revisiting america

How do you take a day off from doing nothing?  Well, I did.  And it felt so good.  There will be more days like that I'm sure.  That's after I do the usual routine, cereal breakfast, two mugs of coffee, my two-mile walk, (up the sidewalk in front of at least ten car dealerships, and I'm sure they wonder where I come from every morning), daily bible reading, and a little housekeeping.  Then, the day was not a total loss because I decided to make dumplings for dinner.  You already know about the limited kitchen facilities, so this became an exercise in ingenuity because I only had a two-quart pot and a frying pan to tender the chicken and make the broth.  Luckily I brought baking powder, flour and all the necessary ingredients.  Wax paper is a good substitute for a dough cloth, and the rolling pin was a large round parmesan cheese container wrapped in Saran wrap, which became too flabby to really roll out thin pieces, so a can of peaches became the next rolling pin, and it worked.  The crock pot became the "big pot" after the dumplings were tender and needed to simmer.  Janie said they were really good, and of course she knows that will be her last meal if she doesn't brag on the cooking. 
Our Wednesday became a really special day for us because we visited the New Orleans Museum of Art.  Wednesdays are "freebie" days so that was even better for our budget.  The building, with a total area of 130,000 square feet of display space, sits on beautifully landscaped grounds, huge lake with ducks and hundreds of gulls flying around, walking paths( many people walking and I wondered if I look like some of them did when I walk( that was not nice), even a bride having her picture taken on the entrance steps. A three storied building full of more than 40,000 objects of French and American art, photography, glass, and African and Japanese works, all beautifully displayed.  The museum was founded in 1910 with a gift from philanthropist Isaac Delgado and is now one of N.O.'s main attractions.  New galleries, expanded education space, administrative space, a new cafe(we had a delicious turkey and bacon panini with pickled articholes and onions on the side) and Museum shop were added with a total renovation and expansion in 1993.  I've never had five hours to spend in a museum so I felt like I had really been, seen, and heard what it had to offer.
Adjacent to the museum was a Sculpture Garden, covering five acres, including a permanent collection of twenty sculptures by twentieth and twenty-first European, American, Latin American, Israeli and Japanese artists.
After all that culture we came home and warmed the left-over dumplings which were even better the second time around.
I must take the time to thank everyone for their comments, which makes me think I will continue blogging, and especially to my four wonderful children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren who are being read the blogs(I'm sure).
What's next?