• New undergown/shift. Pretty sure I have some white linen somewhere for this, but I may need to order some in a lighter weight than what you can buy at Joann’s. They tend to only carry mid-weights.
• New linen cotte aka Gothic fitted dress. Curved front, based off the fitting I did for the tan wool cotte (which fits beautifully). Want to make slightly looser upper arms than the navy linen cotte, with button sleeves from elbow down. Seriously considering doing the elbow hinge sleeve a la Charles de Blois. Have a big piece of red linen in the shed that will work for this. Next cotte will be a similar dress out of the blue wool in the shed, also have enough out of the silver wool. Would like to do one with short sleeves and add pin-on sleeves. Need a long-sleeved undergown for that.
• Turnshoes. Maybe with some cutwork. Have had this planned for ages and never seem to get around to it. I really, really want to start making these so I have some period shoes. Look how pretty in blue! I have some leather that I can use for a first attempt at shoes. I suppose I could buy them here, this is a really reasonable price, but the fit will be better if I make them custom. And closely related to that is:
• Pattens. No point having shoes without these, right? Hinged or flat, not sure yet. May have to get The Husband involved, and if all else fails, buy a pair.
• Accessories. I want to make a new bag to hang from my belt, like this one.

Current projects that need finishing:

• Yellow linen cotte. Needs button sleeves finished (buttons are made and facings partly sewn, need to be tacked down and hemmed, buttonholes done, and buttons attached), bottom hem. Need to hem by hand!
• Teal wool surcote. Needs sleeves lined and attached, bottom hem. Need to hem by hand!
• Blue/gray silk particolor tunic. Cut out, no sewing done yet.
• Herjolfnes 63 for The Husband. Cut out and partially assembled. Needs to be finished. This one needs to be a priority over the particolor cause his garb situation is a situation.

Projects for The Husband that I need to start in fall also:

• Hood
• Braies
• Bocksten-style tunic (fix neckhole fit issues)
• Manesse Codex style longer tunic
• Tabard

So we parked down by the tidal basin south of the Washington Monument, because I resent the idea of paying to park in the city, set the timer on my phone for 3 hours (three hour limit on the free spaces), and hiked up to the Natural History Museum. This was pretty much the only one we really went to when I was a kid, and we just called it The Smithsonian, because none of the others mattered (we did go to the Air and Space and American History sometimes, but we never missed the dinosaurs). We went through the dinosaurs first level but the second level with the pterasaurs was closed, so we went and had a snack in the cafe, then went through the ice age mammals section (boys thought the giant sloth and woolly mammoth were impressive). After that we went to the ocean area where they listened to a lecture on megalodons for a bit, held a megalodon tooth, and then we went downstairs to the stores and smashed penny machine. After that we went up to the rocks and gems and the insect zoo.

After we left the Natural History Museum, we hiked down to the Vietnam Wall, stopping at the World War II memorial (the boys do not feel there should be water features unless people are allowed to go in them, and didn’t see why they couldn’t swim in the fountains, just because it was 49 degrees out). We snapped a picture at the Wall and then hiked past the Lincoln Memorial down to the car. The boys have been to the Lincoln before and did not feel they needed to see it again. We went past the Korean War memorial on the way out – that one is my favorite of the war memorials, I think it’s very powerful.

We hopped in the car and the boys had another snack while we looked for a new parking space. We managed to get one on Jefferson right in front of the Air and Space Museum. Big score there. The boys had never been to the Air and Space Museum before and were very impressed by the space stuff, particularly the Saturn V rocket displays and Apollo missions. We spent a lot of time there, then we went down to the missile pit and C invented stories for each of them. We stayed at the Air and Space, looking around at planes and spacecraft, for quite a while. Stopped in at the store there and bought the boys toy space shuttles. C was flying his around going “Prepare for maximum velocity!” And then they decided they were starving and D commented, “I noticed there was a McDonald’s behind the moon lander” so we went over to the McDonald’s attached to the museum. It was both the most efficient and most expensive McDonald’s I’ve ever been to (pricier than the one outside Versailles in Paris!). By the time we finished eating, it was just after 4 and about time to move the car again, so we headed back out.

