To Philadelphia and Back in 22 Hours

How are we already here again? Two years ago exactly, my older kid and I were on a whirlwind tour to see one last college before she made up her mind about where she was going to go to school. 

That feels so long ago, but also like it was yesterday, you know? That kid I took on her last college tour before Decision Day was still a kid. Just two years later she's still my baby, but she's no longer a child. She finished growing up there at college when I wasn't there to see it.

Now I'm supporting my younger kid as she makes the same kind of agonizing decision, and she's simultaneously the most grown-up, confident, sophisticated human I've ever had the privilege to know and also my precious four-year-old in a thrifted velvet dress, butterfly wings strapped to her back, mashing dandelion flowers into a pretend pie in her backyard mud kitchen.

How can I let that tiny little sprite out of my sight, much less drop her off and leave her at a college 700 miles away? Wasn't it just last week that she sat on Santa's lap and told him that she wanted a kitten for Christmas?

How about we just try not to think that far ahead for a bit. Let's just think about not forgetting where in this massive Economy Lot we're leaving the damn car:

Then we'll just think about the following:

• airport security
• napping during the flight
• finding the SEPTA station at the Philadelphia International Airport and buying rail tickets for later (the station in the college town apparently doesn't have its own ticket kiosk? Because... reasons?)
• booking and riding in my very first Lyft (super smooth process, but our driver did treat us to an anti-Philadelphia screed while also spurning the highway in favor of only surface streets, making the ride take so long that the Lyft app sent me a push notification asking if I was okay or was I in peril)
• getting dropped off at the campus gates and then immediately hoofing it to the nearest Starbucks for caffeine and a breakfast wrap
• taking one sip of my chocolate cream cold brew and realizing as soon as the stimulant hit my brain that we were about to be late for the Welcome event
• hoofing it back to campus at double-speed

And then, of course, exploring this beautiful college campus and learning about the school and meeting some students and staff and watching my kid make friends with the other kids on the tour. 

This school has a literal cloister why?

The kid is more of a sucker for the Collegiate Gothic architectural style than I am. Who wouldn't want to have class inside a castle?

Just between us, and knowing what y'all know about this kid, I'm pretty sure the fact that this school is basically a poorly-disguised cult for worshipping Athena is its biggest draw for her...

Statue of Athena, at which the students leave offerings. Tell me it's not a cult.

When we were given a little free time, the kid and I OBVIOUSLY beelined straight to the library. College libraries are some of my favorite campus buildings to explore!

Check out the original statue of Athena up high where students from the rival college can't reach her, and also plaster casts taken from the genuine Parthenon metopes on display at the British Museum. I'm just gonna leave this right here.

So envious that they have a whole room of puzzles! They also have a craft club with its own permanent, dedicated studio and an art club, also with its own permanent, dedicated studio. 

I read this book in grad school!

I'm telling you, the owl iconography is INTENSE. I kind of wanted to ask how this impacted their enrollment of students from certain Native American nations, but I'd already asked soooo many weird questions that I felt I should probably leave some weird questions for other people to ask.

Tell me that this is not a shocking number of owls, though?!?

I am SO glad that I'm not seventeen years old and trying to figure out where I want to go to college. The amazing choices that she has are a blessing, a luxury, and a direct result of the hard work this kid has done and the phenomenal person she is, but it's also an awful burden to have to decide.

Let's spend the next few hours not thinking about it, and instead thinking about how to navigate the SEPTA system, especially because Jefferson Station booted us out into a shopping mall with no discernible exit, and it took us at least 20 minutes to find our way out to the street. Also, while I was standing at one of the big maps and figuring out our route, a kind stranger came over to gently point out that I was tracing the trolley line and not the rail line. Because apparently Philadelphia also has trolleys!

I'd wanted to see Chinatown, browse a couple of bookstores, walk around the Independence sites, etc., and we had plenty of time to do that, but I'd neglected to take into account that by the time we got downtown we'd have been up and at 'em for approximately 14 hours, and shockingly for me when confronted with a tourist site, I was starting to fade.

Imagine! ME!!! Forgetting to so much as take a snapshot of the Chinatown Gate as we walked under it! Unwilling to walk a few extra blocks over to the bookstore I'd Pinned! Too tired to make the extra effort to take a close-up photo of Independence Hall!

Not even the facts of my own exhausted near-tears and the kid who dances on pointe six days a week admitting that her feet hurt could stop me from paying my respects to Ben, Deborah, and Francis Franklin, though:

That was the last tourist thing we did, though. After that we trudged straight back to Jefferson Station, caught the train back to the airport, did the whole security theatre dance number one more time, and collapsed at our gate, where the kid proceeded to sleep as soundly as if she'd been in her bed back home for the remaining two hours until our flight.

