Back to a family of three

Well, our long-awaited, much-anticipated seven full days (plus two travel days) with Rocket Boy are over. Today is one of those travel days and he's already back in St. Louis -- I just got a text saying his plane has landed. So now he'll resume his life there. And man, I am just so sad.

I'll get over it, of course. This depression doesn't feel like it's going to be super long-lasting. Hmm. I guess it kind of depends on what the weather decides to do the next few weeks, because my moods are so responsive to whether the sun is shining. The week ahead is predicted to have plenty of sunshine. That will help.

It was such an awful week! I'm being honest here, not looking on the bright side. (I'll do that in a bit.) Rocket Boy arrived last Saturday night and we were all so happy to be together. He mentioned that he felt a little under the weather, but it didn't seem like any big thing. Sunday, his first full day with us, he had a headache and took a nap in the afternoon, but that's not unusual. That night the illness took hold -- he was delirious and feverish. And Monday we spent four hours in the ER. Tuesday he felt a little better (they gave him fluids and Tamiflu), but he still spent most of the day in bed. Because he was cold, he started wearing a sweater that he found in his closet (see photo), and that I swear I'd never seen before. It zipped up, just like a Mr. Rogers sweater, and it made him look like a little old man. Christmas Eve, after the kids went to bed, I just flung the stuffers in the stockings, dragged the big Lego sets out of the garage and threw them randomly around the living room, and then we went to bed. Not a night to linger and reminisce about Christmasses past.

Wednesday -- Christmas morning -- he and I both woke up before the twins did, but when they got up, he turned over and went back to sleep. So I did present-opening alone with the twins, just as if RB were in St. Louis. The kids were happy, but subdued. Only Chester seemed really excited about his present (this was supposed to be for Pie Bear, but Mr. Fluffypants found it highly entertaining). For the first time ever, we opened presents one by one, each of us watching the others open their gifts. Another thing I noticed -- there were almost no complaints. The only thing mentioned was that there weren't enough packages to open. (Remember this for next year! Wrap up anything, just so there's more to open!) Only later did I hear that the warm fuzzy throw I got for Kid A was actually smaller than he'd wanted, and the Lego set I got him wasn't his first choice. Over the past year, a certain level of maturity seems to have occurred. Is it because Rocket Boy has been gone? Or are the boys just growing up?

I can't remember which day RB started having problems with his leg, but I know we considered going back to the ER on Christmas Day. Rocket Boy has lymphedema in one leg, has had it for about 30 years, no explanation (it's usually the result of cancer treatment). Because the lymph system in that leg doesn't process fluids properly, he always has to be careful. He wears a compression stocking night and day, takes sodium selenite, exercises regularly, and watches the leg closely for cuts and abrasions. When he gets a cold or flu, the leg sometimes reacts. This time, after the flu symptoms got better, the leg started getting red and painful, a possible sign of cellulitis (which can be extremely serious). He finally went to an Urgent Care place, on Friday, where the doctor told him his leg might be reacting to the fluids he was given when he was in the ER. The doc gave him a diuretic and told him not to take it at night because it would dehydrate him too much. So RB took it right before bedtime and woke up on Saturday with a terrible headache, but with the leg somewhat improved.

Rocket Boy had so many plans for his visit (as did I). He wanted to take the kids on various outings. He wanted to fix things. He wanted to clean things. But for the most part, whatever didn't get done on December 22nd, didn't get done. He did manage to spend some time working on the lights on the house, all of which had died except one little string of white incandescent lights. He bought several boxes of LED lights on sale and put some green ones on the house (see photo at top). The rest will have to wait for next year. Yesterday, the last full day of his visit, he spent most of his time putting together a device that will gradually light up in the morning, waking the kids up gently (he has one in his basement in St. Louis that he built and the kids had asked for one of their own). It looks sort of like a puffy white cloud. He got it all set up last night, sure it would work, but instead it came on during the middle of the night and turned itself off at 3 am (according to Kid A, who was awakened by it). So, RB spent some more time fixing it this morning before catching his bus to the airport. And that was our Christmas.

