Alecto's Ophelia

Hatteras photo blog

Random, not so random... This is from the back of the ferry on the way home from Ocracoke. There isn't much to see on Ocracoke but a few small sacred spots which has us make the trip most years although each year I think, this must be my last.

I posted a photo of Edgar's headstone last year but here he is again. Someday I may take a picture of the children's graves because that's who I really go to visit but I've yet to bring myself to overstep those boundaries. What I like about this island and about Hatteras is that people still bury their own dead. I read in a book this last week that we have sanitized death to the point where we no longer know how to grieve. There is this house on Hatteras Island that I ride my bike by and stop to read the headstones in the front yard. I sort of know these families in as much as I'll let myself trespass and I'm beginning to recognize names which makes me sad even though I am happy to see them kept at home. The thing about the babies I visit on Ocracoke is that eight died from the same family one year at a time until I had to wonder if there were any left. Tiny foot stones back to back.

This is back on Hatteras Island from the deck at sunset.

Here are four kids and a nanny in the hot tub on the deck overlooking the ocean.

We all climbed the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse together this year. It was the first time Little Girl was big enough. The winds were too high to step outside but we looked through the windows and door. This lighthouse was moved some time ago and before then no one could climb because it wasn't safe. When I was eight and it was still open I climbed 252 steps (I think) with my grandfather.

Yes, seaoats and that family snapshot that we never seem to take except this year we did and I suspect we'll be thankful for it.

Oh these are called Ass Antlers and I still have mine. I think it will leave a strange tan line when it finally washes off.

Self Portrait. I like this one a lot. I can recognize the shape of me and it makes me feel grounded somehow.

The very lovely Cletus.

I am watching all those kids from behind the seaoats on the dune line but it's too hot even with flip flops to squat that way for very long.

If I was less random this would have been at the top with Edgar. Here are the not so wild wild ponies penned at Ocracoke. They look awfully well groomed and fed to me. I can't tell anymore what they mean by wild; I think it's more of a cultivated sanctuary but I'm just guessing.

Here is the ferry line to come home from Ocracoke. It seems surreal the way the photograph came out.

And here is that egregious machine that transported seven of us over 1200 miles and for some absurd reason appeared to average 17 mpg. I'm not sure how that is possible but I'll accept it. It was a very difficult thing to maneuver if you're used to tiny or mid sized cars and on the second to last day there was a bit of an accident and we've had to address rental auto insurance for the first time ever.

And finally, the same as it ever is and when I lie face down in the wet sand and I can feel the sun burning up the ozone no matter how much sunblock I'm wearing I can close my eyes and shut out almost everything.

NoMans Speaks (sort of)

And here is NoMan's:

1. D'apres Caspar David Friedrich, 2. Hilton Roy's filet mignon, 3. Cherry Hill High School West, 4. End Of The Day, 5. The Olivia Newton-John Connection, 6. my favorite bubbles...., 7. Rocks in my head?, 8. strawberry shortcake cupcakes, 9. CR 401 - Foggy Evening, 10. bless from above, 11. Tenacity - - - a "painting", 12. Nomans Island

1. What is your first name? David
2. What is your favorite food? Filet Mignon
3. What high school did you go to? Cherry Hill High School West
4. What is your favorite color? Sky Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Oliva Newton-John
6. Favorite drink? Ice Cold Beer
7. Dream vacation? Borneo
8. Favorite dessert? Strawberry Shortcake
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Time Traveler
10. What do you love most in life? Family
11. One Word to describe you. Tenacious.
12. Your Flickr name. He doesn't have a flickr name. I have a flickr name. Therefore he used NoMans. It worked out pretty well.

He has nothing to add. I do, but I won't, it's his post. Good night!

A Flickr Meme

1. Heather Hill, 2. Falafel Lunch, Amman Jordan, 3. Cotton Hollow, 4. Indigo, 5. The Charming, yet witty, Jack Sparrow, 6. Life is a Cabernet, my friends! 6:00, 7. De vuelta al fin del mundo, 8. Spoonful of lemon curd! : ), 9. The Traveler, 10. Family outing, 11. we are connecting (please go here and read the photo text), 12. My skin.