This time we got a space outside the Natural History museum on Madison, and walked down to the American History Museum. First we went through the new (well, new to me, I don’t know when they built it) Star-Spangled Banner display. The display is much better than it was the last time I went to that museum (probably about 20 years ago, so I guess that’s not surprising), they’ve got the flag in a low-light clean room now. It looks just as old and fragile as ever, but then it is nearly 200 years old now. They have the lyrics to the first verse of the National Anthem on the wall above it, and C read them off to us and I tried not to cry cause the anthem always makes me choke up (weird maybe, cause I’m really not super patriotic or anything). No pictures allowed, sadly, but we spent some time looking at the exhibits on either side of the flag room. Boys were particularly impressed by the British bombshell from 1814. C was determined to watch every picture on the slide show tv screen, so we stayed there a while. It was actually really good, I think the flag part was my favorite in that museum.

We checked out the presidential area, and aside from the assassination bits and an extensive discussion of how presidents have died, the boys weren’t too interested. I made them come through the Inaugural Ball dresses section, where they commented on all the gowns (they don’t like Eleanor Roosevelt’s but were impressed by Michelle Obama’s, mostly because they thought the starburst beaded embroidery pattern was spiders). They started asking to go home, but I informed them we were not attempting to leave DC at 5pm and needed to kill 2 more hours. We wandered a bit more, checking things out, then found a section in the basement with activities – whiteboards for drawing, Etch-a-Sketches, and a Lego table. They spent 45 minutes at the Lego table, busily building, while I texted pictures to The Husband and posted a few to facebook and Instagram. Then we went through the transportation display, which was really cool with cars from each decade and two steam engines. The boys loved it, climbing inside a subway car and talking to the mannequins at each display. “Hey you, give me some food!” to a shopkeeper outside his horse-drawn wagon. They thought the “dummies” were hilarious.

We hung out until 7 and then headed home. It was a nice straight shot with no traffic by then. Even made it through the notorious Woodbridge area without having to stop, in the HOV lanes.

So here’s some pics:

D: “What does it do?”

Me: “It helps you imagine the future.”

D: “Like what?”

Me: “Like, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

C: “I don’t know. Lazy.”

Me: “Did you say lazy?”

C: “Yeah. Lazy.”

Me: “How are you going to eat, then?”

C: “Eating and drinking lazy.”

Me: “Yeah but how will you pay for it if you’re lazy? What will your job be?”

C: “Oh. A policeman.”

D: “A welder, like Daddy.”

Me: “Oh that’s a nice job, Daddy would be proud.”

C: “Yeah, I’ll be a welder too. But since there will be an extra for the job, I’ll be in charge.”

Me: “Good idea.”

D: “Does it cost money to sign up?”

Me: “To be a welder? No, but it costs money to learn. But your daddy can teach you.”

C: “Yeah, we’ll do that.”

Here’s how the Mayan calendars (they had more than one!) worked.

The Haab

The secular calendar, the Haab, can be thought of as a series of concentric circles rotating inside each other. The kin is the smallest – a day. There are 20 kin in a uinal, 18 uinal in a tun (roughly a year – 360 days), 20 tun in a k’atun, and 20 k’atun in a b’aktun. The b’aktun is what seems to be tripping people up, and causing a lot of inaccurate memes traveling around the internet. There’s some debate over whether or not the Haab corrected for leap year (it did), whether or not it happens in December 2012 after all (it’s not certain because the Haab doesn’t exactly correspond to the Gregorian calendar and making an exact date translation isn’t always accurate), all that crap. So here’s two things:

1. The ending of the 20th b’aktun does NOT mean the end of the calendar.

2. It was not a doomsday. If anything would have happened – and the archaeological record does not indicate anything would – it would have been a celebration akin to a New Year’s party.

The b’aktun is not the outermost circle in the calendar. There are 20 b’aktun in a piktun (about 7885 years), 20 piktun in a kalabtun, 20 kalabtun in a kinchiltun, and 20 kinchiltun in an alautun (about 63 million years). 63 MILLION YEARS.

Now, the only one out of these counts the Maya were particularly impressed by was the piktun. At the end of a piktun – 7,885 years – the universe is destroyed and re-created. Think of how many of those have already happened! It’s really not a thing. And even if it is, the next one ends in about 2,750 years, so there’s no need to worry.

