West Laurel Hill Cemetery

We had a pretty nice weekend. Out nephew, Lily's cousin Chris slept over on Friday and she absolutely adores him. 

Sometimes we'll play a game where I stretch my arm with some food in my hand while I look away, and Lily will grab whatever I'm holding and eat it and then profess innocence. So she likes to play at outsmarting me. On Saturday morning she actually did it. We still keep a baby gate in her door, because it's at the top of the stairs and we don't want her sleepily wandering out and falling down. Jen woke up first and noticed that Chris was starting to wake up and commented to Lily to this effect. Jen went downstairs and Lily said "I want to play with Chris." I opened the gate for her and told her that Chris was still waking up and that we should give him a little more time and then we could play. Lily said "I want to talk to mommy." I told her that I'd go get mommy and started walking downstairs. Before I had even gotten all the way down, I hear the baby gate spring open and Lily shout "Hi, Chris!"So, while I'm kind of impressed that she's capable of thinking things through to this degree, I'm not entirely pleased that she is calculating enough to deceive someone with such premeditation.

Jen ran out in the morning to gas up the car and I let the kids play with each other. Chris is a pretty easy going kid, so he mostly took Lily's lead in what they were doing. Unfortunately, what they were doing involved poisoning her toys.

Actual quotes from Saturday morning:

• "They put poison in the water to kill the princess." (A couple moments later) "I'm okay because I never drink water."
• "When you die, you go to a very bad place, the top of the hill." (I'm assuming that she heard the word "Hell" at some point and misinterpreted it.)
• "The Princess is dead over here!"

We dropped off Lily and Chris and went to West Laurel Hill Cemetery. I've always liked cemeteries, but only recently have I started seeking them out.  My friend Jen says that cemetery tours should be a regular feature on my blog. We shall see. West Laurel Hill was nice. It was full of these...ack, I'm blanking on the word.

...oh, right.

My friend Frederick, knowing of my interest in cemeteries, pointed out that Swan Point Cemetery, where H.P. Lovecraft is buried, has actual street signs.West Laurel hill does too.

Street signs, awesome.

A horse drawn hearse

I don't think you see it at this size, but if you click on the image to expand it, you can see that this guy has DDS after his name. I mean, it's kind of cool being a dentist (I'm just kidding, it's really not) , but not so cool that I'd want it inscribed on my mausoleum for all eternity.

Tomb with a view!

It was pretty nice. It was larger than Laurel Hill, but not as diverse with the styles of monuments.

"Sure, Lex, I'll hold this green rock for you."

I mentioned a while ago that some of the mausolea in Laurel Hill were bigger than my first apartment. Some of them here in West Laurel Hill are bigger than my current house.

Big!

Also big!

The most interesting tombstone of the day was the one below. It had a sculpture of a dog and a cat, and though you can't see them in the picture below, someone had placed little trinkets of cats and dogs on the grave. There was no date, so what Jen and I concluded was that the man loved his pets very much and they predeceased him. We tried to look up his name, but the only returns for Lee Holloway were Maggie Gyllenhaal's character in Secretary.

 

After that, it was off to Karen's Scott Pilgrim party, which I'll be covering in a later post.