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name? Heather
2. What is your favorite food? Falafel
3. What high school did you go to? Glastonbury High
4. What is your favorite color? Indigo
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Captain Jack Sparrow
6. Favorite drink? Cabernet
7. Dream vacation? Tierra Del Fuego
8. Favorite dessert? Lemon Curd
9. What you want to be when you grow up? A Traveler
10. What do you love most in life? My family
11. One Word to describe you. Connected.
12. Your Flickr name. This was hard. Alecto produced an alarming number of field hockey photos and then some really awful stuff and then a bunch of  people in renaissance garb (which might have worked if they looked anything at all like me or mine all dressed up and ready for the renfest). I used Ophelia instead and that was hard too with all these images of drowned women and then I found this woman in the window and that turned out to be exactly right.

I got this from Madeline's site and had a heck of a time working out how to get into FD's mosaic maker because the Flickr badge maker is either random or just your photos. In the end I googled FD's Mosaic Maker and was directed to Big Huge Labs which required my Flickr account agreement. This was not difficult. Once you have created permission you need to copy each link into the upload fields. When you are complete you can create the mosaic from those twelve selected links. After that you need to right click on the mosaic and save as a jpg which can be dragged, pasted or uploaded to your blog depending on your operating system and host site of choice.

I cheated for sure because even though most of these photos came from the first page, with some, I really had to look for what I meant which is probably not the point. Take Falafel for instance. I'm very clear about Falafel and I can't get it over here. I can get what I mean in Jerusalem or Nazareth where the lines between Palestine and Israel blur and the food is somewhere in between or something else entirely or maybe the root of it all. This photo happens to be from Jordan which is just across the way.

Glastonbury High School was another trouble spot. Glastonbury is most commonly tagged in England but I went to high school in Connecticut and that photograph is of Cotton Hollow (tagged GHS) where we all got stoned and jumped off the rocks into the water. Except me. I sat there and played in the warm shallows watching the sunlight bounce off small ripples. I suppose if I wasn't cheating I would have had no choice but to select one of the sixteen photographs of some guy groping some girl's butt and that might have been more appropriate for high school now that I think about it. Good God, I do go on.

I am strangely unlikely to have a celebrity crush. They've always seemed so distant and unreal to me that I just never connected. Captain Jack Sparrow, however, omg, I would so do him. Or something (sorry, NoMans, but I know you understand just this one). And I don't mean Johnny Depp either. I mean Jack Sparrow. Slurp. Smack. Yum.

Sunday - or how all that sitting still actually worked out

Yesterday, right after I posted and gave the computer back to NoMans I sat still for precisely three more minutes and then dove head first into the wool stash abandoned some six months ago. As NoMans was pulling me out by my ankles (it's a BIG stash basket) I snagged myself a ball of unlabeled violet Lopi and a pair of size 11 needles and made a small swatch. Just to see if my hands still remembered what to do. They did.

After that I pulled out a sixteen inch size 11 circular and knit a hat that started with 80 cast on stitches because somewhere in this organic knitter's cluttered brain I recalled once casting 80 stitches onto a size 11 circular needle.

If any of you knit, know your needles or have a passing acquaintance with Lopi then you know I made a lovely violet hat for Hagred's brother. If he grows a little. Then I went to bed. In the morning I pulled out my double pointed needles and finished Hagred's brother's hat. I put it on my head. It fell easily to my chin. It was really pretty though. It occurred to me later that those 80 stitches on the size 11 needles were for a child's sweater. Hmm.

I decided to felt the hat. Felting involves washing and I think maybe drying but I don't really remember because I've only actually read about it, the piece of wool trapped in a pillow case. This causes shrinkage and the agitation causes the fibers to alter until it sort of melts together a bit. The felted hat is still too wide but now it doesn't fall to my chin. I think I was supposed to take it out still damp and shape it but it can be wetted again and then formed properly. If I get around to it.

