Taking One For the Team and Immersing in Art, a Random and Happy Tuesday Post

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It's time once again for a random and happy Tuesday, linking up with Stacy's Random Thoughts at Stacy Uncorked and Sandee at Comedy Plus.  

Carl has to go to work early this week.

This is a good thing.  It means i didn't have to leave him to sleep another hour in the chair after i came to clean his room.  Instead i blasted him up that minute, let him take his morning meds, then chivvied him into the shower right away.

When he walked out of the shower, i put his clean apron on him over his work clothes and told him he was not allowed to take it off until he was ready to walk out the door.

it was absolutely spotless when he put it on...

His apron, after.  Yes, it's his younger brother's barista apron from the coffee place he worked at when he was in college becoming a rocket scientist.

If you're thinking his parents, having a rocket scientist son working for NASA and a special needs son who pushes carts at the MallMart have a wildly varied life when it comes to relating to their two boys, you'd be right.

Anyway, Carl took the apron off and then went to brush his teeth, and i had to act fast.  When i told him to leave it on until the moment he walked out the door, i meant it, but he gets distracted.  Seeing him over at the sink brushing with no apron on, i rushed over with a towel and reached my hand to stretch the towel across his shirt front just as he spit.

It didn't land on his nice, clean work shirt, that's the main point.  My hand is more easily washable, thankyouverymuch, and i figured it was all in the line of taking one for the team.  After all, i'm a mom, a weird creature who asks small people to "spit it out" and then thanks those small people for expurgating something disgusting into my palm.

Parenthood ain't for sissies, and neither is taking care of Carl.

To get back to the subject of the Van Gogh Immersive Event this weekend, it was truly special.  (Pictures were posted on Sunday, if anyone is interested.)  The beginning is a timeline of his life, information about his world and his family, and reproductions of many of his most famous works.  You can walk into the bedroom he painted, and see the three depictions he did of it, playing a guessing game to spot the four major differences between them, among other things.     

The main part is a huge room where you are surrounded by his art projected onto the walls and floor.  You sit and just soak it in, while music plays and his art swirls around you.

There's a gallery of his self-portraits, astounding to see lined up in chronological order.  It made me wonder how much of the changes were the havoc time wreaks on most of us, and how much was his developing style.

In the coloring room, i got to pretend to be five years old again, sitting and coloring one of his works drawn on a coloring sheet and then it was projected on the wall.  It's been a while since i sat and colored a sheet with oversize crayons, surrounded by children from as young as 4 all the way up to gray hair and canes.  We were all children in there.

Our VIP part of the ticket allowed us to put on the virtual reality headsets for a tour through Arles.  You can look around, up, down, almost even behind you and see the whole town rendered in 3D, from the fields of wheat with crows flying up from it all the way to laundry on clothes lines and watching the water with the lights reflecting on it.  The technology is amazing.

If you ever do get the chance, please go, you won't be sorry.

Now for some funnies.

Have a blessed and beautiful day, everyone!

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Today is:

Birthday of Prince Joachim -- Denmark

Daniel Boone Day -- Kentucky, US (date in he first sighted, in 1767, what would become Kentucky)

Flag Day -- Peru

Journalist's Day -- Argentina (marking the first publication of a newspaper in Argentina on this day in 1810)

Judgements Day -- Fairy Calendar (Leaping songs)

National Chocolate Ice Cream Day

Sette Giugno -- Malta (commemoration of the tragedy of June 7, 1919, considered their National Day)

St. Meriadoc's Day (Patron of the deaf and against deafness)

Union Dissolution Day -- Norway

VCR Day -- the first Sony Betamax went on sale today in 1975

Vestalia -- Ancient Roman Calendar (multi-day festival for Vesta, goddess of the hearth, this first day termed the Vesta Asperit; through the 15th)

Vivien Kellems Memorial Day -- born this date in 1896, she fought the IRS and income tax for her whole life

Anniversaries Today:

Jimmy Osmond marries Michele Larson, 1991

YMCA is founded by George Williams, 1844

Birthdays Today:

Michael Cera, 1988

Anna Kournikova, 1981

Larisa Oleynik, 1981

Bill Hader, 1978

Allen Iverson, 1975

Bear Grulls, 1974

Karl Urban, 1972

Roberto Alagna, 1963

Prince, 1958

Louise Erdrich, 1954

Liam Neeson, 1952

Orham Pamuk, 1952

Jenny Jones, 1946

Bill Kreutzmann, Jr, 1946

Tom Jones, 1940

John Napier Turner, 1929

Gwendolyn Brooks, 1917

Dean Martin, 1917

Jessica Tandy, 1909

Virginia Apgar, 1909

James Braddock, 1906

Paul Gauguin, 1848

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Ghostbusters(Film), 1984

"Johnny Cash Show"(TV), 1969

"The $64,000 Question"(TV), 1955

"The Seven Deadly Sins"(satirical ballet chanté), 1933

Today in History:

The first Crusaders begin their Siege of Jerusalem, 1099

Port Royal, Jamaica, is devastated by an earthquake, 1692

David Thompson reaches the mouth of the Saskatchewan River in Manitoba, 1800

Asian cholera reaches Quebec, brought by Irish immigrants, and kills about 6,000 people in Lower Canada, 1832

1,800 Fenian raiders are repelled back to the United States after they loot and plunder around Saint-Armand and Frelighsburg, Quebec, 1866

Tolbert Lanston receives patents for monotype typesetting machines, 1887

Norway's parliament dissolves  its union with Sweden, 1905

Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder for sale to the public, 1975

Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public, 1982

Mt. Pinatubo erupts, sending an ash cloud 7km/14.3mi high, 1992

The United Nations defines the Blue Line as the border between Israel and Lebanon, 2000

According to a new study, breast milk boosts brain development by 30% compared to babies who are fed formula, 2013

The journal "Science" publishes studies that show the Mars Curiosity Rover has found organic matter, including methane, on Mars, 2018

According to the UN, more than 4 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015 due to the economic crisis, 2019

Bdelloid rotifer multicellular organisms, frozen in Siberia for about 24,000 years, "come back to life" after being thawed by Russian scientists, 2021

The Economist Intelligence Unit names Aukland, New Zealand the world's most livable city, and Damascus, Syria, the least livable city, 2021