Thursday, Sept. 1

Another month has flown by, and we're already in the first day of September. I think we're glad that the dog days of summer are about to wind down, though...it has been a particularly hot and dry one. August was a terrible one for natural disasters around the country, too, and it looks like September will have its own disasters, like the fires in Texas and Oklahoma.

We were up around 7:30 this morning, and I did a treadmill session and weights exercises after breakfast. Then I got ready to go downtown later to meet a couple of friends for lunch. Mother came over around 11 a.m., and we headed to the restaurant around 11:15.

Our friends had not arrived yet when we got there, but the waitress (niece to one of our friends) showed us to our table, which was very attractively set with a purple tablecloth and seafoam green napkins. The niece had set the table this way to please her aunt. We all felt very special.

I decided to eat a heavier lunch, since I figured light h'deuvres would be the fare tonight at the museum. so I ordered lemon baked chicken, with mushroom mashed potatoes, and green beans. Mother chose chicken breast, too. The other ladies opted for quiche and salad/fruit. We all enjoyed the freshly baked melt-in-your mouth yeast rolls, and I even brought a half dozen home with me. If Hubbie chooses to stay home for supper tonight, he can add these wonderful rolls to his meal.

Unfortunately today, the chicken breast I ordered was as tough as shoe leather, which I reported to our waitress. "No one has ever complained about it before," she said. "Well, someone has now," I retorted. She agreed to pass the info on to the kitchen, but nothing was done to otherwise satisfy me, which does not endear the restaurant to me.

One of the ladies brought along a lovely cross stitched cloth that she gave to Mother. She is clearing her closets and giving away a lot of stuff, in anticipation of moving to an apartment. It's a beautiful piece, suitable for a table centerpiece when serving cookies and coffee or something.

She also brought a stack of greeting cards that she's received over the years, hoping we could use them to make other greeting cards for Caring Hands Hospice, and we can.

This lady was in somewhat of a fizz when she arrived. Seems that while she was stopped at a light, she noticed that someone was about to pull out of a parking space directly in front of the restaurant, and she was anxious to claim the spot right away. So she made a dash for it, not noticing that the light had not turned green yet. Fortunately, no one was coming the other way, or she would have been t-boned for sure.

To add insult to injury, she then proceeded to lock her keys in the car, and had to call her neighbor, who has an extra set, to come unlock her door. She blamed all this on old age, even though we've all had things like that happen to us.

Our other friend said that aggravations like that usually come in threes, and since she'd dropped one of a pair of her earrings down the bathroom drain at this friend's house this morning, she felt the trouble-comes-in-threes had been satisfied.

We finished our lunch and went our separate ways around 1 p.m. At home, Mother went to her house, and I changed clothes to go meet the group going to the capital city for a tour of a Norman Rockwell exhibit.

We all met at the hostess's house around 3:30. The hostess had borrowed a 16-passenger van from her brother for our trip. An obstacle was the exceedingly high step-up into the vehicle. Three of the ladies are considerably overweight and have leg and knee problems, so it was a real problem for them to get into the van. I wish I'd known about this, because I could have brought a fold-out step stool for them.

One of the ladies could have ridden in the front seat, which was easier to access, except a lady with no particular physical problems declared that she gets car sick, so she had to ride up front.

The art gallery director and I, however, had no problem hefting ourselves into the van and working our way through the maze of seat belts and over the wheel well to the very back seat.

The freeway to the capital city leaves something to be desired, so the nine of us, particularly the two of us in the back seat, bounced high enough to nearly hit the ceiling as we traveled over rough patches...hard enough even for the arts council director's eyeglasses to fly off her head.

We had a great time on the two-hour trip, but after all that bouncing, all nine of us made a beeline to the ladies room as soon as we arrived at the museum.

Even though we were a small group, and the only ones being entertained at the museum, we chose to dress up a little. One lady was wearing a very pretty mid-calf length black skirt, with eyelet and bead detailing. She said she got this Mexican-style skirt at a market in San Francisco. Back at her hotel, though, she noticed the tag in the skirt showed that the skirt was made not in Mexico, but in Indonesia. Figures.

Our host at the museum showed us to the refreshment tables, where we enjoyed grapes, strawberries, three kinds of wedge cheese, sliced white cocktail bread, some sort of shaved meat, toasted almonds, and stuffed grape leaves, along with a choice of two kinds of wine (white and red), soft drinks, and bottled water.

Tonight, the manager of the gift shop stayed open for our group, and we were allowed to browse as we sampled our refreshments. There was a shelf of 50% off items, and the manager offered a 20% discount on anything else in the store. Several of us purchased items. I bought a pair of Chinese cinnabar earrings. Cinnabar is a type of wood, red in color, and in the case of my earrings, intricately hand carved with a floral design.

Once we'd finished shopping, a tour guide showed us through the exhibit, which pairs Norman Rockwell paintings with black and white photographs of similar imagery by award-winning photojournalist, Kevin Rivoli. The photographer did not set out to duplicate Rockwell paintings, but simply realized that among his collection of photos, many seemed very similar to Rockwell's slice-of-life paintings.

Our tour guide pointed out Rockwell's paintings of the Four Freedoms: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. Freedom of Speech portrayed a man standing up to voice his opinion at a town hall...the photographer had captured a similar image. Freedom from Want, of course, is Rockwell's beloved Thanksgiving scene, which the photographer had also captured in a scene (maybe at his parents' or grandparents' home) of an older couple stuffing a turkey.

Rockwell's portrait of a grandfather and grandson fishing, was similarly captured by the photographer of a father and son fishing from the bank of a lake.

We left the museum around 8 p.m. to head home. Our museum host had bagged up all the leftover refreshments for us to nibble on as we traveled. There was too much for us to consume, though, so we left the remainder with our hostess/driver.

It was bedtime, of course, by the time I arrived home. I pointed out to Hubbie, though, that I had driven the van on fumes, since we hadn't noticed how close to empty the gas tank was. Hubbie agreed to fill the tank first thing in the morning, before I need to go to water aerobics.

It was a good day.