in Washington State at the time (and, I believe, at the time of writing this) did not show the legal name after marriage. But you could take that marriage certificate to the DMV and other places and use it as the basis for changing your name at work and on bank accounts and so forth. I did. But I did not bother to notify Social Security. Wow, were they mad. They mailed me all kinds of stuff. I eventually got around to doing that a year or two later, and shortly after that I got divorced. I very promptly notified social security of that name change. I then made absolutely certain I kept a file of that whole sequence and vowed never to change my name again (I haven’t). I got a passport. I got enhanced wtfery. All the things. When I dragged my sister and her family on a Disney cruise, I worked with B. to get my sister through the passport application process, which was similarly complex because she got married, and then divorced (but did not get rid of her married name).

So now there are all these people in news articles, on FB, on reddit talking about how they can’t get Real ID because they are women who got married and their paperwork isn’t good enough to prove the name change. I’m scratching my head, because a lot of this stuff talks about marriages license. No one wants that. We want a certified marriage certificate. But some people say they are being rejected because the documents on offer do not prove a name change at marriage.

And now I’m trying to figure that out. In many stories, the person has a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, and literally no state issued photo id, and often no social security card. I am not counting any situation where there is a spelling (sometimes the hyphen) difference between the social security card and the other documents. If you are living your life with a social security card with a spelling difference from your other identity documents, you have a much higher risk tolerance than I do.

Now I’m wondering about how these people got through the I-9 process. Hmmmm.

ETA:

I’m back! I think you could get through with a social security card and a voter registration card, and in Massachusetts if you register on the paper form you can get a voter’s registration card on the basis of your social.

My sympathy for people who refuse to maintain any of the ordinary forms of identity verification is limited. It’s there. It’s just not very enthusiastically there.

Years ago — possibly 10, actually — nibling went to a con — probably Connecticon — and met John Hemry / Jack Campbell. When I learned she was there, I expressed envy, because I love reading his books, and she went and got a picture with him and sent it to me. This was a really NICE thing to do! I can imagine it not being nice in other personality dynamics, but here, it was intensely awesome. I couldn’t be there, so she found a way to share. I couldn’t find it anywhere (and I foolishly set my text history to auto delete, so I couldn’t just scroll back forever, the way I used to), so I texted her and asked if she had it and she found it! She also supplied a bakery recommendation for Balticon. Woot! So I now have a prop for when I attempt to introduce myself to him before / after a panel at Balticon or wherever.

I’m also reading samples today. I reread Doctor Galaxy yesterday, but I’m in the mood to try some new stuff, so, Samples!

First up: Breathing Space by Kristen Painter. It has detailed, amazing reviews on Amazon, and it sounds potentially interesting to me: a cozy mystery, the protagonist is a librarian, on a cruise ship in space with a bunch of people in cryostasis. I’m a little confused about the cryostatis + cruise ship? But possibly that’s just the future equivalent of steerage?

In any event, so far we have a plumber in the chat complaining about people not putting the lid down in the loo and that interferes with the proper functioning of the “WCS”. Which, fine, but signage exists now, as do motors. Future space ship can’t solve this problem? Next, the head librarian is having a hot flash and goes over to cryo to cool down, which is kept at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. We’re still using Fahrenheit in the future. How utterly discouraging. The librarian says that library cards are complimentary in the chat, and invites people to visit the library to access entertainment like video games. Why do you have to go to the library to access that? Why are there library _cards_? These are all details that are likely intended to make this Space Ship more relatable to readers — oh look, it’s our society, but on a space ship! It’s like a cruise ship now, but in Space! I hope that it works! I’m pretty sure it does work for some readers. It does not work for me. Next issue: the jumpsuit. There’s a whole thing about the librarian opening up her jumpsuit in cryo to cool down (they don’t have effective treatment for hot flashes in the future? Plausible discouraging), which has a strong cover of RAH’s Friday vibe to it. If that’s an elaborate reference, I’ve got a whole other set of issues. The librarian’s daughter is Vice Admiral on this starliner, and yet still, jumpsuits. Then there’s a paragraph about how she doesn’t have to wear the jumpsuit when she’s not working _but she is still wearing it_.

This is too much. This is way too much. None of this makes any sense. I’m going to try to read a few more pages, but unless it turns into a totally different book in that time frame, I’m abandoning it. ETA: I can’t. I just can’t. If this sounds like your kind of book, I wholeheartedly hope you enjoy it. It’s available on kindleunlimited — this wasn’t even a sample in the end.

I’m off to do Duo and then try something else new. Happy Friday, and may your experiments with new things be enlightening and enjoyable! For all my complaints, this experiment for me was both. While I do not want to continue reading, I am ecstatic that readers who like this sort of thing have this author / this series as an option.

I actually got A. to school for her lunch and left her there her entire day. I had to do part of the MEPFP meeting remotely as I was driving back, which is fine. I dug around in what Modbus “points” are and they are registers. 16 bit registers. Absolutely hilarious.

