So how was your Memorial Day?

Things I would have done differently yesterday if I had an ounce of sense:

• Looked at the forecast, noticed the number 93 beside the letter F, stayed home.
• On exiting the metro in downtown DC, set off towards the Capitol, where there was allegedly some free music happening, rather than in the opposite direction, because after one and a half monuments, and not even the one I wanted to see (the new Martin Luther King memorial) we were drooping from the heat and the kids were demanding lunch.
• Brought a packed lunch instead of a snack which was devoured in five minutes as soon as we stepped off the train, because all the food in Washington DC is on the other side of the Mall and even if you know where the cheap food court is so you don't have to pay museum-cafe prices, (we do; it's in the Old Post Office) Dash still won't eat anything except bare nachos, otherwise known as tortilla chips, and then whine for the next twenty minutes because he didn't get an ice cream for "dessert". 
• Explained up front that tortilla chips don't count as lunch, so dessert is not merited. It's not like anyone else had ice cream either.
• Made a bigger effort to get Mabel to use the bathroom at the last place we were, so that she wouldn't spend the  entire metro journey home spinning around a pole and almost firing herself off - head exactly level with chair arms - because she couldn't sit still because she desperately needed to pee.

Things at least I did do:

• Wear sunscreen, put it on the kids. 
• Wear a hat.
• Bring water.
• Bring a stroller.
• Not have to watch helplessly as my child peed her pants on the train, because she held it all the way home.

Then we got home, collapsed in a heap, and made the kids watch Star Wars so they would shut up and leave us in peace. That was a good move too, but in all I can't help thinking the day would have been better spent at the pool.