OK, time for the bright side. We got to spend seven full days together as a family. Rocket Boy and I spent more time together than we might otherwise have done, because he was lying in bed most of the time (including a hospital bed) instead of taking the kids on outings. None of us has really caught what he had, although Kid B has a mild cold. We all got along well together, no fights worth mentioning. And life goes on.

We're planning to skip January travel and bring him back here for an extended President's Day weekend in February. So January will, as usual, be a time for hibernation. And reading, lots of reading. It'll be OK. We'll survive. I just have a big ache in my heart -- not really because Christmas was spoiled, because who cares about that. But having him be sick reminded me of how old we both are, how our time together and with the kids is finite. I'm so glad he's enjoying his work, getting this last chance to use his marvelous brain and earn some good money. I just wish he weren't so far away.

Made it to Christmas Eve

No matter how organized I am, no matter how many things I get done ahead of time, the days leading up to Christmas are always a mad rush. Before this past week started I thought I had everything under control, but then on Sunday the 15th, Chester (big white cat) got sick (necessitating multiple trips to multiple veterinarians, massive amounts of money spent, miserable attempts at "pilling" the cat, the cat's retaliation in the form of not using the litter box, etc.), and our internet went out (necessitating multiple calls to CenturyLink, a fruitless trip to buy a new router, an attempt to use an old router I found in the garage, and a day spent waiting for the CenturyLink technician to show up). I spent a lot of time cleaning, but certain things didn't get done, most notably the bathroom floor. Finally on Saturday night Rocket Boy came home, to everyone's joy, but that night he discovered that a cat had peed in the bathroom (the pee was under the bathroom scale, which I would have discovered if I'd cleaned the bathroom floor). Then on Sunday night RB came down with the flu (necessitating a trip to the emergency room on Monday morning). Just one of those really special weeks (actually 9-day stretch, but whatever).

All that was enough to keep me from doing the last bits of Christmas prep. And so here it is Christmas Eve and we're almost -- but not quite -- ready. I still have most of the presents to wrap, and of all things, we don't have enough Hanukkah candles to make it through the eight days. The grocery store is out of them, Target is out of them, Michael's is out of them, JoAnn's is out of them. McGuckin's is probably out of them (I admit I didn't go there today to check). It's 3:15 pm on Christmas Eve and I don't want to go to any more stores. We have enough candles for tonight and tomorrow night, and then after that maybe we could use birthday cake candles. Or not burn Hanukkah candles, since we're not Jewish and we really don't need to! We like to, though, especially on the nights when we're also burning advent candles. We'll see what happens.

I managed to get eight batches of cookies made this year, if you count fudge as a cookie, which we do. Here are the eggnog cookies and the meringues that I screwed up, so they're flat. They still taste good, though, and the eggnog cookies are yummy scrumptious. Those aren't anything my family ever made -- I think I got the recipe off the internet at some point. Don't know why I thought I needed another cookie recipe, but they are tasty.

The last two batches were oatmeal crunch (which we also call date crunch -- it has dates, oatmeal, and nuts -- I use walnuts) and fudge. I usually make good fudge, but something went wrong this year, and it doesn't look right, too grainy. It looks like the butter didn't mix in properly. It tastes OK, so I'm going to go with that.

Last night the kids and I made our usual trip to Westminster to get a honeybaked ham and had our usual dinner out at Chili's afterwards. But boy, with Rocket Boy home sick in bed, it wasn't much fun. Actually, correction, it was perfectly pleasant. I just missed him. The boys and I go out to eat every Saturday night, sometimes at Chili's, and it's usually fine, as was this night. But when Rocket Boy's in town, it's natural that I should want him to eat out with us. Oh well, not his fault he got terribly sick.

Can you hear that self pity creeping in? I'm so glad he's home and we're all together. And I'm so mad that he's sick! I'm mad that I'm probably going to get it next -- I feel very tired today. And the kids will get it, maybe. And I'll have to take care of everybody while being sick. And by the time Rocket Boy is all better, it'll be time for him to leave. There, I said it. I'm feeling it. I'm owning it. And there's nothing I can do about it.

