Putting one foot after another

I am not dead. My brain has been accumulating a list of narranda, which I consistently fall asleep before posting: the ongoing renovation of the kitchen, including the complete relocation of all dishes, utensils, spices, foodstuffs, and refrigerator to far-flung parts of the house (not to mention the plumbing), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), all of Thursday, La strada (1954), and lavender. Divers books. Rain. Cooking. My cousin Tristen has been here since Friday, so we walked around the Arlington Res to the tune of Pele and her jealous sea-sister and a rain-god captured by the Queen of Stone and Steel; he was very helpful yesterday in making a hot peach syrup to be eaten over the traditional homemade strawberry ice cream, and today we spent the entire afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts. He had never been to an art museum before. He recognized the statue of Orpheus with Cerberus charmed to sleep as soon as we walked through the Huntington entrance. I know him! His wife died from a snake and he went into the underworld to get her back, but he looked back when he'd promised not to and he had to leave her there. So you may understand it was a success: we spent most of our time with the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman collections, with a substantial detour into South Asia after he told me he wanted to visit Ganesha and I figured out that the god whose name he couldn't remember—You know, the one who sits like this—as he assumed the lotus position in the middle of the hallway—was in fact the Buddha. He was twice mistaken for my child and seemed neither wishful nor offended. The Sargent murals blew him away. We spent about fifteen minutes sitting underneath the rotunda and the stairwells, him pointing to each group of figures and either identifying them for me or asking me to tell him their stories; these included Herakles with the Hydra, Orestes pursued by the Furies, and Phaethon falling from the zodiac in fire, but I don't think any of it freaked him out. He really, really wanted a poster of Sargent's Pegasus, but the store did not sell them; he settled for a small model pegasus and I got him a large children's book of Egyptology, with hieroglyphs. He had already correctly identified the logogram for "water." He wants to go to the aquarium tomorrow morning. We'll see if I'm functional. He is wonderful.

I have my schedule for Readercon; I will post it tomorrow.