Tripping

Larry and I actually managed to see a movie together Sunday. I know! It's almost as if we were mature adults with control over our own schedules, right? We saw The Post, a paean to old-fashioned newspaper reporting and publishing if I ever saw one. I swear, the lengthy close-ups of type-setting and printing presses bordered on journalism porn.

I loved it.

This is the current tableau on my dining room table.
I'm calling it "Christmas Meets Spring."

And then Monday was a day off, and darned if I have the faintest idea what I did that day. Ditto for Tuesday. But Wednesday, a friend and I decided we were still young and energetic enough to drive 3 hours with our girls to visit an historical site we'd been meaning to take them to for a year or so now. And then 3 hours back, because we decided it was a great idea for a day trip.

That's 6 hours of driving, people - I did the math. But hey, it's worth it to get the girls to learn about our nation's history, all while having fun, right?

Wait, I just asked Susie what she liked - was it seeing an actual cannonball embedded in the side of a house? The authentic archaeological diggings? The entertaining docents? She said, "The potato chips and the ice cream," so maybe it wasn't worth it, after all. I don't know. What I do know is that I'll have to file this experience under the I'm not as young as I used to be category. I've spent the last 2 days recuperating from what should have been a simple homeschooling field trip.

I mean, Larry and I are no slouches at this sort of thing - I can't even count the number of times we've been to historical reenactment villages and farms and ships and what not. Sturbridge Village, Williamsburg, Plimoth Plantation - you name it, we've done a day trip there. For years, no vacation was complete without driving to see people dressed in clothes from different time periods, operating colonial-era printing presses and spinning fiber. If we HAD ever gone to DisneyWorld, the kids probably would have been confused that Goofy wasn't showing them how to hammer out a horseshoe or that Minnie wasn't sitting at a loom, weaving tablecloths.

Normal vacation activity for our family, unfortunately

Yeah, we were that sort of homeschooling family. Yet the years apparently have taken a toll on me, which has me questioning my half-baked plan to drag at least a few of the kids to some national parks out west this summer. Do I have the stamina anymore? Can I manage the driving and the hiking and the visits to re-created gold-mining towns? Most importantly, will there be potato chips and ice cream?

All this remains to be seen. Odds are, none of it will happen, due to my not having made hotel reservations, oh, gazillion months ago. Who knew? And the girls have categorically refused to go camping this summer. Larry looked surprised at this news. "They don't want to?" he asked, with the same level of surprise one would display upon hearing that his children were not actually his own. "But it's so much fun!"

Which makes me think Larry has early-stage dementia, because he apparently doesn't remember back a mere 6 months ago when one teen (who shall go unnamed) did her very best to render our annual camping sojourn in Maine a living hell. Or he just likes to torture all of us - that's a possibility, too...


[Colonial dancers image: Old Sturbridge Village]