So now I will finish this post and go put away laundry. After that I'll wrap presents and unload the dishwasher. Dinner will be pretty easy -- I just have to steam broccoli and bake sweet potato fries in the oven. The ham is pre-cooked and pre-sliced. I bought rolls, so we'll heat them up. And we'll drink sparkling cider. Couldn't be easier. On Christmas Day I'll make Barbara's famous potato dish, and we'll eat that with the ham and rolls and maybe a green salad. There's very little for me to do. After that, if I do get sick, the cupboards, fridge, and freezer contain lots of easy to prepare (or already prepared) food. I've made things easy on myself and on everyone. It's all going to be fine. You did it, kiddo, you made it through the ramp up to Christmas. It's all going to be OK.

O Christmas Tree

Rocket Boy has been gone for over seven months now, and in many ways I've adjusted. I don't spend all my time fussing about being the only one to cook dinner, the only one to do the dishes, the only one to take care of everything that needs attention. Mostly I just do it. If it's something I don't know how/don't want to do, I leave it until Rocket Boy's next visit. But then comes Christmas, and suddenly there are a lot of things I can't really set aside until he gets here. True, he's arriving the night of the 21st, and we could do all the gift shopping and write all the cards and put the tree up and decorate it on the 22nd and 23rd and 24th. We could, but that would be awful. I want to enjoy his visit and enjoy the holiday, not just work the whole time. So I got the cards done early, and I'm basically done shopping. I've made six batches of cookies. There's a holiday cloth on the coffee table and a semi-holiday tablecloth on the dining room table and a wreath with a red bow on the front porch.

Then there's the tree. We have a very elderly fake tree, probably from the 1960s. The little instruction booklet that came with it (which of course Rocket Boy still has), looks very old-fashioned. It doesn't have a date, but on the front, under this nice picture, it says this: "Created and manufactured by British Crown Colony of Hong Kong for the S. S. Kresge Company, Troy, Michigan 48084." I searched the internet for something similar and found a four-foot version (ours is six-foot) on ebay which identified it as being from the '60s. So our tree is probably at least 50 years old. It still looks nice from a distance, but in reality it's falling apart. And it's Rocket Boy's job to set it up, and fix the parts that break, and put the lights on. Not mine, Rocket Boy's.

Only this year, it's my job. Mine and the twins' -- they've helped a little. They went down in our scary basement with me to fetch all the Christmas stuff, and carried most of it upstairs and into the house for me. Kid B went back down with me when we realized we were missing the most important box of ornaments and the little folding table that the tree stands on. I assembled the tree myself while they were at school, using this little diagram and trying to remember all the things Rocket Boy has told me about the tree over the years.

I wanted to put the lights on before my book group came, on Monday, but I discovered that the lights were not in any of the tubs and boxes we'd dragged up from the basement. "They're in a gray storage container," Rocket Boy told me. Tuesday morning I went back down the concrete stairs, past the spiders who were somehow NOT all dead, even though it's freezing cold, and in a corner of the basement, on the highest shelf, was an unmarked gray storage container with the lights in it. But when I brought the lights up and looked at the tree again, I realized that it had lost a branch already. When I tried to put the branch back in its slot, the slot broke apart in my hand. Every year Rocket Boy repairs a bunch of these slots, and every year more of them break. He solders them back together, but that's way beyond me. I decided that I would buy brown duct tape and tape the branch and the broken slot back together and he could fix them for real later. But I made the mistake of telling Rocket Boy my plan. "Don't do that," he scolded me. "Duct tape will make everything sticky. Use a hose clamp."

A what?

You can sort of see a hose clamp in this close-up tree picture, the little metal thingy around the base of one of the upper branches. That's the branch that broke off. Below it is the branch that broke off when I was putting the hose clamp thingy on the upper branch, and you can sort of see that the lower branch now has a hose clamp thingy on it too. I put them on using a thingy that's sort of like a screwdriver only different, called a nut driver. Rocket Boy was able to tell me exactly where in our disastrously messy garage I could find a nut driver, and it worked quite well. I am almost out of hose clamps, though, so when I break the next branch I'll have to make a hardware trip to get more hose clamps.

