I am sitting in front of one of my favorite late-summer meals, a steaming stack of zucchini pancakes with applesauce and plain yogurt (the yogurt is a substitute for sour cream, not because it is healthier, which it is, but because the sour cream was discovered to have turned an exciting shade of pink in the back of my refrigerator). AJ and his dad, who have already eaten, are burning off some steam on the improvised baseball diamond in the yard. The only sound I can hear at the moment is the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard. It is wonderfully quiet.

We left the house early this morning in search of adventure and instead found ourselves traveling through an endless parade of picturesque farms on our way to Madison, Wisconsin. It was another perfect summer day, an excellent day for exploring. AJ giggled over Calvin and Hobbes in the backseat while we all sang along to Dan Zanes and Schoolhouse Rock and pointed at all the farm animals. Considering that Wisconsin is America�s Dairyland (and no, this is not a misspelling of Diaryland), there were surprisingly few cows to be found. We might want to rethink that nickname, Wisconsin. Nevertheless, we did enjoy all the signs for �FIREWORKS CHEESE� and sometimes �CHEESE FIREWORKS.� Apparently fireworks are legal in Wisconsin, but conjunctions are not.

We spent a fair amount of time cracking lame jokes about the roads with letter names that started coming thick and fast as soon as we crossed the state lines. AJ was entertained by highway MM (�It�s delicious!�), whereas I was more amused by highway P. �And speaking of P, anyone see a rest stop around here?� Oh, yes, my humor�s going to go over big at kindergarten. I can tell.

When we got to Madison, we parked the car and walked toward the capitol, stopping at a street cart for a chocolate banana smoothie for AJ. We admired the fiberglass cows dressed as assorted characters from the Wizard of Oz. They appeared to be staging a government coup, as they had the capitol building surrounded. Fortunately for the Wisconsin state legislature, the cows were not in a big hurry to take over. In fact, there was absolutely no security that we could see in the capitol building at all. The doors were wide open. So of course we walked in.

The building is incredibly impressive and in such pristine condition, that it was a marvel to behold:

We got to walk into all the chambers � the Supreme Court room, the Senate Chambers, the Assembly Room. AJ was particularly taken with the �Yay� and �Nay� buttons on the desks. He sat himself down in one of the leather chairs of the senate and pretended to vote on some important issues. Probably something like �Nay, Chocolate; yay, vanilla.� Or possibly �yay, 12 planets; nay, 8 planets.� He wouldn�t tell us:

After we�d finished exploring the building, which also included a visit to the facsimile of the Liberty Bell (minus the crack) and a quick badger-counting expedition, we headed back outside, passing a Pro-Choice demonstration on the capital steps that, judging from the superficial details such as large numbers of babies carried in slings by Birkenstock-wearing parents, boys in �Fuck Bush� t-shirts and braless women with hairy armpits and Indian print skirts, was probably preaching to the choir. This might explain why no one, and I do mean no one, was paying any attention to them. (I have spent a lot of my life in church choirs and I feel fully qualified to say that the choir is generally paying no attention whatsoever to the sermon). Even the TV cameras, evidently sent to cover the event, wandered off during the speech and started interviewing small children trying to catch birds.

We wandered down State Street towards the UW campus and stopped for Italian food and some midday whining (for AJ) and wining (for the grownups) and people watching. A good time was had by most, although one of us refused to eat his noodles and kept falling off his chair on purpose. Note to self: Do not allow AJ to read Calvin and Hobbes cartoons within two hours of public dining.

After lunch, we headed to the UW Memorial Union where we grabbed an ice cream cone for AJ, and headed out the back to Lake Mendota, where we dangled our toes in the water, read all the signs about how we�re not supposed to feed the ducks, watched sparrows splashing in the water on purpose and sailboarders taking headers into the water by accident.

When we were sufficiently soaked in lake water so as to be uncomfortably clammy on the long drive home, we headed back to the car with extra snacks. We took the scenic route home, which was even prettier than the highway and had a much higher cow quotient and also some goats, sheep (for sale!), ponies, llamas and free-range chickens. Aside from one brief rest stop so AJ could play on a playground and I could entertain myself with the latest issue of 18 Wheeler Singles (I can�t find a link to this stellar publication, but here�s another blogger who recognizes a literary gem when he finds it), we came straight home just in time for dinner, the aforementioned steaming stack of zucchini pancakes.

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