I keep reminding myself of this because, quite frankly, the last few days have been rather difficult. I’ll recount things from the female perspective (meaning I’ll give more details than Matt does). Paul and Lydia both have been suffering from some sort of viral bug. The last 2 mornings Grandma Dianne’s sleeping buddy, Lydia, has awakened her with an exploding diaper in bed requiring an all adult hands on deck disaster response. Tonight Lydia is sleeping on towels on our bedroom floor to give Grandma Dianne a break. Hopefully we’ll all get some sleep.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite, Melissa, “ Matt said to me a couple of days ago. That’s right—bed bugs. We’re far more familiar with the East Coast resurgence of bed bugs than we ever hoped to be. After waking up with red spots all over our legs, the evidence was pretty conclusive. The Quality Inn just isn’t as “quality” as it used to be. I did express my disappointment to the manager about the lack of internet service, lack of air conditioning (they did move us to another room), lack of cleanliness and the bites all over our legs. To make it up to us, she gave us one night’s cost off of our bill. We figured it made the extra car insurance we had to purchase for the rental of a 12 passenger van a wash.
I was relieved to be on the road to Monticello after a late start because of dealing with Lydia. No more bed bugs and a beautiful post card perfect drive—a gorgeous day courtesy of God for our traveling pleasure. Some of the trees are starting to turn and we even saw an 8 sided barn.
I enjoyed Monticello much more than I thought I would. I am partial to George Washington as he was truly a follower of Jesus Christ. Mt. Vernon is very plain architecturally in comparison to Monticello, but the inside was designed by Gen. George to impress, right down to the Jolly Rancher Apple green walls in the formal dining room. I thought that Monticello, being more ornate on the outside, would be just as garish or more so than Mt. Vernon on the inside. Not, so.
Jefferson didn’t believe in wasted space and the colors he chose were much more muted. The freize work at the ceiling was rather ornate in the main hall and the dining room. The images on it included some that looked like those Native American cattle skulls with the feathers hanging from the horns. I asked the guide about them and she said they were actually a copy of a Roman Pagan ritual symbol—I wasn’t impressed. However, I did enjoy seeing actual elk horns that were given as a gift to Jefferson from Lewis and Clark. Also, Jefferson at one time had a collection of books numbering 7,000 of which he donated to start the Library of Congress. He purchased another two thousand books, many of which dating to that time period, are now housed at Monticello. I asked the guide if any were Jefferson’s actual books. To my delight, she pointed right to the shelf where I was standing and said those were his. I leaned down to get a closer look and saw among them a 3 volume set of Don Quixote.
We arrived at our new location late Wednesday night, ordered delivery pizza and worked quickly to get things brought in and put in reasonable places. We just couldn’t get the air conditioner to work. Matt called and they sent a maintenance man out right away. He said, “You can’t stay here. You have to move. The air conditioner is frozen up solid.” It turned out to be a blessing because I got both washers and dryers going in both suites to catch up on laundry and hopefully rid ourselves of the bed bugs (although I still think some precautionary measures will have to be taken when I get home—thankfully bed bugs don’t like dry climates).
Today I had the pleasure of talking with the head cook at the Governor’s Palace and I learned many things about food preparation and preservation in the 1700’s.
The lovely dinner was only surpassed by the delighted looks on all the kids’ faces as the strolling musicians and entertainers passed through our dining room. Even Elizabeth had a huge grin—now that’s saying something.--Mel
No comments:
Post a Comment