You're probably thinking, why doesn't she just get a new tree? And I should, I should. If Rocket Boy leaves this mortal sphere before I do, I will be running right down to McGuckin's or Target to buy a new tree. But as long as he's part of this family, I feel as though getting a new tree should be a mutual decision. At least that's what I think today.

Anyway. The next step was the lights. I really dragged my feet on that, somehow anticipating the disaster that lay ahead of me. Rocket Boy tried to help over the phone. "There are five good strings of lights in the gray tub," he told me. "And be sure to use the green extension cord." I found the green extension cord with no trouble and noted that it had several different places to plug in lights. It also looked to be in good condition, unlike many of our extension cords. But then Kid B and I looked for the five good strings of lights. After much searching through the gray tub, we found the five strings RB must have meant. But we also found four other strings of lights, all carefully labeled "Not working," and the date on which they were found not to be working.

"Why," I said to Kid B, "are we storing four large strings of lights that are NOT WORKING?" Because you know if Rocket Boy has labeled something as not working, they're not working. He doesn't give up on things easily, certainly not electrical things.

We soon found that one of the strings he claimed did work was not working either. But four strings seemed to work (three incandescent, one LED), so we put them on the tree. This took us only about halfway up the tree, so obviously we were going to need to buy more lights. The strings that were on the tree also looked horrible, because they weren't the kind that plug into each other. They all had to be plugged into the green extension cord. I did not understand that the green extension cord was supposed to be wound around the tree trunk so that its various outlets are distributed up and down the trunk. Instead I just left it down at the bottom of the tree, and so all the light strings also hung down to the bottom of the tree and got tangled up and looked ghastly. And then one of the strings of incandescents went out.

So I called Rocket Boy and yelled at him about all the problems with the lights. He apologized for not having told me various things. He also told me a long story about how he'd been babying our incandescent lights along for decades, and how badly designed they were, and how LED lights are actually better. "OK," I said. "I'm going to go buy four strings of LED lights. Goodbye." But first I took all the lights off the tree, since we were obviously going to be starting over, and in the process, all the incandescent lights stopped working.

I went to the little hardware store near us and discovered that one string of 100 LED lights would cost $21. Ah, that must be why we hadn't replaced all our incandescents sooner. So I bought just two strings and took them home. Then I studied the green extension cord and tried winding it around the trunk of the tree. That made SOOO much more sense. I put on our old LED lights and the two new strings... and the tree was only about two-thirds covered. Should I go back to the hardware store for more $21 lights? I finally decided to try again to make the incandescents work, and I got two of them going again. I put them on the top third of the tree. It looks a little ugly, with the cords showing, but the tree is lit. And I only broke one more branch while I was putting the lights on, fixed it with a hose clamp, and will go buy more hose clamps tomorrow or the next day.

So now we have a lighted tree. And I am a basket case. We'll try to put the ornaments, or some of them, on tomorrow. First I plan to get a very good night's sleep.

First week of December

I love the way the December calendar works out this year, with the 1st on Sunday. The weeks are so nicely laid out as a result. So today is Sunday, December 8th and the first week of December is over. It was a busy week for us, in a pleasant way.

I have a Roz Chast cartoon from the New Yorker on my refrigerator that's titled "The Fall Collection." I particularly identify with the first outfit, "The perfect ensemble for days that become increasingly cold and dark." But I also like the middle outfit, "What to wear when it suddenly hits you: soon, the "holidays." A few months ago I got interested in trying to plan ahead for those "holidays," so as to enjoy them instead of getting all stressed out and doing everything at the last minute. I copied a lot of stuff from one of those "Get all your Xmas shopping done in July!" websites and even made week-by-week plans for cleaning the house and otherwise getting ready. I cleaned a couple of rooms, sort of, and then started cutting corners, and anyway, it didn't work out. But I did do a few things early, most importantly the cards. I actually took them to St. Louis with me and had Rocket Boy sign them all. I can't believe it's December 8th and I'm done. I feel so free.