I made another hat after that and almost got it right by decreasing the stitches to 59 and doing a seed stitch for the first eight rows so that it might stick a bit better. It's still too big. I'll felt that one too.

After that I pulled out two skeins of wool I bought in Vermont last year that just scare me senseless, they're so beautiful. They are raw homespun skeins the first died with pokeberry (it's that lovely orange you see in my lap) and the second is an undied, unbleached pale cream that's been spun tight and is still remarkably sticky from the unprocessed lanolin.

I did all this today because during the trip to Whole Foods, NoMans decided he needed to whip up a batch of nine alarm Texas chili. I don't think he meant to make it nine alarm (yes, I made that up) it's just that he doesn't actually cook much (he preps, cans and cleans) and he was experiencing significant chili abundance. I whipped up a pizza from yesterday's leftover dough while he was out allowing Cletus to scare the pants off herself behind the wheel of my car but other than that, it was his kitchen. I did make the mistake of roasting some sweet red peppers while he was cooking and nearly got a fork in the eye when I approached the counter to clean them. And also there was the matter of the baking bread but I suppose I'll be forgiven for that because he's going to need it to help him survive his chili.

So here I sit with these two skeins of lovely raw wool turned into balls and a plethora of needles to choose from. I also have a mess of books on the subject and if I was so inclined I might march myself down the hall and fetch them but I don't think that's how it's going to go.

How I torture myself at work

How I torture myself at work: Food blogs.

I grew up with a very poor relationship with food. I think I've posted about the frozen block of processed white fish (LADEN with small bones ground right up in the mix) that was placed in a Pyrex dish, covered in thick slabs of Velveeta and placed under the broiler until flames appeared; said block o'fish still very much frozen in the middle and served up with a side of frozen mixed vegetables cooked until a single color and consistency had been achieved and there may also have been a potato baked at 400 degrees for three or four hours. Add that to general adolescent neurosis and you've got an eighty pound sixteen year old. I was five foot six. I don't mean to blame this eating disorder on my mother's cooking or the fact that my father simply did not cook (at least she fed us). What I'm really getting at is the fact that food meant only one thing for a very long time: fuel for the body, to be consumed or not depending on the current level of Alecto Angst.

My mother can cook, by the way. She could always cook. That wasn't the point but boy was I irritated as all get out when I worked that one out.

My love affair with food began when I was eighteen and working in a restaurant that happened to produce some mighty fine fare; I discovered the culinary branch of the arts. During the last twenty-five years I've had an on again off again relationship with my own kitchen. I've moved through the phases of 'I cook but please don't tell anyone' to 'you're the house-husband, therefore you cook the meals' to 'food? what food?' and finally to my current state of bliss.

So where was I? How I torture myself at work: Food blogs. During the month of NaNoWriMo I wrote a book between gaps in database calculations and restructures. And during the month of NaBloWriMo I wrote blog entries while waiting for load files to parse. Since I have been unable to bring myself to open my novel or write a post before 7 PM and my blog buddies post at all hours of the day or night I have been reduced to scanning the food blogs. OK, that was entirely irresponsible. Not only have I not been 'reduced', I'm simply failing to acknowledge my most recent OCD obsession. The food blog.

Since taking off twenty pounds last year and not spending a whole lot of time at the gym (I don't have a membership, I wouldn't go, who am I kidding?) or down on my elliptical or outside walking with Cletus (it's dark out there! wah!) I'm quite cautious about what I put in my mouth during the day and continue to seriously regulate my caloric consumption to nothing but low fat, low sodium food that can remember where it came from. In other words, if it won't do my body a whole lot of good, it's not going in my mouth.

So what happens when I see Tammy's frozen grapefruit concoction at four in the afternoon when the blood sugar is just beginning to plummet? I'll tell you what happens, it sets off a chain of events and denial that has me sniveling into NoMan's shirt at 10 PM the same night begging for a Krispy Kreme New York Cheesecake filled donut. But you know what's even worse? On her side bar she's got this photograph of a very unusual Sheppard's Pie that I've been dying to make but haven't quite gotten around to. Or I start following food links and I'm suddenly in pasta heaven and that Fra Diavolo sauce could be whipped up in no time at all and ladled generously over some over stuffed tortellini.

