A trip to D.C.

June 14, 2017

My psychiatrist agreed I am doing well, so he said I should take my prescriptions at least until December before dialing them back and, I hope, off them entirely.  I’ve almost forgotten how miserably depressed I was last year, so desperate that I practically begged for help.  My sister suggested that having my knee replaced with a metal one would be as traumatic as electroshock therapy for depression, and I agree.  Since April, when I got the surgery, I’ve not felt depressed at all.  A beneficial side effect of an otherwise painful ordeal.

P. and I spent a pleasant week in Washington D.C., got back at midnight the day before yesterday.  You know, we didn’t take our dog to D.C.  Instead, we enrolled Gunther in dog day camp where he evidently did quite well.  A woman at the camp (who looked like the photo of a meth addict—teeth missing, lots of sores on her face) kept him busy with other dogs.  I don’t know.  Sniffing each other’s butts, I suppose.  Trying to hump each other.  Dog stuff.

Meanwhile, P. and I took a cab from the D.C. airport to our hotel in Bethesda ($40), but except for another taxi the next day to watch Josiah graduate from high school, and a “LYFT” ride (similar to Uber), we enjoyed public transportation all week.  It was cheap and fast and easy to understand.

The subway system was seamless.  P. and I picked out a destination each day and rode Metrorail and Metrobus and walked.  You get the picture.  To the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, to our granddaughter Olivia’s choir performance, to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, you know, like that.  We walked until my new knee swelled up like a softball was in it.  All together satisfactory getting around D.C.  We even took the subway to the airport the last day.

One day we traveled by rail, bus, and foot to the Frederick Douglass Historic Site where we saw a film that stated unequivocally that the American Civil War was fought over slavery.

People were kind to us.  A huge woman saw our perplexed expressions after we got off a bus and helped us to the subway station.  Another day we went to the National Arboretum, also in the Southeast portion of the city.  We walked miles, getting by with a little help from friendly people.  While P. and I waited in the intense heat at a bus stop, a tiny white woman with an “o” shaped lipsticked mouth stopped near us, stared at her phone for a couple minutes, then told us our bus would be stopping in 10 minutes more.  There’s an app you can get for your phone that tells precisely where every bus is.  I don’t know how it works.

In Bethesda, P. and I stayed at a slightly seedy, but cheap and adequate, hotel.  In old Bethesda, home of the “Tastee Diner” and five or six other restaurants.  My favorite was a French place, “La Madeleine.”  We ate there three times.  Each time I had a crepe smothered in pesto with shrimp.  I enjoyed old Bethesda almost as much as Paris, with the benefit that I could almost understand the natives of Bethesda when they spoke.