Smithsonian Air and Space to Natural History

 We got a pretzel from a vendor, walked across the mall to get good views of the Capitol and the Washington Monument and then started heading for the Natural History museum.  We sat on a bench for a while in the sculpture garden and had some peanut butter and crackers, rested our poor feet and then

Oscar got on  John’s shoulders to the Natural History museum.  This time, security found the foil around the pretzel that John had left in his pocket and wanded Oscar for good measure after hearing about my underwire…..we saw the mammals and the ocean hall before heading out the back exit to the metro station.  We were

  all done in and just had to find the closest stop since it still probably wasn’t Smithsonian.   Of course, it’s rush hour leaving DC and that made for a much more eventful trip on the way to Arlington.  We did make it there though

 and decided that some kind of take out would be in order for dinner.  I hit the CVS that wasn’t too far away to get some Oscar provisions (bel vita, animal crackers, fruit chews) and found a nice 6 pack of beer when my fitbit went crazy.  Now, I bought this thing this

 January because I see that I have to change some things if I don’t want to have heart attacks and strokes like everyone in my family and until now, it has only really buzzed me to let me know that I haven’t moved off my fat ass in the last hour.  And then it will buzz 10 minutes later when I still 

 haven’t moved because I’m in a session and I think it’s against social worker ethics or something to get up in the middle of therapy and say, “sorry, hold that thought, my fit bit says that I need to move right now”.  It doesn’t seem to count me walking down the hall to get the next client as “movement” in an hour.  Oh, well.  I don’t have  fit bit 

 that is big and tells you things, mine just buzzes and has lights that tell you things, then you use the app to be more specific.  Well, when I got back to the hotel, I was able to see that I went 10,000 steps and 76 minutes of continuous movement today.  So, for the first time, my fitbit thought that it had a moving creature on the other end.

 Sad to say that traveling is the only time that I move this way.  When it’s warmer at home, you seem to just get eaten by mosquitos, there is something about walking for a purpose instead of laps, and we never have our cars on travel.  So, even if we’re on trains, we’re still walking to the train stations and down the stairs and back up and everywhere else.  Which is probably

why I can go to Europe and eat the most amazing foods in huge quantities while still losing weight.  John had to go out for the Indian food that we were able to find near us and was very unhappy when he got back and there were no plates, forks, napkins or straw for the mango lassi.  Oh, mango lassis.  Another thing that I have tried and tried

to make at home with the mango pulp a manager gave me from an Indian food restaurant in Chicago and still cannot get that magic that they do in a restaurant.  John said that we should probably just add about a cup more sugar, which is probably why I love it so much.  While John wanted me to call the restaurant to complain while he went foraging in the hotel, I used Oscar’s straw to start on the lassi and

the food was amazing when we got to it.  So, I think that he forgot about wanting to call them and complain.  There are so many amazing restaurants around us and I think you have to have an ethnicity here to make it work because  there is nothing normal about any of them.  They are either Belgian, French, Italian, Thai, Indian, Mexican, etc, etc.....

 The only normal restaurant I’ve seen on our trip to the metro station was an IHOP and that has “international” in the name which is probably the only reason it’s allowed to stay.  When we settled in a little, I started to write all this down.  When we mentioned to Oscar’s school that he would be gone spring semester of next year for John’s sabbatical, his teacher, Miss Amanda said that he should be pen pals with the class to show them all that he was doing.  I asked Oscar if he wanted to do a travel blog of his own and he said, “yes”.  So, I thought that we would

pilot it on this trip.  Here is his response to the question, “what would you tell everyone about our day today if you were talking to your class?”  First, “what do you mean” and then when I said about what you saw or liked, I got the following answers.  When asked how he would tell people about our day, Oscar said, “I likeded going to the theater in there.”  (the IMAX movie about landing on Mars)   “Cheetah there” when asked about the Natural history museum.  A few minutes later,  “And I likeded all the bunny rabbits there.”  “And I likeded penguin there.  And I liked Nemo and Dory there.”  So, I’m thinking that Miss Amanda’s idea of Oscar doing his own travel blog when we’re on sabbatical isn’t going to work very well… unless he gets a lot more eloquent and effusive in the next year.