As for the b’aktun, this all started with what is hysterically known (among New Age crazies mostly) as the “Doomsday Stela”, even going so far as to call it a prophecy. IT IS NOT. Like most Mayan hieroglyphs, it’s fragmentary and our understanding of the exact meanings is incomplete. Here’s what my professor of Mayan hieroglyphs during my undergrad days, Dr. Stephen Houston, says about this: What Will Not Happen in 2012

“Whatever Monument 6 has to tell us pertains to the dedication of the building associated with the sculpture. It has nothing to do with prophecy or the supposed, dread events that await us in AD 2012. About that the Maya are notably silent…or, truth be told, a bit boring.”

And from Dr. Mark Stone, another Mayan archaeologist, this fantastic debunking.

“The Palenque Maya did not expect 2012 to be the end of days. They calculate a piktun‐ending with a piktun of 20 bak’tuns. This could not happen if the bak’tun reset again after it reached 13.”

So let us please all CALM THE FUCK DOWN, because this is not a thing. If you believe it is a thing, you are an idiot, and lack any understanding of archaeology, history, or Mayan culture.

C: We need to watch Jurassic Park because we need to see the ingredients for how he makes the dinosaurs. Then we can MAKE OUR OWN because I think he messed up on them.

Me: Why are you sitting in the corner, dude?
C: I broke my Lego ship, so I’m punishing myself.

It started with D having discovered he can curl his tongue. C, upset that he couldn’t do it too, said forlornly, “Everything has to be the same with twins.” Then he added, more cheerful, “But size doesn’t matter.” I did one of those *omg* kind of disbelieving laughs and said, “Where did you hear that?” He said, “Master Yoda.” Freakin’ Star Wars.

D: Mommy, I will never stop loving you.
Me: I will never stop loving you too.
D: Even when you die before us?
Me: … yes.
D: Because we are seven, and you are way older.

Me: Dude, if you just did your work instead of staring off into space, you’d have more time to play. Stop daydreaming and get it done.
C: That is also called flashbacking.

D: Mommy, there was a spider in our room. On my foot.
Me: Oh my. Did you smush it?
D: No. I held my foot up like this, and it fell off. But guess what.
Me: What?
D: C smushed it. *runs off* C, spiders eat flies, they are good animals!

Lately they are REALLY into the Star Trek movie with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. They’ve been watching it at least twice a day. They even built the ships out of Lego. It’s really hilarious.

“I hope we find dinosaur bones,” D added.

“Do you want to come dig too?” C asked.

I told him I’d be out in a bit.

“Okay,” C said, “but you better bring some food and a drink of water, cause it is going to take a while.”

This morning, after speech therapy, they went out for some digging time. This time when I checked on them, D explained their scheme to me and showed me how they were going to fit both of them in the hole by making it bigger, and demonstrated how big it was going to be.

“Nice,” I said.

“There is one problem, Mommy,” D added. “How are we going to get back out of the hole?”

I suggested ladders. D was not impressed but decided it was good enough for now. “Okay. We are only digging until we hit lava.”

“We want to see what color lava really is,” C put in.

After Cub Scouts, they went back out to continue their excavations. This time I brought a blanket to sit and watch the proceedings. They showed me how deep they were (about a foot), and how big the hole was (maybe 6 inches across) and explained they were having problems because they kept hitting roots and metal.

“It is probably pipes,” C said wisely.

“It better not be pipes. It’s probably a rock,” I said.

“No, it sounds like metal. I think it’s pipes. We just have to get past them.”

“Below that there is sand. And then crabs. Crabs make holes in the sand, and that keeps the beach nice,” D informed me, and demonstrated with his hands the shape crabs make in the sand.

“There aren’t any crabs down there,” I told him. “Just clay probably.”

“Clay!” C said, laughing at this ridiculous suggestion. “There is a rock layer that is like a thousand percent thick! We are going to need a jackhammer.”

“Yeah, a jackhammer,” agreed D.

I examined the hole again. There were a LOT of roots. “You know, you’d hit less roots if you weren’t digging right next to the trees. Why don’t you dig over there in the middle of the yard?”

“No, that is where I planted my orange seed,” C said, but they decided to move over to the middle of the yard near where he planted the orange seed. I explained to them about backfill and helped them fill in the first hole, then went back to my blanket while they discussed their strategy for the new hole.

“There are a lot of plants here,” D called to me.

“It’s just grass and weeds,” I told him. “Dig through them and you’ll get to the dirt.”

“And then the lava,” he said with relish, and went back to digging.