LAME, LIKE IT, LOVE IT

With story time over until January, I have a void to fill.  It’s too cold to take walks outside.  I need a break from mallwalking.  We’vebeen to Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum already.  We’vebeen out on many lunch dates.  I even took her to the musical dress rehearsal at my brother’s high school he teaches at.  Starting to run out of ideas, I decided to take her to the Detroit Institute of Arts.  The D.I.A.

The first step in going to the art museum was to figure out Ellie’s outfit.  I had attempted to go earlier in the week and had already picked out an artsy outfit, but the museum was closed, and she peed on it.  So I had to pick out something different.  A different artsy outfit.  I thought about going all black going for the pretentious architect look.  But she doesn’t have all black, so I decided to go for the emo-rocker look.  That might be a sub category to “artsy outfit”.  I put her in a black AC/DC onesie with black leggings that had a black and white striped ruffled skirt attached to it.  To top off the outfit I did red socks with her red sparkle Wizard of Oz Dorothy slippers.  Bling!  When we got to the museum most of the women had on skinny jeans or leggings with boots, which is what I had originally picked out for her.  I’m good at this, I think.

I was hoping for Ellie to get a little excited when we got to the museum.  Who doesn’t want a baby that appreciates art from Italian Renaissance?  We went to the grand gallery first.  It has a really high decorative ceiling with big chandeliers.  She just glanced up briefly as if to say, “This is nice… but I’ve seen better.”  So I took miss fancy pants out of the stroller and we started roaming the galleries.  We started in the modern art galleries where she developed a rating system.  We’d stand in front of a painting and I’d point and ask if she liked it.  Most often she’d look at me, then look at the painting, then back at me as if to say, “Are you kidding?  This is art?  I make better ‘art’ inside my diaper.”  And then she’d start playing with the button on my jacket.  This meant the painting was “LAME.”  But sometimes she’d stick her hand out towards the painting.  Like she was trying to high-five it.  This meant, “I LIKE it.”  And very few times, and mostly with the impressionists, she’d smile and clap her hands.  “I LOVE it!”

I wonder if I can use this same rating system when she starts dating.

You know… when she’s thirty-five.