Mostly this is handled by coming home and making dinner. Other times I contemplate whipping up a batch of butterscotch brownies just before midnight but stop myself because I'm not sure there's quite enough cream cheese in the house. Other times I wonder if licking the screen at four in the afternoon is more likely to get me sent to HR or put me into a diabetic coma?

Lastly, my apologies to RW. Pay no attention to the food talk now.

Transcendental Blues

In the darkest hour of the longest night
If it was in my power I'd step into the light
Candles on the alter, penny in your shoe
Walk upon the water --- transcendental blues

- Steve Earle - Transcendental Blues

I've been listening to one of my Big Furry Guys (Mr. Earle, the king of the Big Furry Guys, for whom I took my very pregnant body - I was actually due that day - to see with Emmylou and Nancy G in the nosebleed seats at the old Palace Theater in Stamford, prior to any kind of renovation, and have never forgotten it) all day, on and off, interspersed with David Gray and Natalie Merchant and now I've moved onto Mark Knopfler's All the Roadrunning singing Beyond My Wildest Dreams.  It's been that kind of Sunday, my favorite kind, in which much was created, baked and consumed and much laid aside for the coming week.

I don't think the world is going to end as we know it in my lifetime.  I'm not even sure it will occur in my children's lives.  I think it will continue to occur gradually until we are lulled into such complacency that we have entirely forgotten ourselves and can so be consumed by a greater and perhaps more worthy beast. I'm not even sure I mind all that much. I don't really know. I do mind starving to death. I do mind poisoning myself. I do mind being asleep. I do very, very much mind that some of my friends are feeling it today. I also mind that I can't quite wrap my mind around the people I don't know, who aren't my friends, who also suffer terribly. I mind a lot of things. I can process a bit of it.

I read an article yesterday about the human race splitting into two separate species in the next 100,000 years. And we were meant to be alarmed. How can any of us truly be alarmed by something 100,000 years in the future?  We aren't wired to process information that isn't immediate. The article discussed the future of The Beautiful and Bright and the Ugly Caretakers. Huh. As if this isn't happening all around us all the time?  And as if the Hapsburgs weren't any indication of what occurs when the gene pool implodes on itself. Huh. And I remember the film Gattica that was released in a time when I stored literally gallons of breast milk in the freezer and sniffed fragrant (I can't really refer to infants as dirty under any circumstances) infant clothing in the privacy of my office to bring on the let down reflex that would catapult my last girl's meals gushing from my corporate breasts into sterilized receptacles and put on ice for another day. I did this twice a day every day and I cried every time I did it because all I really wanted was to be at home in my rocking chair with my last girl at my breast. The day I stopped crying was the day my milk dried up.  I made it six months and for any of you who nursed your children that's a serious feat, to continue to produce while separated from your infant 10 - 16 hours per day.  It broke my heart and I never did get over it.  I just moved on and found other ways to merge the me who is on fire in the world and the me who needs to pull my children in as close as I can get them. It is all about the need to be.

She is nearly seven. I can still feel her in my breasts; they constrict and ache when she cries with a particular tone or is away too long.  My oldest will turn 21 in two weeks. I have not seen him in two months nor had an intimate conversation in over six months. My breasts still ache for him too. I have not forgotten but I have let go. It is very hard and I try not to think too much or I would come apart and fly off into the ether and then what good would I be to anybody? But you know what, I love you, Mikie, I love you so much I can't catch my breath some days. And I believe in you. I believe that you will find your way and in doing so find your way home, where ever home happens to become.  I believe that deep inside, you know how much I love you too. I cut my arm off and my heart out because it was the only thing I could think to do. And I love you. Always.

So, having revealed all that, maybe Sundays will make a little more sense. Maybe I'll stop being the confusing enigma that is not one thing nor the other and pisses off just about everyone but me at one point or another.