I also thought I would start baking cookies early, but there is a problem with that idea: the cookies will be stale by Christmas. On the other hand, the twins inhale everything I bake, so it is more likely that the cookies will vanish before getting stale. My goal is to dole them out to the twins slowly, a few each day, so that by Christmas we'll have at least a few left, just to show that I did in fact make all these varieties. This will work as long as the twins do not find the cookie tins, which are in the garage, and it's very cold in there, so it tends to discourage young people who like to wear shorts and t-shirts and go barefoot around the house. I've made three batches so far: confetti cookies (prettier than they taste), panocha squares, and Norwegian holiday cookies. (I don't know what is so Norwegian about them. They probably have another name that I don't know. This is one of my grandmother's recipes. She was not Norwegian.) (Postnote: After doing a little research I discovered that the Norwegian holiday cookies are probably a version of thumbprints, and are more Swedish than Norwegian.)

We had several activities to attend this past week. Tuesday, there was the Winter Arts and Academics Festival at the twins' middle school, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Thursday we attended a Posada, also at the middle school, which was interesting in part because of the different crowd. Boulder is a mostly white, Anglo community, and I have gotten used to seeing mostly white, Anglo parents at school events. But the twins' elementary school and now their middle school also have a not insignificant Latinx population (plus the middle school has a bilingual program), and those people attended the Posada. The kids and I were almost the only Anglos there, except for some teachers. My Spanish is very rusty, but it's not gone entirely, and I have some knowledge of Hispanic culture (from growing up in California, six weeks in Mexico one summer, three weeks in Guatemala another, reading, studying Spanish for a few years, etc.). So it was fun. The photo shows Kid B trying to hit the pinata.

When we got home, I pulled out our old copy of Nine Days to Christmas: A Story of Mexico by Marie Hall Ets and Aurora Labastida and re-read it to the twins, which helped them understand some aspects of the Posada that had confused them, such as why we were standing outside the cafeteria while most of the people were inside, singing a song in Spanish that they couldn't understand, until finally we were let inside. This is quite a good children's book, although I think the text is a little long for a child the same age as the protagonist (five year old Ceci, who is in kindergarten). The fact that my eleven year old middle school students were interested enough to listen to it says something.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had two activities. In the morning, Kid B and I attended the annual harp concert at the main library. I love this concert, and the last two years Kid B has really wanted to go to it, but this year he was ambivalent and I kind of had to bribe him (I promised to drop him off at the George Reynolds branch library afterwards so that he could play on the computers). This made me sad -- I think it won't be much longer until the twins don't want to do anything like this with me. I was remembering when I took Kid B to a performance of the Nutcracker a couple years ago. He probably wouldn't want to do that now. But I can't really complain. I didn't want to do things with my mother for at least ten years, maybe fifteen, starting around this age. On the other hand, boys are different from girls. We'll see what happens. Anyway, the harp concert was lovely. Last year the performers all dressed in velvet, which I loved. This year most of the harpists' outfits included red. One girl's dress reminded me of the dress I wore to the Paly Winter Formal back in 1977.

Saturday night we attended the Boulder Parade of Lights, downtown. We took the bus, which was standing room only and crawled through terrible traffic. "I don't know why anyone tries to drive to this," I told the twins. "Much more sensible to take the bus." We arrived just as the parade was starting and found places to stand on the north side of Walnut. The kids found it an excellent place to get candy, even though those handing it out had to climb over dirty piles of snow to reach them. We enjoyed seeing their middle school's marching band (they screamed their teacher's name, but he didn't appear to hear them). Afterwards we walked over to Pizza Colore on the mall, where we'd eaten some good pizza a few months ago. But many other people had the same idea, and the tiny indoor seating area was full, so we sat in the tiny outdoor seating area instead. This did not make the twins happy. It was probably the warmest Parade of Lights I've ever attended, but that doesn't mean it was warm. We miss the Cheesecake Factory, which was always perfect for post-parade dinners. We finished our pizza quickly and walked to the closest bus stop to wait for the bus that would take us home. And waited. And waited. About an hour later, a bus finally arrived. I don't know what was wrong, but we were very cold by then. I told the twins that next year we'll DRIVE downtown (we'll need to be early, if they're in the marching band).

