I Visited Cloud City and Lando Calrissian Didn't Even Kiss Me

Mommy Camp - Day 2

I would like to take a moment to thank the good folks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for their suggested donation idea. (I would also like to thank the hipster working the cash register for curbing her eye roll when I only offered $3.) The Met is awesome for many reasons, but mostly because it allows me to feel like a Very Good Mother while letting my kid ogle mummies.

Kid: "So, mummies are real?"
Me: "Yes, but they're not alive."
Kid: "So they're not real."
Me: "No, mummies are real, but they're dead."
Kid: "So when do they come back to life and start moving?" (This is why I do not homeschool.)

I managed to spend a few minutes in the Temple of Dendur before the boy beelined to his favorite piece in the museum, a rather snoozy stone crocodile from the 1st century. (The 1st century!) Then we headed up to the roof garden to check out the newest exhibit, an awesome little number called "Cloud City," which is basically a giant set of hexagonal mirrors that you climb on. Unfortunately you have to be 10 or older to enter it, much to the heartbreak of EVERY CHILD THERE. (My offering of a soggy PB&J didn't exactly improve the situation.) Luckily, we found a very nice - and comfortingly geeky - museum educator who got Owen talking about dinosaurs and comic books and totally saved the day.

I'd promised Owen that he could see a real Jackson Pollock painting (I wish I could take credit for his art appreciation - they studied him in preschool) and his reaction was predictably adorable. I don't get what all the fuss is about,* but if Owen loves him, I'll muster up some interest, too. In other news, we both agree that Van Gogh is the greatest, along with this moody Seurat.

We managed to get out of there without a trip to the gift shop (phew!) putting our sum total at a measly $3 - or a glass of tap water at Fancy Camp.**

*Later, with Matt:

Me: "I could totally make paintings like that."
Matt: "But you didn't."
Me: "But I could."
Matt: "But you didn't.

** Based on very little research, I suspect this is the camp Snobby Mom from yesterday's post was discussing.