I go to work every day because that is me.  That is me being who I am on fire, every single day. My friend The Consultant asks periodically, Alecto, do you like your job?  He asks this because he thinks my business partners are lunatics.  He's right, they are.  And I tell him every time, Consultant of Mine, I love my job and I do my damn best to tolerate them that has the need of me.  A large part of who I am is defined by the creativity that causes these databases to whir and chirp and push out their own product all day long.

I have Sundays because I need to be here as well. I need it all. Some days I think it might kill me and other days, like today, I think I have mastered the alchemy of what has become my life. Here is cheese bread and pumpkin pie plus the leftovers because I always end up with too much. I have moved on to using spelt instead of wheat and I'm still not sure what I really think of it.  It's a bit drier but it rises better, although you can't tell here by the bread because there are two pounds of cheese in these loaves.  They are asiago and goat gouda, both local and both packed with protein. Cletus and I both have food issues. We need to get the most possible bang for our calories to remain healthy. We need to get so used to this kind of gathering and eating that we no longer have the idea of a food issue. The pie comes from a little sugar pumpkin and he didn't take much to cook up and pie at all. He is, however, taking forever to cook because there is so much of him.

Here is the inside of my refrigerator.  Talk about intimate! On the lower shelf are four meals for the coming week. There are duck breasts marinating in a red wine, garlic, shallot, ginger concoction that will be finished in a plum glaze in less than 20 minutes when it's time to cook them.  There are chicken thighs and legs in a chipotle marinade (yes, I make all my own), a flank steak in balsamic and garlic, and finally veal chops in a white wine and lemon reduction with fingerling potatoes, yellow squash and plum tomatoes. This will get us through the week. Remember, Alecto DOES NOT cook on Fridays. There is a cream of tomato soup on the stove with a red wine infusion to go with the cheese bread and the spelt sour dough (I nurture the starter four days a week,  refrigerate two and wake up and utilize one). I'll let you know how I feel about the spelt in another week or so.

NoMans is making pickles. NoMans has been going through some cathartic stuff this week relating to his childhood and what did and did not happen and the fact that, as the youngest of four, his parents and siblings might just have gotten tired and it might not have been all about him after all.  One of the things I love most about him is that this cathartic stuff shows up in pickle making. He takes his ache and makes something beautiful out of it and he feels good in the process. I'll tell you though, I laughed my ass off when he figured out the pickling process was an actual process as opposed to an event and will take 5 - 6 weeks to complete in this climate. And also, I wished for CG's mother's punch bowl but the other yellow bowl will do just fine.

And finally, if you look up above those frou frou cherry veneer cabinets you will see to the left of my new butcher block, an actual wooden bread bowl.  I let go last week in Vermont. I bought the hand milled bowl and then had a long chat with a baker (who talked me into playing with spelt and made the most incredible sour dough raisin bread I've ever tasted and had the coolest mother f'ing long white beard I've ever seen) about the need to generate yeast in the kitchen and the fact that it would, simply, feel better.  He wasn't kidding.  It felt incredible.  It felt alive. My grandchildren, if they are so inclined, can use it. It doesn't mean I don't love the old yellow bowl. I do love the old yellow bowl and it is still mine.

And lastly, here is my beautiful first girl, my reason for being, my reason for breathing life into anything I can get my hands on. She might not be unschooled but she's remarkably creative and free. Her hair changes color weekly and she consumes books at an alarming rate. She paints and draws things I can barely process, she sings in two choirs, has been immersed in Latin for the last two years (chick seems to dig it, go figure)and is wearing her Thing One Disney T in the warm fuzzy memory of turning sixteen in the park of dreams with her best friend, her sister and her two step-brothers. She sits under one of my goofy wool blankets (I knit like a hyperactive fiend) and keeps her macbook close at all times. She too listens to The Big Furry Guy and smiles her secret smile. 

I cried when I wrote this tonight. And it was good. Thanks for listening.

- kisses and good night - Alecto

Being There. Priceless.