Today we're thinking of starting to decorate the house. The house is not truly ready for this -- I need to vacuum, at the very least. But it's Christmas, and the house should be decorated. The first step is to clear away a space for the tree, which I have done (see photo), and the next step is to bring the tree and all the storage containers up from the basement. I told the twins that and they said NO, they were NOT going down in the basement. But the spiders that live there are all dead in the cold (though their egg sacs line the walls). And it's important to do this between snowstorms. It's chilly today, but the back yard at least is free of snow (the north-facing front yard probably won't be free of snow until April). So I must finish up this blog post and get going. I'll let you know the results next time I post.

Home from St. Louis

It is December! And we are home from our travels -- and the twins are back in school, so I have some time to decompress and think about what to do next. We had a wonderful time in St. Louis, visiting Rocket Boy. Here are some highlights.

We flew to St. Louis last Sunday (the 24th), arriving at about 4:30 in the afternoon. The day went very smoothly -- caught the bus to the airport with no problem, plenty of time at the airport, got three seats together on the plane, perfectly smooth ride (Kid B said it felt like he was in a car), and Rocket Boy there to meet us at the other end. We had rented an Airbnb because RB just lives in a basement, so we went there to drop off our luggage and in the refrigerator we found this surprise! Rocket Boy had bought it and brought it to the Airbnb just before he picked us up. We ate it for several nights.

Rocket Boy had gotten us tickets to ride on St. Louis's newest Ferris wheel, this monster down by the old Union Station. The wheel is 200 feet tall. What terrified me was learning that the first Ferris wheel ever built, which turned at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and later at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, was 264 feet tall (and of course didn't have nice safe enclosed compartments like this one). RB and I enjoyed the ride, but the twins were scared. Afterwards we had a delicious dinner at Landry's Seafood House. I had fabulously wonderful swordfish and Rocket Boy had seafood pasta. Pricey, but worth it.

Monday morning RB had to work, so the twins and I took a Lyft to the St. Louis Zoo. (The plan was that RB would pick us up there after work, around 2 pm.) Taking the Lyft was unexpectedly exciting. I didn't download the app until that morning, wasn't familiar with it at all, and when I started to order our ride, we weren't quite ready to go. The app asked me whether we wanted to go now or later and I chose "now." The app then informed me that my ride would be there in 3 minutes. "Ack! Three minutes!" We went tearing around the apartment, putting on shoes, grabbing water bottles, etc. Once outside, we had to find the address where it would pick us up. It was very close, but I wasn't familiar with the house numbers yet. We raced one way, then turned around and raced the other. Meanwhile, a black car showed up and parked across the street. "Maybe that's our Lyft," Kid B said, but I didn't see a Lyft sticker. The app sent me a message: "Your ride will depart in 3 minutes." "Ack! Our ride is leaving!" Fortunately, the driver of the black car then called me and told me where she was, and so we hurried across the street and were off to the zoo at Forest Park.

We enjoyed the zoo, especially the penguins and the lemurs. One amazing thing about the zoo is that it's FREE, so I spent more money there on souvenirs and food and donations than I might otherwise have done. There was a Starbucks in the park, so we had "lunch" from there (the twins adore Starbucks). After a few hours we were tired of walking, so we sat at a picnic table outside the Primate House and ate the M&Ms I had bought for the plane. It was a beautiful day and we were on a hill near a lot of trees, so I started looking for birds. I am not much of a birder anymore, but there were two birds I really wanted to see in St. Louis: a Eurasian Tree Sparrow, which is found nowhere else in the U.S. (it's an import from Germany), and a Northern Cardinal, because Rocket Boy said he hadn't seen one in a long time and they had probably migrated. "No, they don't migrate," I said, and then had to prove it. While we sat at the table I looked up and saw a cardinal fly by! I tried to find it again, but no luck.

