This was one of those weekends where you are so very busy, and you take a peek at the activities that are planned, and you think, if I had no child, this would be a COMPLETELY different weekend. Not better. Not worse. Different.Friday, I took the day off of work, and chaperoned Maya's class to the Monet Exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. All I can say is, WOW. There are some paintings that just look...DIFFERENT...in real life. I've seen pictures of Monet's Japanese bridge with waterlillies for as long as I can remember. On posters, greeting cards, whatever. It's background noise for the eyes. Then, there I was, in a VERY crowded room, stifling with too many warm bodies all milling about, and there was this amazing painting, with texture and depth and nuance only hinted at in the posters and cards and so on. It was claustrophobic and crowded and annoying, and really, really wonderful. There were so many pictures that I had never seen before, paintings that are wonderful and rare and so beautiful. (And it was a beautiful, foggy day in the city...with glimpses of the Golden Gate through the cypress trees, it was cool and damp and a balm to those of us in the East Bay, where today it is supposed to be 90 degrees.)
Side note: You all know of my love for my iPod, and some of you know that I love to listen to This American Life on said beloved iPod. Well, a week or so ago, I was listening to This American Life, and the program was about Americans who live in Paris, and why. It was a pretty interesting program, especially the part from the black woman who loves Paris because there she is American first, not black first, and she gets tired of the racism she finds here in America. She is the first to admit that her American accent grants her friendliness not afforded to those with African accents, but enjoys it nonetheless. But I'm digressing too far here. On that same program was a bit by David Sedaris, a frequent commentator on This American Life. He was saying that he doesn't go to museums, because he doesn't see the point in standing in front of paintings and looking at them. Finds no joy or real beauty there. He's never been to the Louvre, or the Picasso Museum, or any of the other famous museums in Paris. I try not to judge others for being different than I am, but when I hear of someone who finds no beauty in museums, I find that I just don't quite understand them as well as I thought I did. I was reminded of Mr. Sedaris' museum comments while we were in the city.Friday night, after returning on a school bus of bedlam, we got cleaned up and went to a party at the board presidents house. I served a 3 year term on the school board at Maya's school, and he was having a party for the outgoing and incoming members. It was nice. Cold, not too many people, but still, nice.
Saturday, we went to breakfast, which was nice, but then we parted ways. Ted went to a birthday party for his dad, and after that to a party at his bosses house. Maya and I went to a Girl Scout cabin in Hayward, which was a very strange place, and just maybe a bit too long to spend in a big room with 19 other people. It was a mother-daughter planning session, where we talked about our goals for this year in Girl Scouts, they talked about their goals, we did exercises to get to know each other better, we cooked and cleaned together, took a hike, found a cemetery, got stung (not me, one of the scouts), basically bonded. Which was all very nice, but I wish it had been an all day thing, instead of 4pm Saturday until 2pm Sunday. Ugh. Not so fond of sleeping on mats on the floor in a room crowded with people I don't really know 
that well. During some mom-down-time, I walked around a bit. The cabin is located behind the "Hayward Plunge", which is this really old building with an indoor pool, for the community to use. It looked pretty worn out to me. But I saw the sign that said it's 70 years old this year, so I guess that's why. I'll probably look somewhat worn out when I'm 70, too. There was also a little cemetery (All Saints Cemetery, it was named) behind the cabin, which kind of freaked one of the girls out. She had a hard time sleeping, and she cried a lot. Poor kid. And selfishly, poor us, because we couldn't sleep either, with her crying. Sigh. (Another side note...I'm so used to seeing modern cemeteries, with their manicured lawns and quaint names for the areas, it's always kind of strange to come across a forgotten place like this one, dried out, littered with broken glass and vodka bottles, with smashed headstones and broken hearts...I always wonder about the people who were left behind...are they dead now, too? The most recent headstone that I saw was 1945, most of the people seemed to have died in the 20s and 30s. And mostly from other countries, maybe.)We came home after that, and took much needed showers, and vegged out.
Monday, after taking Maya to school, I went to a training for a program that I'm implementing at Maya's school. It's not new in the area, but it is new to the school, and I'll be the coordinator. It seems like a really GREAT program, and I'm looking forward to it. The program consists of parents getting trained at the Health and Human Services place (21 hours of training, plus the coordinator training I did yesterday), and then you go back to the school and train the kids to resist drugs and tobacco, deal with bullies, look skeptically at advertising and marketing, deal with alcoholism, on and on and on. What a great program.
So, that was my weekend. It rudely ended this morning, with the barfing of Genevieve, right by my ear. Thankfully, the Oxy Clean seems to have worked. Whew.
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