R. and I went to dinner at Azucar, which was, as always, awesome. I did not overeat so much that I had reflux, but I was wildly too warm in the middle of the night, which has not happened in a while. We are not running the AC yet and it got warm during the day but we are not opening windows at night due to high pollen count. Ugh. I’m feeling more than a little pissy at R. right now, partly because of foolishness like not running the DW while we were gone and not even checking in with us when he got home later than us on Sunday night (so I had to go double check and make sure the meat thawing on the counter got put away appropriately). But also because he’s just completely checked out in terms of helping A. with anything. I kind of get it, because they are bickering a lot right now, but also I don’t understand how he thinks this is ever going to improve if he stays checked out.

I walked with M. in the morning, before taking A. in to school.

I had high hopes for today. I wanted to attend a noon panel about portal fantasy’s enduring appeal. I had paid in advance for late checkout for both rooms. Alas, I failed to nail this plan down with my sister, and she had a very different plan. B. had shoulder surgery, and this was his first weekend without in-house support post surgery, so she really wanted to get back and catch up on what he needed, and to do that before it got really late because they both get up super early (like 5 am or earlier) to go to work. No way to argue with that, and also, when I made the late checkout plan initially, I had no idea about the shoulder surgery.

Meanwhile, A. had not successfully attended any panels this con (or gone to the art show or the dealer room). I dragged her to a laser presentation on the terrace, but it was too warm. I dragged her to The Glen for the costume showcase, but the lights were upsetting to her. Today, we attempted a 10 am about story structures other than the Hero’s Journey, which was mostly about the Hero’s Journey, with a side of generalizations about how other cultures tell stories in other ways but I can’t think of them offhand in any detail. It would be so easy to talk about, oh, I don’t know, Becky Chambers’ work or anyone doing Found Family group of protagonists rotating point of view stories, but nope. Instead, a mention of Ammonite by Griffith which is from 1992, along with mention of Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea trilogy + 1. Anyone who thinks that Tehanu fixes anything is super confused.

So we bailed halfway through and tried the 3D printing panel, but that was currently whinging about people uploading large batch files for sale for 3D printing that compiled lots of other people’s work without attribution or payments or whatever. Reprehensible, for sure, but in no way what we were expecting.

We gave up.

My sister departed the hotel without telling us, but after knocking on her door, I pulled up Find My and then called them to find out if they were running an errand or actually headed to the restaurant. They were headed to the restaurant. We got out the door, and the restaurant at noon was, as expected, very, very busy with the post-church crowd (Kitchen 33). Yet my sister had chosen to sit in the car rather than get into line to start the process of getting a table.

We had a very, very good conversation once we were in line, about what the original plan was, how I had not communicated it, and how I understood largely why she was doing what she was doing, and she volunteered that she should have communicated better herself, which was nice and sincere and honestly I’m super happy that all of us have reached a point where we can have these conversations well in advance of meltdowns and resentment and arguments. She said that traffic into DC would get really ugly after a certain point in time (in the event, she was wrong, because the direction of travel meant she wasn’t going to have to deal with it today anyway, which I had already figured out ahead of time but whatever) and that, in conjunction with they hadn’t had much breakfast worked out to really wanting to get to the restaurant. I didn’t bring up the failure to line up for a table.

I expect we’ll have several more rounds of this type of problem before we finally get it figured out. One of the problems was that I referred to meal plan for today as “brunch” and in her mind, that meant “between breakfast and lunch at noon”, which obviously no one has ever in the history of brunch meant. I mean, that isn’t even elevenses, because she was expecting a full meal. Whatever. She had a plan, and I couldn’t say have fun, enjoy see you in May because A. was already feeling somewhat left out and this was the last element of the trip.

C. held the door for people doing in and out (at least it wasn’t hot where we were waiting just outside), and at least one elderly lady remarked several times what a nice young man C. was and who was raised right, which on balance I thought was extremely cool, even tho in all the obvious individual elements was hilarious. My sister said the credit should go to C.’s dad, a remark that didn’t penetrate the elder lady’s discourse at all. I thanked her for her kindness.

After we left and were driving to the airport, I realized we were going to get there very, very early and I asked A. if she wanted to do something else before heading to the airport. I had google us an art museum and we went to the Virginia Museum of Fine arts. There was a parking spot right in front with no apparent meter or need to pay. There was no fee to enter. We found a nice bathroom right away, and then wandered until I saw a sign for Faberge and I showed her some Faberge eggs and lockets and so forth. Then we backtracked and looked at a collection of metal buckles and belts and hair combs and so forth that were Art Nouveau, and also some furniture. We also poked our heads into an exhibit of Indian art.

We got to the airport at 4:42 and it took us about 15 minutes to get to the gate. The equipment was late arriving, but we got to Logan in a reasonable time and no issues retrieving our car and getting the rest of the way home. I fed A. a 2 egg scramble with bell pepper and american cheese and chips on the side. She’d eaten a bunch of carrots and a banana on the plane. I’d eaten a bunch of strawberries and a banana. While I brought a lot of my snacks back home, we did eat almost everything we’d bought at the Publix (except half the apple cider, hardly surprising).

It took A. forever to get to bed. R. got home around midnight, but didn’t say anything so I wound up having to go back downstairs to confirm he’d put the thawing meat into the fridge (he had). The laundry took a while, but I got it all folded and put away.