St. Louis

So Harley was recovering nicely, until we left to go to St. Louis for the weekend, and she decided to chew her stitches out, struggle with the E-collar, and need to be completely resutured. She had to start over on her recovery. I owe everyone at the hospital a huge debt, and I don't just mean the money. It's a good thing this cat is sweet and part of the family because she just used up her lifetime supply of favors.

And cats and E-collars? Don't mix. She licks the collar trying to get at the stitches. If I take it off even for a minute, though, she's after them, so she'll just have to live with it.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, we were having a fun family weekend:

Friday was the Budweiser tour and Union Station, which is now a mall. The Budweiser factory reminded me of the candy factory in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I took this tour with my high school band many moons ago and still remembered most of it.

Saturday my sister and her kids joined us for a tour of Grant's Farm and the zoo. The zoo was another place I'd been in '78, and it was as nice as I remembered and still... a zoo. Maybe we're just burned out after years of homeschool field trips.

Sunday we went to the top of the Arch, since, you know, it's the law. Isn't that what you have to do in St. Louis? And now we have. After that, we went to City Museum, the highlight of the trip. It was a blast! I'm too old to be climbing on jungle gyms, but I didn't let that stop me. It was basically one big playground, and the adults there seemed to be having just as good a time as the kids.

We went to two movies while we were there: The Illusionist, worth a matinee maybe, and Man of the Year, worth a view on TBS in a few years if you have absolutely nothing else to do. Seriously, who advises Robin Williams to take these roles?

It was cold there. I may be stuck in Texas forever if just for my circulation.

We arrived home last night late, after a rescheduled flight. I had my very first parent-teacher conference, took apology gifts to the staff at the hospital, Sean worked, and Emily had her riding lesson. She's thinking of giving it a rest for awhile during basketball season.

Good to be home.