I, on the other hand, finished my book (Peter Darling), started another (Beartown), and discovered that, gasp, the Philadelphia International Airport only stocks Pepsi products?!? NOOO!!! Mama needs her Diet Sprite!

I reluctantly nursed my... Starry? WTF is a STARRY?!?... and made it last until we got back to our home airport, at which point I'd forgotten that I'd even taken a photo of our parking spot. Thank goodness for the teenager, who just flat-out remembered where we parked in her head, and who loudly sang our personal mash-up of "Party Rock Anthem," "California Girls," and the entire Percy Jackson musical with me to keep me awake for the drive home. 

I want her to go to absolutely the BEST college, y'all, and also I never want her to leave my side for a second. 

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Before the Greatest Moment of My Life, I Spent 24 Hours in Columbus, Ohio

You know, as you do!

My kid goes to college in Ohio, not in the path of totality, but I figured that if I picked her up from college on the Friday before the eclipse, and hustled her back home as soon as the Moon had finished its transit of the Sun, she'd only have to miss one day of classes AND she could experience the greatest moment of my life with me.

And as a bonus, she could watch her sister walk the runway in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show, which was ALSO that weekend!

And as another bonus, she and I could go to the live show of our favorite podcast, Welcome to Night Vale, which was performing in Columbus also ALSO that weekend!

So that's what I did!

Around here, people are already joking about how overblown our city's crowd predictions for the eclipse were, as if the city council was just being dramatic because we didn't end up quintupling our population that day, after all. But let me tell you that I drove from here to Columbus, Ohio, and back TWICE that long weekend, and traffic was no fun. There were speed traps every few miles for the entire trip, and although the traffic was moving pretty well, the highways were soooo crowded and it was exhausting to have to constantly be on high alert. Like, just let me put my cruise control on for a few minutes, ugh!

I was SO happy to grab the kid, check into our hotel, and veg out for a couple of hours... while watching the eclipse countdown on cable news, of course!

And then off to our favorite show!

Afterwards, it had been my ultimate dream to go to the Sonic two minutes from our hotel and buy their super weird and disgusting-sounding eclipse slushie float, but Sonic saved me from myself by having a drive-through employee who was all, "Welcome to Sonic. Hold a minute, please," and then... just never came back to take my order? The kid and I waited a couple of minutes, then I thought I'd maybe swing around and take another run at it, and I pulled back up to the drive-through line just as another car was entering and I could hear the employee say over the speaker, "Welcome to Sonic. Hold a minute, please." And then... he never came back. 

We waited another couple of minutes before the kid could convince me to bail and drive over to a different fast food place, also a couple of minutes from our hotel. I hotly protested because I've never been to a Raising Cane's before and therefore have not pored over the menu to decide what I want and practice my order, but fortunately the kid's reassurances that the menu is so easy even I could figure it out while in the drive-through line held true. Now that I am old, I REALLY love a simple drive-through menu!

I also REALLY love a hot hotel breakfast! This one had mini omelets and sausage patties, which are all excellent with toast for making your own breakfast sandwich. One of my favorite things in life is a breakfast that's already included so you don't have to think about it.

In related news, I swear that I find the best things on TikTok. A couple of days before this trip, I'd seen a TikTok about things to do in Columbus that weekend, and in it was news about this fairly new Titanic artifacts exhibit at the COSI.

I mean, we're already going to be there, and it *is* one of my Special Interests, and it *is* almost the anniversary of its sinking...

Here we go!

Is this the most expensive LEGO set? It is $680!!! It would have been cool to be the curator responsible for assembling it for display, though...

When you enter the exhibit, you're given a boarding pass for a real passenger on the Titanic. The kid got to be someone fancy!

I, however, don't like my own particular odds nearly as much...

The exhibit is produced in part by RMS Titanic, Inc., the only company that's allowed to retrieve artifacts from the Titanic site. Recovering the artifacts allows them to be preserved, and the company also works with other organizations to do scientific and historical research at the site. They also produce several exhibits of Titanic artifacts around the country.

Crow's Nest bell

The best part was when they'd put an artifact next to a photo of it before it was recovered:

They recovered so many of these that I think there's a set in every one of their simultaneous artifact exhibitions:

I would be very interested in putting together THIS as a LEGO model--it's the Titanic as it was discovered on the ocean floor:

This is a porthole with a solid bronze frame. Imagine the pressure it would take to warp it like this!

