Woolly Mammoths

So, today there was no school in our town, since several of the schools are polling locations. Normally, I am happy happy happy to have my children home, but today, I was looking at three deadlines that raised their hairy eyebrows and leered menacingly at me.  Not to mention that I am doing a pretend NaNo this month (more about Nano here) and the only thing that makes my pitiful word count goal more pitiful is not meeting it.

To distract myself from the work that would not be getting done, I packed up my two kids, borrowed two more, and headed to the Museum of Science, where we spent the next five hours playing with pirate stuff and being eaten by Woolly Mammoths. There are fabulous Woolly Mammoth eating pictures, which I cannot show you, because I have made a deal that I will only post child-approved pictures here, and those particular pictures were not approved. I do have this lovely picture of myself in a wind tunnel, looking rather bemused. (That’s because the two small boys were taking advantage of my momentary lapse to run helter skelter through the museum, and I was counting the seconds until the tube would pop open and I could reclaim them.)

Just wait until this thing opens…

It was a lovely, fun day, and it kept me distracted from both the deadlines and the election.  All I will say about that tonight is that the five of us did stop off to vote on the way to Boston. The kids were thoughtful, and asked good questions, and were interested  in how people in the same town, in the same neighborhood, can believe different things and vote for different people and still all wake up in the morning and still be neighbors and friends. It’s hard, but what amazes me even more is that somehow, every four years we manage.

See you in the morning, neighbor.