Tsaritisno today was a major check off the list!

First we rode the metro out…if we'd driven it would have taken hours. The metro goes super fast.

Then you have to wear these airport-style booties to protect the newly-made Catherine-the-great-deserving palace floors.

You have to sneak in a photo of the interior before you get called out by a guard. And that will happen, don't worry, that is their job. But you can take as many pictures as you want outside.

After you tour the museum, which was totally recreated by the mayor of Moscow in the last ten years, based on 18th century sketches–and what a great use of space, I must say–each room of the palace is filled with arifacts from all corners of Russia, from classic heavily embroidered costumes to Lapland papooses.

Afterwards, you have to pick your favorite Lomosov pattern in the gift store.

Amazing day, seeing some of Catherine's huge collection of painted urns and mechanical birds in pretty little cages and 100-year-old-postage-stamp-sized books brought from Kazakstan and palace-sized rooms filled with Mongolian yurts

Then, for a dramatic time-travel juxtaposition, we went to the mall and bought Camille clothes at Zara.

I wish everyone I know as weird and wonderful a Mother's Day as this.

My fun, vivacious aunt who had no fewer than four spinach salad recipes, loved to run on the beach when she was 50, and always wore 3-inch heels, now at 84, still has cute legs. Walking down the hall of the nursing home, I saw them sticking out, half-hidden behind a curtain around her bed. Then I looked at the face and said, "That's her. Or it's someone else who looks exactly like my grandfather did at 97."

My Aunt Edie, who loved red wine and the color yellow and to laugh and play pool, lays in bed now and compulsively scratches her neck. She always used a tiny brush to put on her lipstick, seeing her now without make up is a harder adjustment than having her not know who I am. She has the same eyes she always did, the same high cheekbones, skin that shows she took care of it for years, and makes me rethink the need for sunscreen. I petted her arm and asked if that was okay with her. "Yes," she said, which is now her only word. Her biggest joy in life these days is chewing gum.

The necklace my aunt is wearing in this photo, my uncle bought for her in Clearwater Beach, Florida for their one year wedding anniversary. Soemthing like twenty one-carat diamonds form a heart-shape, with one larger diamond in the center. From the day she got it, she never took it off. She showered in it, wore it with gowns on New Years Eve and running on the beach. She wore with her bathing suit while working on her tan. Her smile and that necklace, Aunt Edie lit up our world.

After wearing the necklace every day since May 1967, around 1990, in the grocery store, my aunt felt around her neck and realized the necklace was missing. She searched everywhere, crying, put ads in the paper but never saw the necklace again. She believed she lost it while walking across a parking lot.

Wednesday my sister and I visited my aunt in the convelencent hospital and talked about how adorable she was. "If there was anything of hers I ever wanted, I would have loved to have had that necklace," my sister said. I knew exactly what necklace she was talking about, no one forgets bling like that.

While my sister and I have spent the last few days holding my dad's hand in hospice, my uncle has been searching his house for the combination to his safe. He invited my sister up to her house the other day and surprised–or absolutely freaked her out, given that we'd just been talking about the necklace–her with a gift. She walked into my dad's room and at his bedside, I looked up to see the diamond heart-shaped necklace around my sister's neck and screamed. My uncle says he found it in a jacket pocket of my aunt's, without the chain.

Of course, I'm only somewhat insanely jealous, but I am so happy to see the necklace, and I love seeing it on my sister.

Difficult as it is to believe it's her, her legs twisted in a blanket, unable to have a conversation, scratching and chewing gum, seeing my darling Aunt Edie in her dramatically altered state is still seeing her. I'm going to go see her again while I'm home. I think I'll take lipstick to put on her, and some lotion to smooth where she's been scratching.

Update: I spent most of the time during my second visit with Aunt Edie telling her about her wedding, I was her flower girl. I told her every detail I could remember, she seemed to enjoy hearing about her velvet and silk dress, the tiara she wore and the rose petals I put in everyone's champagne. I found out this morning, before I had a chance to publish what I wrote earlier, that my Aunt Edie died yesterday.

We've had a couple of visitors, we insisted Helen extend her stay from two weeks to three weeks. We did all sorts of fun stuff with her, like visiting a doll workshop–which is a whole blog post of its own. Then Aleen was here for a week and we went for a few wanders–we found a couple of really quirky shops, both of them hidden in apartment buildings. We would have made her stay longer if we could have, but she left yesterday. She probably thought we were trying to kill her with Glee and Modern Family and trips to the grocery store and the forced bus-drivers holiday of constant psychotherapy. I've also been working on a brochure-turned-36 page booklet outside of my regular job that kept me busy when I wasn't newslettering. Camille had exams. A bomb exploded at the airport. Oh, and today is the last day of the Two-Week Triathlon, I swam my last 26 laps and spun away my last 12 miles.

Peter wrote an Overwhelming To-Do list of things we have to accomplish by the time we leave Moscow, like renew our passports–including some doggy passport we need for Bea–and schedule our travel and pack out, all the usual. Plus we are in negotiations to sell our house in Portland. I'm having a hard time falling asleep at night. I wonder why?

Took down the Christmas tree today–everything had to be carefully put away this year since it will all be moved this summer. I put the tree outside with the lights still on so we can enjoy it a few more days.