Weekend Trip, Chapter Two

This is later than it ought to have been, as my computer was in the shop. Also, Chapter Two is a lot more about what kind of stuff I did and a lot less about the autism side, since I’m no longer on the road at this point.

 

We visited my grandmother (my dad’s mom) for a couple days and had a lovely time. Camera in hand, I got some pictures of her cats:

 

Max

 

Max, a massive cat with big whorls of dark orange running down his sides. He’s a gorgeous boy, and despite being told he ‘doesn’t give kisses’, I got a couple. (I suspect one or two were more for the chicken I was eating than for me…)

The camera got a kiss, too...

 

… And Squeak.

 

Hello Thar!

Squeak is more beige than orange, but while his stripes are more normal and less swirly, he might win the prize for spottiest belly, which sadly I have no picture of.

 

Both cats got up to some mischief in the night, and since I was sleeping in ‘their room’ (read: on the couch), that sometimes meant keeping me up…

 

Nothing to see here, move along.

 

(I couldn’t resist darkening and tinting that one green on the computer afterward. I took it at one in the morning, and it felt like such a night vision safari shot, but when I uploaded my pictures, the flash made it look like it had been taken in broad daylight.)

 

Of course, Max found trouble to get into during the day, too…

 

It's the quenchiest!

 

We said it was ‘evidence gathering’ and not ‘praising his jumping up in the sink all the time’. Every load of dishes comes with the need to wipe pawprints off the enamel… But I can’t argue with cute– and I caught him mid-lick!

 

Okay, on the autism de-stressing side, I will say, for me, staying in a house with cats is way easier than staying in a house with no cats, but that’s because I love cats and having one or two on hand calms me down.

 

And on the ‘Interests=De-stressing’ note, the other thing we did while we were in the area was a trip to the Bowers Museum! There was a free Egyptology lecture, and since it’s a subject that the whole family is fair-to-middlin’ keen on, we were thrilled to go. Obviously I have no pictures of the lecture, or the indoors exhibits, but I got some lovely ones of the sculptures and fountain out front.

 

The front gate...

And the row of fountains once you enter!

Here's a fountain bowl head-on.

 

I really loved the fountains– they spread out to either side of the front gate, six to the left and six to the right. And the sound of the water was really soothing.

'Pass Through'

More statue-garden

 

The Buddha head stood alone (well, sat on a bench alone, at any rate), and I was able to get a shot of ‘Pass Through’ with the plaque readable, but the big stone chain sculpture I didn’t get a good view of the provenance for, nor can I remember what it was called. It was all lovely, though.

 

Between the Egyptology lecture, visiting some family, playing with some cats, and a little odd shopping on the trip, I’d rate the trip a success. Nobody had a full-out meltdown at any point, which is always a point in the favour of any excursion, and I really enjoyed seeing what I got to see of the Bowers museum.