From D.C. to Home

Our last outing with the family was to the Museum of Natural History. The kids have been many times but our goal this trip was to see the giant boa fossil.

Indeed, it was a very large display.

We found it in the back half of a room exhibiting some awesome award-winning nature photography.


The family watched the video several times explaining the details of the snake, the anatomy and construction.
I'm sure the kids can repeat all those details still. I didn't need numbers to know it was huge.











I wish my guru son had come back to Tokyo with me.
My pictures will not rotate and I used to be able to have them do that automatically. I think now that my computer has been reminded of the difference, it is holding out for my son's touch.

At any rate, I made it back to Tokyo, but forget about planned travel. Just like the rest of the trip, NOTHING went according to plan. Cancelled flights and the resulting missed connections, re-routing by a much longer way making arrival a day later. Again a plane that pulled out to the tarmac and then had to return to the gate for repairs after multiple delays. Two legs of the trip with screaming kids in the seat in front and the seat behind. (How did I avoid that with six kids?) And the final leg was in seats built for midgets.
I am not all THAT big. I have a long body but rather short legs (which is why I buy pants in the states where they have short sizes). My feet are about 24cm, about a size 7 or 7.5. So why, with the back of my legs against the seat, were my toes two or three inches beyond the legs of the seat in front? There was barely enough room under that seat for my purse ... let alone my feet! Sleep? Well all the lights were out, it was dark the whole way and in order to sew, my elbows would have gone into the neighboring seats. I can't remember being more glad to get off a plane ... even though I was stuck at the airport until the trains began operation!

I managed to assemble the five substitute blocks for the ones lost on the first flight. Now I will swap them out with blocks in the remaining seven rows since they contain too many of the same fabrics to be all in one place.

Have you ever spilled coffee on your work? Well, I managed to do just that. I tried washing the section where the spill was but was not too successful. These blocks have a lot of small pieces and the resulting seams having to be re-organized with the iron might just drive me nuts. I am now thinking of un-sewing those parts and doing them over. I wonder what my blogging friends would advise.

Shortly after arriving home, I received in the mail this beautiful piece of needlework all hand made by a wonderful friend, Eva Huskova, who I have gotten to know through my blog. Every tiny stitch is just perfect and the butterfly has a very special meaning to me. It was the symbol of the "hidden Christians" in Japan and this comes from the Czech Republic, which my great grandfather left so long ago, bringing the family bible which had been kept hidden under the manure pile for safety, to a new life in America. 

Thank you, my dear friend. I am looking for the perfect place to display this where everyone can enjoy it (without getting things piled on top).

I am slowly getting over jet-lag, which only seems to happen on the return trip. I have had a happy reunion with my family here. Also enjoying my hot-pot  and my shower that I can take by setting the temp. first and sitting down to wash my legs and feet instead of being attacked from several feet above my head.

A month or two before I left home, I had discovered that by subscribing to the comment section of the blog, I could get the comments in my in-box and reply from there. Until then I had been writing down each comment on note paper and looking up the addresses one by one, taking much time and effort. BUT, as usual when things seem too good to be true, this did not last and now all the comments come from "noreply" and I am back to trying to find the addresses... especially hard when there are several people who use the same name. If there is anyone who knows how to solve this problem, I would love to get it back to where it was a week or two ago.

Meanwhile, if there is anyone out there who is a little chilly, I've got a lot of excess heat I'd like to get rid of. I wish the day might come when we can store it somewhere and then take it out half a year later. Then again, I realize there are people paying to sit in a sauna.