Memorial Day Weekend: Bowen Island and Britannia Mine Museum

After leaving Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, we headed to the ferry terminal and took a ferry to Bowen Island. We have been wanting to go there for some time, especially since the island has such as great name!

On the ferry

We stayed at a charming cottage that was beachfront property. Lucy loved the mirror doors of the hallway closet, and she kept going in and out of them. She pretended that the closet doors served as a portal to Oz, and she kept going to visit different Oz characters. J and I joked that she was confusing the Oz closet with the idea of a Narnian wardrobe.

Throwing rocks on our private beach

Digging in rocks on our private beach

We went on two short hikes during our stay on Bowen Island. The first was a quick 1.5 mile hike to Dorman Point, which had a lovely overlook of the water.

Our second hike was after lunch, and we walked from Killarney Lake to Bridal Veil Falls. I think this was about a little over a mile hike altogether.

The kids loved jumping on the trampoline at the beach house

On Memorial Day, we took the ferry back to the mainland and headed to the Britannia Mine Museum before driving home. Sam wanted to go to this museum because he thought he could make some associations with the game Minecraft, but I don't think he really was able to make any good connections, Regardless, I'm so glad that we went here and I think that we all really had a good time. It was a little bit more expensive than I had hoped, but it was definitely worth it. The exhibits were really interesting, and I liked learning about what this mining community was like in the early 20th century. It was also fun to go inside the actual mine and the mill. I learned quite a bit about mining too. One thing that stuck with me is that the song "Sixteen Tons" is actually referring to the amount of rock that muckers were supposed to shovel and load in a ten-hour shift.

Waiting for the train to take us into the mine

The mill was huge! This photo doesn't even do justice to the vast space contained in this structure.

And then, we headed home. Lucy conked out after all that fun and slept for a good portion of the drive back home. She tends to only nap in the car now, which is unfortunate since she really could still use a nap each day. She often will fall asleep if we drive anywhere in the late afternoon.

Memorial Day Weekend: Burnaby and Vancouver

Our first full day in Canada was mostly spent in Burnaby and Vancouver. We visited a lovely park and farmer's market in Burnaby, and everything was walking distance from the Burnaby Village Museum. The museum recreates the appearance of a village in the 1920s, and volunteers are dressed in period costume throughout the site. The village was free and open to the public, and we all had a really fun time. I especially liked visiting the houses in the village and seeing all the interior decoration. We also had fun seeing places like the Printing Shop and the General Store.

"Riding" on the stationary trolley

This antique carousel was accompanied by music from a restored Wurlitzer organ!

After we left Burnaby, we headed to Vancouver and visited the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. I was curious about this park because I noticed it when J and I spent our anniversary in Vancouver over a year ago; our bed-and-breakfast Thistle Down was just up the road from the park. It was fun to walk across different bridges and take little hikes in the area. We didn't have our hiking backpack for Lucy, which was unfortunate, but we managed alright by carrying her when her legs got tired of walking.

Sam was nervous on the suspension bridge, but he managed alright!

The Cliffwalk

Memorial Day Weekend: Car Ride and Stack-Ranks

We took a road trip up to Canada for the Memorial Day weekend. Our car drive was really fun, especially since we introduced Sam to Back to the Future and got to eat at a fun drive-in called Boomer's in Bellingham. The kids were thrilled that their food came in little cars, and Lucy was really taken with the idea that she got to eat her dinner in the car (which is funny, because she snacks in the car all the time).

On the drive, we played a fun "stack-rank" game that we invented. You basically compile a list of your favorite things by interrogating a person and asking one at a time, "Which is better? ______ or ________?" We picked a few themes for these lists, and here they are, ranked from best to worst:

Lucy: Princesses

--

Elsa

Moana

Belle

Cinderella

Sleeping Beauty

Ariel / Snow White

Rapunzel

Jasmine

Gizelle

Anastasia

Ana

Sam: Heroes

--

Harry Potter

Ron Weasly

Steve

Dumbledore

Chewbacca

Ewoks

Chirrut Îmwe (Rogue One blind guy)

Ash

Pikachu

BB8

Hermione Granger

Jyn Erso

K2SO

Batman

Emmet (Lego Movie)

Rey

Yoda

Cassian Andor

Poe Dameron

Baze Malbus

Monica: Artists

--

Van Eyck

Bernini

Michaelangelo

Vermeer

Van Gogh

Sargent

Waterhouse

Gerome

Caravaggio

Da Vinci

Manet

Monet

Hopper

Rembrandt

Aleijadinho

David

Jeremy: Movie characters/vehicles

--

Batman

Batman Tumbler

Darth Vader

The Delorian

X-Wing

Tim Burton Batmobile

Millennium Falcon

C3P0

R2D2

Number 5

Death Star

E.T.

