Counting Blessings

 I will never turn down an impromptu invitation from my son - Saturday afternoon he wanted to go downtown to the Viva Dallas festival, a pre-celebration of Mexican Independence Day (which is actually today, Diez y Seis de Septembre). It actually worked out well because I had a 3 PM acupuncture appointment: Zach was working Saturday, so by the time he got home, mowed the front yard & took a shower, it was perfect timing. 

We drove downtown, parked at a lot a couple of blocks away (which was “merely” $11, the festival itself was free!) and hiked over to City Hall Plaza. What’s not to like? We ate tacos & elote, listened to mariachis, watched the dancers and saw some impressive displays of horsemanship. I was especially impressed by the young lady riding astride in the full flowing skirt.

Zach couldn’t stay out too late because he had to get up for work Sunday morning - this was perfectly agreeable to me also… We strolled around admiring our architecture and I tried to fill Z in on some of the controversy - many traditionalists were not in favor of our modernistic City Hall design or the Henry Moore sculpture in the plaza. The modern faction won, I think mostly from a desire to prove that we were not Fort Worth! If you walk a few blocks west, you can see the traditional cattle-drive, western bronze sculptures. Zach had to do his employee orientation inside City Hall by which he was favorably impressed.

 But then Sunday morning, it was back to reality - like it or not, I had to get my mother showered. Let me just say that I can handle animal clean-up much better than the eye-watering combination of stale urine and body odor. I tried to work as quickly &efficiently as I could and I got it done. On the classic movie channel they were doing a Lonesome Dove marathon, which turned out to be far superior to the disappointing Cowboys game.