Okay, this is the coolest part: it's a hands-on exhibit where you can touch a real piece from the Titanic!

In related news, thank goodness for this one shot of me, because all the other dozen the kid took of me TOUCHING THE TITANIC are... unflattering, ahem. I have a bad habit of wearing an exceptionally gormless, open-mouthed expression when I am beside myself with delight, and am, for that reason, considering making a sticker for my phone that contains one of two phrases: either "Close Your Mouth" or "Fix Your Face." You can see how either of these phrases would be endlessly useful in a wide variety of circumstances!

Mouth closed, face more or less fixed, and TOUCHING THE TITANIC!

Please also note that in the photo above I am representing in my Maritime Museum of the Atlantic Titanic merch.

I found where I live!

The exhibit actually had a LOT of paper artifacts--these luggage tags, several currencies of paper money, playing cards, etc.--and I never did learn how they hadn't dissolved in the water:

The occasional recreation was peppered among the artifacts, and I was SO INTO IT:

Found the doorknob to my cabin door!

Okay, y'all: I am so in love with the third-class dishes! I found out that the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, actually sells recreations, so that's now on my holiday wish list...

More paper artifacts--how did these survive?!?

Here's a glimpse of the kid's fancy first-class cabin:

I'm also a really big fan of my third-class floor tile. We DO have a couple more rooms in the house that need new flooring...

Here's MY room! I also want that blanket...

Okay, this is horrifying: did you know that something like 1/5 of Titanic's boiler room crew were CHILDREN?!? Look at those little faces!

Lol that they had an iceberg--with some kind of condenser involved because that is real ice!--that you could take your photo with:

Mouth not closed. Face not fixed. Oh, well!

This is one of the lifeboat hoists:

And this is also really cool: they projected the footprint of the lifeboat onto the floor so you could see how you fit into it:

Closest my third-class self will ever get to a lifeboat!

Of course this kid is examining the lifeboat like they're old friends. Lucky first-classer!

They had some portraits of people they KNEW we'd know from the Titanic movie, of course:

ANOTHER PAPER ARTIFACT!!!

Okay, moment of truth! Do I live or do I die?

Poor Johannes...

Now it's the kid's turn:

I love that she devoted the rest of her life to charity. What a beautiful response to tragedy.

I was also surprised to see clothing on exhibit. How did THIS also survive?!?

Look at that beautiful visible mending. I didn't even realize you could hand-sew that stitch!

Afterwards in the gift shop, my mean kid would not let me buy a tiny Titanic and iceberg in a floaty thing OR a Titanic and iceberg ice cube tray. To be fair, they both *are* on Amazon at nearly half the price, so it was a good save on her part, but still. I have longed for that floaty Titanic thing every day since.

Since we were already at COSI and who knew if we'd ever come again, we decided to quickly swing through a couple more exhibits before we hit the road. This Oceans exhibit was actually an amusing interactive water play area that we enjoyed just as much as the toddlers we were playing alongside:

And this Dinosaurs gallery features artifacts from the American Museum of Natural History!

Here are a couple of Apatosaurus vertebrae:

These are Ornithopod tracks on sandstone:

You had to check out the labels very closely to see what was a cast and what was real. I feel like I'm the only person annoyed by that! I strongly believe that casts should be a non-realistic color:

I love a good Dinosaur As Bird model!

I also don't usually see amber on display, so I was VERY stoked about this:

And then just when we thought we were about to leave... we found an augmented reality sandbox. We must now sculpt all of the landforms!

I am still distraught that I didn't come home with this Layers of the Earth candle--every layer is a different color and scent!--but the kid managed to wrestle it out of my hands, and good thing, too, because it was FIFTY DOLLARS. For something I WILL LITERALLY BURN AWAY.

Also this Sun stuffie at FORTY-FIVE DOLLARS JUST NO:

Sigh...

After a lovely morning spent at the museum, the kid and I were hoofing it back to the car when suddenly she announced, "I am STARVING!" I said, "OMG me, TOO! Let's grab lunch before we head home." I pulled out my phone to see what Dr. Google Maps recommended for lunch nearby, but then when I looked at it I was all, "Oh, NO!!!" We had accidentally spent five hours at a children's hands-on science museum! I'd thought it had been maybe... half that? Maaaaybe three hours, tops? I think we must have been in some kind of fugue state to not notice all that time passing! 

So that was ixnay on a sit-down lunch, and full steam ahead on a gas station lunch so we could get back into the stream of traffic headed towards the path of totality. It was an absolute slog of a drive, but the kid was back in time to surprise Luna before dinner!!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!