Roger Rabbit

Marty McFly

Karate Kid

Mr. Miagi

Wesley, Princess Bride

Jeremy: Artists

--

Mark Rothko

Anish Kapoor

James Turrell

Agnes Martin

Josef Albers

Sol LeWitt

Franz Kline

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Gerhard Richter

Ed Rucha

Joseph Cornell

Barnett Newman 

Sargent

Bernini

Richard Serra

I think these lists will serve ass a great memory of our interests at this point in our lives. The drive passed by quickly with this game, and we got to introduce Sam to Back to the Future while we waited to cross the border. Once we passed the border, we went to our motel and the kids got to swim in the pool.

Paintings of Étretat

My sister E got engaged to her boyfriend Taylor a few weeks ago! We are very happy for them and wish them great success and happiness in their future together. They got engaged on the cliffs of Étretat in Normandy, and I can't help but think of the 19th-century paintings of that same location.

Boudin, Courbet, and Monet stand out as the three main artists who really focused on painting Étretat (see some information about these artists and a nice compilation of some of their Étretat paintings here). Between October and December of 1885, for example, Monet painted nearly fifty paintings of the Normandy coast! I found a Pinterest compilation for some of the paintings created by Monet, but I don't like how those paintings are cropped in the compilation. I've highlighted some of my personal favorites by Monet, Courbet, and Boudin below:

Monet, The Cliff, Étretat, Sunset, 1883

Monet, Cliffs of the Porte d'Aval, 1885

Monet, Etretat, Cliff of d`Aval, Sunset, 1885

Claude Monet – Coucher de soleil à Étretat, 1883. Oil on canvas,  60x73cm. Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Monet, The Cliffs at Étretat, 1885. The Clarke Institute (Wikipedia has a darker image here, but I think that the Clarke Institute image is probably closer to the correct color)

Claude Monet Etretat, la porte d’Aval, bateaux de pêche sortant du port, around 1885. Oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm. Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Courbet, Bay with Cliffs, c. 1869. Oil on canvas

Courbet, The Sea-Arch at Étretat, 1869. Oil on canvas 79 x 128 cm

Courbet, La Falaise d’Étretat, Van der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal

Boudin, The Laundresses of Étretat, 1890 

(When writing this post, I was amused at this particular subject matter, because I should have included this painting in my "Washer Women" compilation on my art history blog! Ha ha!)

The "Mental Load"

My dearest friend Kelly just shared this article with me, which discusses gender roles and the "mental load" that women carry in relation to household and daily tasks. I do think that this article makes some broad generalizations about society's role in shaping gender and personality characteristics for each gender, but it raises some important points to consider. I feel very lucky to have married a helpful and proactive husband, but I think that both of us would agree that I still bear the majority of "mental load" necessary for running our household. This is partially due to circumstance (since I am at home more than J), but also because of my personality. J describes me as "fastidious" and I think I've become more fastidious since becoming a mother. I like to feel in control of my environment, which encourages me to have a heightened awareness of my surroundings and the tasks that need to be done. I also prefer to do smaller tasks on a regular basis, instead of having to focus on a pileup of tasks all at the same time. This is one way that J and I are different: he doesn't mind doing something at the last minute or waiting until a need is immediate. I also have a lower tolerance for clutter and dirt than J, so chores fill my "mental load" checklist on a more regular basis than they do for J.

That being said, I'm so glad that J knows how to help around the house and assume responsibilities without direction. Even though he isn't as bothered by clutter, he knows that it bothers me so he is  more sensitive to clutter on my behalf. I appreciate that he is a conscientious husband. And I want to make sure that I raise Sam in a way that naturally encourages him to avoid gender stereotypes and be prepared to assume the "mental load" for his adult life. And, if he chooses to share his life with someone or have a family, I want him to be prepared to equally share that "mental load" with another. So this article is prompting me to think about the way that Sam completes his chores. I typically assign him to a particular task, but I think I'm going to have him try to look around the house and determine where there is a genuine need for a chore to be performed.

My mom definitely was a person who assumed the "mental load" for our family. I think that this was part of her personality: she liked to assume control so that things would happen in the way that she wanted them to. I think a good portion of her "mental load" involved thinking about things that related to the health and physical well-being of herself and her family (particularly regarding food, cleaning products, or clothing with fabrics that didn't irritate her skin). My mom was busy during of her waking moments. I enjoyed seeing this picture that V showed me earlier this month, because it is a rare image of my mom sleeping (see below). I think I'm probably just a little bit younger than Sam in this photo. This picture is also appropriate, too, because my mom is sleeping on a brown silky pillowcase so that her skin wouldn't touch the cotton pillowcase.

