It was definitely good to see my parents. To keep them entertained i brought them to a couple museums. The first was the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I've been before but it was a while ago, so i was still fairly excited about seeing it again, and knowing the museum had a couple picasso's i thought it would be a nice treat for my mom. (My mom has kind of made a hobby of picasso, she collects all sorts of historical books and prints of paintings) When we actually got to them she said to my father, "Now i hope you don't mind terribly, i want to just sit for a while with my picasso's."

My father was bored out of his mind though. My dad is a pretty simple dude to explain. He only appreciates things that make clear sense. He hates the abstract, theoretical and philosophical sides of life. Anything that he can't understand right away isn't of any use to him. You'd probably think, as i have for many years, that this is not such a good view of life, but i'm honestly starting to appreciate it. Since he spends his life in the real tangible world he can remember all sorts of obscure facts, statistics, and stories, and although he is a little too proud of his knowledge at times, it is impressive. There just remains one thing that i will never respect about his personality. He is incredibly racist. It's a product of his need to form a rule out of not so much evidence or experience. If one somewhat unethical Indian crossed his path just one time, he'll make all sorts of blanket statements about their entire culture. So needless to say whenever a topic of that nature came up i challenged him on it, not as aggressively as i used to (because that just ends up in him getting all angry and sometimes even physical) but with a passive sense, an open-ended, open-mined comment that led into another topic of conversation. Ha, if i make it sound like talking to my dad is an art... it really is.

It's so odd how my parents got along over so many years. This is a harsh statement, but i really believe it's only because of traditional family expectations that my mom never left. But, that was realistically only possible a long time ago. Now, there's so much security in growing old with someone, so much fear of the unknown, fear of being a middle-aged single woman, fear of having two entire family trees fall upon her with accusations and negative judgments. She's making the best of it, choosing her battles wisely, getting her feelings out with writing. (She writes short stories, not often, but sometimes; she'll go on benders, usually after stressful events)

Whoa, that was a pretty big tangent, but that is my intention with this thing, to get thoughts out that i have no other way to express, thoughts that would be a loss if they were just forgotten.

But, to continue, the other museum was the Science Museum of Virgina. It sucked. never go there unless you have screaming kids who like to touch things and don't yet understand what germs are. The rest of the weekend was filled with amazing food. They spared no expense in taking me out, so for that and their company i am infinitely grateful.

My mom ended the weekend by saying, "I wish i could just take you home and things would be like they used to..."