Trev and I spent the day downtown on Thursday. He had a doctor’s appointment in one of the skyscrapers and then we met up with Maria to eat street food. Trevor went for a burger and Maria and I got sticky buns. We run into Nona and Nada and later Trevor got to chase some ducks that stubbornly decided to live in the Confederation Park fountain. After a nice walk down Elgin street we said bye to Maria and headed off to the Nature Museum to see “Animal Inside Out”.

I feel ambivalent about nature museums in general. Despite the creepiness, I can’t object to taxidermy, I think displaying the animals as close to the real thing makes sense and the museums themselves would lose much of its richness had they resorted to papier-mâché versions of the real thing. I still find it eerie that the objects are kept in some sort of pre-decomposition stasis for such a long time. Plastination resolves the decay issues but is like taxidermy on speed; interest and creepiness both amplified to 11. OMG, a Cerebus!!! No, it is just a camel with its head split open into three…

After we finished the exhibit, Trevor wanted to stay and see all the other parts of the museum which took us to supper time. There were two restaurants on Bank street I have been wanting to visit for a while, so I arraigned with Chris to meet us at the Korean place with the rest of the crew. We rarely go to restaurants any more (other than quick lunches on workdays) so going as a family was an event in itself. The boys ended up eating Chris’ meal, Chris ate Trevor’s dish, I ate the boys’ soup, Owen cried until we ordered him tofu salad and then ate tree forkfuls of it because that’s all he ever wanted, the waitress was spoon-feeding Markus and so on. Surprisingly enough the outing was not a complete disaster.

Now I am sorry I did not take pictures of the day, but it is something that I very rarely do anyway. When I am doing something with the kids I tend to not want to distract myself with the camera, besides, Chris is the designated photographer. It was nice to spend the day with Trev. There have been a number of challenges in school and Chris and I have been racking our brains trying to make the best decisions. It is hard to understand why there is so much of head butting at school when at home he is as easy going as eight year olds come.