El Greco - View of Toledo - The Met

I don't know what got into me, really I do not. My intention was to sleep until my back screamed and then roll out of bed, down the hall to very old coffee and the Saturday version of the Sunday Times.  Today was NoMan's day in New Jersey with the boys.  That means he left around 7ish and even resetting coffee to brew at 8:30 I still meant for it to be old by the time I got to it. And the Saturday version is just because they like to get a jump on the Sunday news. It's true.  Then I was going to roll around in my messy bed with the paper, half a bagel and some more bad coffee and read that paper cover to cover with nobody fighting for shares. And then I was maybe going to get up, have a shower and shave my legs.  I love the Saturday shave, I get a new blade and everything comes off smoooooth as silk.  It's a beautiful thing and part of my favorite Saturday ritual.

Not happening.  Not any of it.

I don't know. Sometime around 8:30 or so, when I could smell the coffee brewing, I started to think about what kind of nice day we were expecting and the fact that it was only me and Cletus Marie all day and we could pretty much do anything we (I) felt like doing. We (I) felt like going to The Met in NYC (Metropolitan Museum of Art).  Which meant We had to get out of bed at a reasonable hour if We wanted to park anywhere near the vicinity of 5th and 80th.

It took me until 9:30 to make up my mind and by then it meant We had to seriously get our acts together and blow out the door. I banged on Cletus's door on the way to coffee and yelled, 'Get up and shower, we're bugging out of here!'  Cletus may have bothered to ask where and for what but I wasn't listening and so we moved. I also told her to look nice.  I don't know why I told her to look nice and I don't know why I thought I wanted to look nice either. This edict resulted in both Cletus and I leaving the house in stacked heels. We wore jeans but we wore stacked heels.  I'd have been better off in my cowboy boots. We looked good.  Don't know why we looked good, but we looked good.  As I backed the truck out of the driveway I remembered a conversation NoMans and I had with another couple mid-way through a whole day tour of Vatican City.  We were talking about my shoes.  These very same shoes (and probably very same jeans) I was wearing.  And the woman said, 'They sure are cute but I bet you're ready to cut your feet off and leave them in the gutter.'  Yup.  I was.  And yes, I did it.  Again.

I didn't tell Cletus where we were going until we were almost there.  Not sure how she worked it out because I can't remember the last time I drove directly to Museum Mile, versus parking at my brother's building or somewhere else, or taking the train. She worked it out about 8 blocks North of our destination.  She looked down at her feet in her super hot sexy Rat Stomper boots and then looked back at me and said, 'Momma, I look GOOD, why are we going to a museum?'

Sigh.

When we pulled up to park the nice man had a look in the back of the truck and said 'I hope you don't have a body back there or anything.'  I said, 'No, just the contents of my closet which my lovely husband swore he was taking to Good Will, oh four or five weeks ago now.'  He laughed and let us in.

Now let me tell you, I haven't driven in NYC in quite awhile.  This is not a skill that once honed will ever really go away but I was driving the truck and it was a beautiful day and people were everywhere and by the time I got us parked and into the back entrance I was pretty well good and flustered. The fact that Cletus did not abandon me at the first opportunity is testament to her general good nature because if it had been me and my mom had been behaving like an utter lunatic I'd have bolted for sure, or at least sulked about it. Cletus was golden, even if she was laughing at me and still asking, 'Um, why the hell are we in this god forsaken museum?' Because we are, darlin', because we are.  And you'll suck it up and like it too!

We wandered first through the Greco-Roman period.  This part was really surrealistic for me because the last time I wandered through the Greco-Roman period I was in blasted Greco-Rome and the stuff is still in the streets, not locked behind glass or up on pedestals.  It was just plain weird and then it was sad because I'd kind of gotten used to just being able to pick up and fly to Europe for a long weekend if I felt like it.

