Learned and Affirmed on Vacation

As you probably know already, our summer included a significant illness, a death, a funeral and a whole lot of time away from home for my son and I as we dealt with the business of death.
While I was thankful for the freedom of summer to deal with these things (I find it interesting that my father, a 35+ year high school teacher, died at the end of the school year), as the start of school approached, I hated that we had no vacation to show for our summer. So, we disappeared for a long weekend before school started.

Here are some things I learned - or had affirmed - on our trip:

• Some people are just rude - like the woman who took two phone calls during our planetarium program or the people who ate in the bustling and overcrowded hotel dining room but left their trash on the table for other guests to clean up. Here's a tip - if you carried the food to the table yourself, you also get to carry your own trash.
• I am not a museum person. I don't like to read every sign and absorb every bit of information. I like what I like and then I am ready to move on.
• My son is the same way.
• My husband, on the other hand, wants to look at every display and read every word.
• I like art that is straightforward - where pictures are what they are and the story/meaning is readily apparent.
• Some art, though, is even more straightforward than I'm looking for, which made me very happy that my son is still young enough to be fairly oblivious.
• If your vacation is in August, and most of your activities are outside, and you are in a mid- to southern area of the country, pack two outfits for every day. Yeash, we were a hot and sweaty group!
• I should not be trusted with a map. If I had been working the maps, we would have been lost too many times to count. Thankfully, my husband is brilliant with directions!