Day Nine Museum Day

Great news today on the appliance front—ALL ARE WORKING! Late last night, after I wrote my blog, we baked potatoes in the oven, took showers, and finished the laundry.

As I suspected, the underwear finished somewhere around 4:00 this morning. We went to bed at 1:00, and at 2:00 I heard 2 Papa get up. When questioned about what he was doing, he said he was going to turn that noisy washing machine off. I protested, needing the clean undies. I admit it was loud. For hours, it whined, spit, sputtered and wiggled. We hadn't heard that much noise out of something so small since Ashley had colic in 1978. But, I encouraged 2 papa to shut the door to our room to which he replied, “Why didn’t I think of that.” Once again, job security for me.

We definitely walked on the wild side today. The absolute, cardinal rule in Oxford is to never leave home without your umbrella, but we did it today. We felt quite rebellious. Then, I went a step further and wore a white coat. Now—I have not heard anyone say this, but I’m quite sure they prefer wearing black as the entire city needs a good power washing which makes wearing black the preferred color in case of an accidental brush up against a building, car, truck, railing or small child. Just a theory, but it’s seems plausible. It didn’t rain the whole day, which was fantastic, but it was cold. It appears to be a trade off.

After three full days of working and the promise of a sunny day, 2 Papa was ready for some action. Don’t get too excited--- he had read every brochure we had picked up and was looking for museum action. We went to three museums before lunch. As a side note, lunch here is at 1:00 every day. People start their day later in Oxford so lunch is late and supper is late. I have a theory about that too. For many locals drinking starts at lunch and continues through the rest of the day until they crash late at night—see Pub map that is posted around town in case one can’t make it from one block to the next without locating a beer. Again, just a theory….

The first museum we visited was The Museum of Natural History. There we met a fellow American--see picture of the dinosaur from South Dakota. Then we went to the Pitt River Museum. The specialty there is pretty cool. Each display is done by geographic region, showing how people all over the world created things of necessity. It was amazing to see how brilliant our ancestors were in problem solving and how similar the inventions were regardless of the thousands of miles between each culture and no Internet. The last museum was the Museum of Natural Science. It was a little boring except the displays of the invention of penicillin, cameras, and one of the chalkboards that Einstein actually wrote on. It was his theory of the expanding universe, distance between galaxies, and age of the universe in an algebraic formula. A little like my theories, I think.

Now, my turn. SHOPPING! We went to what is called by the locals, a covered market. I think that’s a good name since it’s a market and it’s covered. After all, we’re in Oxford—lots of bright people here. I didn’t buy anything. I’m just on search missions at this point. Speaking of buying, if the weather holds out, my new boots will make their debut tomorrow for High Table. If you will remember, High Table is the Friday night chapel and dinner attended by students and fellows, who are dressed in their gowns. Everyone dresses up super nice for the event. Should be interesting!

One museum display I loved was showing games created by or for children. Sheepknuckles was a game where children threw up four actual bones from a sheep’s knuckles and tried to catch them on the back of their hand. Perhaps this game came when some tired mom tried to keep her kids out of the kitchen while she prepared supper. I imagine she just tossed the extra sheep knuckles to them and said, “Go outside and figure out to do with these.” And they did! God is so great! Of all the inventions we looked at today, there is none greater than mankind.

“God created human beings; he created them godlike, Reflecting God's nature. He created them male and female. God blessed them: "Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth." Genesis 1:26

I’m thankful God created each of you.
Hugs,
2 mama