OK, maybe that sounds a little ridiculous but there is a reason I do what I do for a living.  There's a reason my husband does what he does.  And if you take those two incomes, even after subtracting maximum 401k withholding, Other investments, Alimony and Child Support, we still do OK. And one of the reasons that we choose to do what we do is because it gives us the means to pick up and go if we are so inclined, and both of us are very much inclined. Only we can't do it anymore.  We probably can't do it again for another two years because I probably cannot leave Ms Cletus behind, or take her with me, until she is eighteen. And while that's a price I'm more than willing to pay I did get hit upside the head with it today and I stood there looking at the Vermeer's and the Caravaggio's and wishing for some Bernini statuary and a Piazza Navona and wishing for one particular Caravaggio that I remembered (after tearing from one end of the Dutch Painters exhibit to the other) was probably in Rome at the moment.

And it all boils down to this:  I miss being on adventure with my husband. And I cried. And then I wiped off my face, got a good look at my daughter and said, 'Alecto, you are here today.  Be here.' And then the day took off.

We looked at everything.  We looked at musical instruments and made roaring noises at each other in the horn section. We looked at armor and weapons and giggled over the one cod piece some assine king had made to display his enormous erection during battle (um, most warriors tuck the boys up under chain mail and as close to the skin as possible - this guy had it on display and it freaking curled up at the end too!).  We did look at the Vermeer's and I cried because the man was a genius and I had the great privilege to stand in front of a handful in New York City because I live within the 60 mile radius (barely) and have the wherewithal to get myself there. We went to the Eternal Ancestor exhibit and learned about the Congo and the Fang region and the death, fertility and burial rites.  I even a bought a book (which scandalized Cletus because these things ain't cheap) because I was so completely enthralled with one particular burial process where - I think, I still don't quite get it yet - the deceased is sewn into what resembles an over-sized ugly doll and then buried.

And then we had tea.  We got in line for tea at 2:30 and were ready to pass out. Cletus looked at me and said, 'I just want a bloody cold drink already.  I do NOT drink tea.'  I said, 'No, no, Cletus, we are HAVING tea.' Cletus wasn't having any of it but Momma was and so Cletus snarled and sucked it up.  Twenty minutes later we were seated.  Twenty minutes after that we had tea. 

It was wonderful and amazing and from here on out if anyone says the word tea to Cletus she will immediately jump to attention and ask if clotted cream and lemon curd are possibly going to be involved, in which case she will practically mainline the tea to get to the goodies. There were little egg salad tea sandwiches with scallions and asparagus.  They were round and made on dense white bread.  There were the most delicate little chicken and apricot pies and salmon rolls and savory pancakes.  There were scones, and tarts and petit fours. And there were four pots of clotted cream, blackberry jam, lemon curd and marmalade. The best part was that everything was teensy tiny so that you could have just a taste of many, many wonderful sweet and savory things. There might have been champagne involved as well but I was driving.

Cletus had to be told to wipe her face.

The icing on the cake was our exit from the building.  After years and years of visiting this place I still don't get it.  I can get as lost as all get out and spend hours happily wandering in ever widening circles until I pass out from sheer exhaustion but fail to actually locate an exit. (I do a lot better at the Museum of Natural History, for some reason)

I told Cletus, as I poured over the map, that I had no idea how to get out of the building toward the garage.  Cletus said she had it handled, all we had to do was go back to the Greco-Roman period which was right below the nearly closed Islamic section and we knew right where that was.  We went there.  Unfortunately as we went there Cletus decided to gallop (like a horse on the way back to the barn) through Eternal Ancestors which caused one of the Docents to gallop after her in serious alarm which caused me to use 'the voice' to get her attention which caused the Docent to nearly drop dead in fright. After that she had the good graces to slow down.  Somewhat. (Cletus has got Momma figured out, if you go too slow Momma will stop to look at things and we WILL NEVER GET OUT OF HERE).

Once we got to Greco-Roman Cletus led us through eight precise turns and I'll be damned if that wasn't exactly the backwards path from how we started our day.  Except that on the eighth turn I realized we were passing the same bathtub for the third time, just at different angles. The exit was at the entrance or the way we'd come back. Cletus was beside herself, I'm still having fits of giggles.

I'm so glad I got out of bed today. Maybe I'll shave my furry self in the morning.