Sydney and Amy's journey of art appreciation

 The Mosiman women aren't renowned for their art appreciation. Enthusiasm...yes. Appreciation...no. Savannah will try to extract herself culturally from Sydney and I at this juncture but we are always quick to remind her of our erupt removal from a Smithsonian museum following her immature case of giggling hurt-y hiccups. Brad staunchly stands by his decision of heartlessly evicting his family. "Laughter has no place in Lincoln's assassination exhibit," he stated firmly.

I'd like to say that this was the only time we'd been kicked out of a museum. Sigh.

Bruised and battered from being bucked off (again and again), we always get back on our haughty-high horses and trot right back in those hallowed halls of high-falutin handicrafts.

Having watched a marathon-amount of television, I shook the spider-webs from my transfixed-by-Netflix brain and googled Famous Art in San Diego. Nobody familiar to me popped up. I was well-versed in concentric circles. Pointillism made sense if I crossed my eyes a little. I could handle a water-color as long as it depicted a pond. But my google search kept pointing me to a sculpture. "Remember, we didn't think all that much about The Thinker," Sydney reminded me. "That was because we were hungry and there was a little cafe behind him," I said. She nodded. "You're right, we were thinking with our stomachs. Let's go."

In addition to our questionable sense of art appreciation, Sydney and I also possess a marked lack of navigational ability. Combine this with unrelenting optimism and we can be cheerfully lost for hours...until we get hungry. "This feels like when we were searching for Balto's statue," Sydney commented as we scoured Balboa Park for the famed Sculpture Garden. We made a brief restroom stop to perform an acoustic version of "Fine by me," re-enacted the renowned legacy landscape scene from"The Lion King" as we crossed a bridge overlooking the San Diego hillsides, "Look, Simba! Everything the sun touches will one day be your's!", and tired, stopped at a bar, admitting that we'd given up looking for the famed Sculpture Garden. "But you're here!" the hostess exclaimed, directing us to the back of the restaurant. We looked longingly at the liqueur but didn't want to disappoint the hostess so we stomped back to look at the art. Ugh.

"It's supposed to be the figure of a woman reclining," I whispered to my unimpressed daughter. "Is that her boob?" Sydney wondered. "I think it's supposed to be her elbow but the space between her torso and leg is meant to conjure up a mountainous landscape. With that in mind, it IS probably a boob," I admitted. We looked around at our fellow art-lovers. Most of them were laying on the littered ground, drinking. Kids were running and shrieking delightfully. No one was looking at the art. except a white French bulldog wearing a sophisticated red sweater. We named him Reggie...short for Reginald.

Sydney and I walked to another piece...a combination windmill/antennae thing constructed of seven-foot silver length-ed bobby pins. Sydney carefully inspected the surrounding fence while I stared, entranced at the bobby pins. "They're moving," I murmured. "I think my head could fit through there," Sydney speculated. "They're both idiots," Reggie observed. "Look!" I exclaimed, illuminated, "the bobby pins transform into shapes...parallelogram....now, wait for it...wait for it...RHOMBUS!" It was a revelation. "I could twist my shoulders just so..." Sydney said speculatively, "but my hips...what about my hips?" Reggie glanced back at the mountainous landscape and didn't have the heart to tell her that she'd be halted well before her hips. "For some reason, it won't quite complete the final triangle..." I obsessed. "What is the triangle with the one long side and the two short sides...acute/obtuse/acute/obtuse...OBTUSE! It's OBTUSE!" Reggie agreed. One would be hard-pressed to find a finer art analysis delivered in this crowd. I beamed, interrupted Sydney's impending escape from the fence, and with heads held high, we left the Sculpture Garden. "How did you like it?" our hostess asked. "Which one is your favorite?" I countered, curious. She paused before stuttering out, "The red one." I laughed. Never discount enthusiasm when it comes to art.