Sometimes I wish I could ask my mom more about this topic of the "mental load" and gender roles now that I'm an adult: I wonder if she felt overwhelmed with the mental load or if she simply could prioritize and took the "mental load" all in stride. I also wish I could ask her what she why she opted for a more traditional division of gender roles when it came to household responsibilities. I have some good guesses as to what she would say, but I wonder if she would give me a more nuanced explanation to me, since I am now an adult with my own household.

I do know, though, that I could have been more aware of things that needed to be done around the house when I was growing up. I remember that I would spend time cleaning my room and organizing my own things (because that was an environment that I could easily control), but I typically would leave my dishes out and not put things away in the kitchen. And there were other small things that I wouldn't assume responsibility for, like replacing empty toilet paper rolls with a fresh roll. When I was growing up, it was common practice for everyone grab a new roll when necessary and simply leave it sitting upright on the back of the toilet (while usually just leaving the empty cardboard roll still in the hanger). When I was a newlywed, I remember J specifically had to ask me to start replacing the toilet paper by hanging the roll on the holder, and I was surprised to realize that I had acquired this quirk! Before that moment, it genuinely never crossed my mind that it was strange to leave the roll out until J pointed it out. It will be interesting to see what quirks (and, hopefully, good habits) Sam and Lucy develop as a product of their upbringing.

Empathy and Kindess

I came across a graduation speech that Will Ferrell gave at the University of Southern California. I was struck by his candor and humility, and I particularly liked this quote:

...you will never truly be successful until you learn to give beyond yourself. Empathy and kindness are the true signs of emotional intelligence.

I've been thinking about how Sam is so mature for his age, and I think that it partially is because he has an inherent ability to feel empathy and be kind. A neighborhood boy came over to play this week and the game that he invented with Sam involved hiding behind doors - in the end, the game ended up frightening Lucy. When I came upstairs to see what was going on, Lucy was crying but Sam also got emotional as well. He has an inherent sense of what is the kind thing to do, and I hope that he continues to take his sister's feelings into consideration for the rest of his life.

My Old Jewelry

For some reason, lately I've been thinking about the jewelry that I used to have as a child. Perhaps it's because I found my faux-Victorian "Happy Birthday" tin last summer, when I unearthed a box of my childhood things in my dad's attic. When I was little, I would put some of my keepsakes and jewelry in that tin. I'm pretty sure that I kept a white crystal turtle and a brown crystal hare in there; I got those keepsakes in second grade from my little boyfriend, David S., who went to some place on vacation (I think called the Crystal Forest?) and brought me some the souvenirs.

I also kept jewelry in a ballerina jewelry box (that looked very similar to this one) for a long time. I think I gave that box to one of my little sisters when I got older, and I may have given my sisters some of my jewelry too. I had several necklaces, including an "I [heart] Primary" necklace and an "LDS" necklace with my emerald birthstone.

If I remember right, I think hat I have both a blue-and-orange butterfly pin, and also a white butterfly bookmark. Both of them were made of enamel, and the bookmark had a little gold hook so that the butterfly would rest outside the book, along the spine. I remember that one of these was slightly loose (perhaps the pin?) and I could slightly wiggle the lower two wings. These are the closest things that I have been able to find online that match what I used to have:

I also had a rose pendant that was on a gold chain necklace with simulated pearls and a twist clasp. I'm not sure if it was from the 1928 Collection jewelry line, but the aesthetic is very similar to this one, although my pendant rested on a solid oval base and had this rose shape.

My favorite necklace, at least when I was a teenager, was a "House of Seven Gables" pendant that was shaped like the actual house. I got the necklace in the gift shop of the House of Seven Gables, during my 8th grade trip to Boston (and the surrounding area) and New York City. I found one pendant charm on,one which kind of resembles my pendant, but mine had more definite shape with precise lines (as well as a darker color). But this is kind of close:

I still have one bracelet that I wore as I child; I think I got it when I was around eight or nine years old. It is a braided silver bracelet that only lies flat against the wrist when it is curved in a certain direction; you can't clasp it if it the bracelet is flipped the other way and curved the opposite direction. It still fits me, and when I put it on for this picture I remembered how tricky it is to balance the clasp on your wrist while you try to fasten it:

Now that I have a daughter, I wish that I had hung onto some of my jewelry so that I could pass it along to her. I tend to get rid of things that I don't use regularly, so it's unsurprising that my childhood self had that same tendency to purge items that were too small or didn't get enough use as I got older. If only I had held onto some of these things!