Around 2:30 we decided to exit the zoo and wait for Rocket Boy outside. I called him to see when he might be coming. "We have a problem," he said, sounding very unhappy. "My car won't start." Remember that Rocket Boy is driving his dad's old Mitsubishi Montero, which is 28 years old. It has a lot of problems: windows that don't go back up if you roll them down, doors that don't open from the outside (Kid B's) or the inside (mine). But it had a new battery. "It's not the battery, it's the switch," RB told me. "I can usually start it in neutral, but not today." We decided that he would call Enterprise ("we'll pick you up"), get a rental car, and then come get us. In the meantime, the kids and I would start walking to the Science Center, another amazing free thing in Forest Park, and we would all meet up there. So we started walking. Unfortunately it is a mile and a half from the south entrance of the zoo to the north entrance of the Science Center, and we had already been walking around the zoo for four hours. Plus, I'm developing plantar fasciitis again, so I was in a lot of pain. Partway along our walk I called RB to learn that the Enterprise driver had been given the wrong directions and was now stuck in traffic on the opposite side of the city. Obviously we were not going to be rescued any time soon. The twins and I walked on, Kid A begging me to call another Lyft. By the time we got to the Planetarium (the north side of the Science Center), I was in bad shape. I sat on a bench and watched the twins play while we waited. The Science Center closed at 4:30 pm, and then we waited outside on a bench as it got cooler and darker. I think Rocket Boy finally showed up around 5 pm.

We had tickets to see "Garden Glow" at the Missouri Botanical Garden at 5 pm, so we needed to rush over there, but St. Louis rush hour traffic interfered with that plan. We finally got there around 5:30, and they let us in. We decided to eat dinner at the restaurant first, which was a good plan. I had a spicy tuna melt, the kids had quesadillas, RB had quiche. Then we set out to walk through the "Glow." The Garden is Rocket Boy's favorite thing in St. Louis and I was sorry we weren't seeing it in daylight, but even in the dark it seemed lovely. I started thinking we should go back to St. Louis in the spring, perhaps May, to see what it's like then.

Tuesday morning, the twins and I took another Lyft to the City Museum, an amazing place for kids to play -- not really a museum at all. It's on several floors of an old industrial building (I think maybe a shoe factory?) and also outside and on the roof (but the roof is closed until May, another reason to go back then). There are slides and things to climb on all over the building -- pictures don't do it justice, the place is nuts! It was supposed to rain all day, but the rain held off until around 2 pm, which meant the kids could play on the stuff outdoors off and on until then. Another piece of luck was that the museum is not usually open on Tuesdays and the fact that it was open on the 26th was very poorly advertised, so there weren't very many people there (also, I believe school was still in session in St. Louis). The kids wore themselves out playing. We were there for six hours.

Once again, Rocket Boy was delayed in picking us up because of his car. He had left it in the parking lot at work the day before, so after work he needed to get it towed to a garage and this time, although the driver had the right address, AAA sent a battery-charging truck instead of a tow truck, so he had to wait for another truck. Fortunately, the garage was near the Enterprise car rental, so it would be easy to return the rental car later. When he finally came and got us, he took us to his basement, which we had been very eager to see. It's a very nice basement, furnished with a mixture of things left by previous tenants and things he's found on craigslist. He had all the greeting cards he'd received since moving -- for Father's Day, our anniversary, his birthday, Halloween -- displayed around the room. The kids immediately asked if they could sleep there one night, so we arranged that Kid A would spend Tuesday night on the couch (and be dropped off at the Airbnb on RB's way to work) and Kid B would spend Wednesday night. We ate dinner at a wonderful little greasy spoon nearby called the Buttery -- very cheap, cash only.

Wednesday, Rocket Boy was due to get off work three hours early because of the holiday the next day (he took two hours leave both Monday and Tuesday), so we planned that we would go to the Gateway Arch with him then. The last two days had been so busy -- and it was so cold that day -- that we just stayed in the Airbnb until he arrived, which was later than planned because of the car again. The good news was that the Montero had been successfully fixed (it was the starter, not the switch), so he was driving it again. We drove to the Arch, which is actually part of a National Park, parked on a side street, and walked over to the entrance. I hadn't realized that you can ride a tram up to the top of the 630-foot arch, but we gamely did it, and it was very interesting. It was a bit terrifying to think about how high up we were and how the trams were over 50 years old, but at least they weren't 80 years old (Rocket Boy first guessed that the Arch had been built in the 1930s). There's a good museum connected to the Arch (underground), and a large gift shop. We were there too late to tour the old courthouse which is also part of the park, but that would have been interesting too. For dinner, we drove to a Bob Evans south of the city -- it's a chain, of course, but a chain that RB and the kids had never been to, and the food was good.

Thursday, Rocket Boy FINALLY didn't have to work, but of course nothing was open, it being Thanksgiving. So we tentatively decided that it would be nature day. I was still hoping to see that Eurasian Tree Sparrow and find more Northern Cardinals, plus I thought a hike in a county park would be pleasant (the twins thought that was a terrible idea). It was a pretty gloomy day, though, with rain threatening (and eventually falling intermittently). Rocket Boy also wanted to show us the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, so we attempted to do that. Crossing over a bridge to the Illinois side of the river we found the Lewis & Clark Confluence Tower... but of course it was closed, although we were able to walk around the grounds and read the interpretive signs. Something else to do in May! We never did manage to see where the rivers come together -- probably should have researched it better. Another thing we did find, while wandering around a swampy area near the bridge was a cardinal! Several cardinals, in fact! Rocket Boy was very impressed.

Later in the day RB drove us to a wonderful outdoor sculpture garden. Even though it was raining again, we wandered through it for quite a while (the kids mostly stayed in the car). Definitely a place to go back to in May. There were a lot of birds around, and I looked and looked for those Eurasian Tree Sparrows, but didn't see any. However, my lack of binoculars may have been a factor. I did see lots more cardinals! so that was fun.

After the sculpture garden we went back to the Airbnb to crash, and finally it was time for our Thanksgiving dinner, which we had made reservations to eat at the City Diner -- a place that apparently used to be really great but is now under new management and has fallen on hard times. We hadn't needed the reservations -- the place was about 2/3 empty at 5:30 pm. "Sit anywhere you like," the waitress told us, so we eventually found a booth that didn't have torn-up seats. Then she brought us these gigantic platters of food. The food wasn't bad, but there was so much of it. I ate my stuffing and mashed potatoes, sampled the other items on my plate, and felt sick. Kid A ate so little you couldn't tell his plate had been touched. Kid B knocked over his pink lemonade (you can see it in the picture, in the tall red glass) and most of it landed on me. Including tax and tip, I paid just over $100 for that dinner, our worst of the trip. But we went back to the Airbnb (Rocket Boy stayed with us the last night) and laughed about it, and it became a funny story to remember.

Friday, our last day in St. Louis, we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to the Airbnb, and drove back to the Science Center, where we hung out until it was time to go to the airport. One thing that really struck me about St. Louis was the black/white segregation. St. Louis has more black people (49.2% of the population) than white people (43.9%), but I saw very few black people enjoying the attractions we visited. I saw black people working at menial jobs, I saw them huddled near abandoned buildings. We did go to one grocery store where almost all the shoppers were black. But mostly we just saw white people, even though many of the places we went to were free, intended for everyone in the city to use. Why does it have to be like that? The Civil War was over 150 years ago. I did see a few more black people at the Science Center that last day, but not 49.2%. I know I sound naive and I don't know what to do about it. But it seemed so very wrong.

Rocket Boy came with us into the airport and watched and waved until we disappeared into Security. I was so sad to say goodbye. Our flight left late because of bad weather in Denver, and it was an extremely bumpy ride. We got to Denver around 6 pm and caught the 7:20 bus to Boulder. That was also a hair-raising ride, because it was foggy and the roads weren't completely clear. I knew Boulder had gotten 22 inches of snow on Monday/Tuesday, but I still wasn't prepared for the mess at home. It's going to take forever for all this snow to melt. Fortunately, our neighbors had cleared our sidewalk as well as a path to the house, and our cat-sitters had been able to get over and keep the cats alive. We dragged our suitcases through the snow -- and we were home. It was a wonderful trip, but I'm so glad to be back in my cozy little house again. Rocket Boy will be back in less than three weeks! and on we go.