But needs must, especially when it's -6C outside and the alternative is another afternoon watching my precisely constructed Duplo creations being callously demolished. The museum is only a few minutes down the road, and Pete has recently begun insisting I say "yes, doctor" when he tells me things. I'd initially hoped that we were playing Doctor Who and that I could fulfill my lifelong ambition of being a companion (Ace or Mel), but disappointingly he was a medical doctor. He even performed some surgery on Megan when she was staying, first removing her heart and then her seeds. It turns out she's anatomically similar to a pumpkin.
So we jumped in the car and headed down. How bad could it be?
Bad. Very very bad. The museum was set up in 1862, when Surgeon General William Hammond instructed front line doctors in the civil war to send him "specimens of morbid anatomy...together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed." They didn't let him down, as morbid is the best way to describe the contents of the numerous jars and display boxes. There's a reason that God decided to cover people with skin.
"What is that, Daddy?" Peter asked, constantly, loving every minute and taking after his aunts and uncles who have medical science and nursing degrees galore.
"Err...hang on. Daddy just needs a moment," I explained as I sat on a comfy bench with my head between my knees, wondering why it was suddenly so hot and dark in here.
I recovered long enough to see the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln and the skeleton of a monkey the US shot into space, while Pete flicked through the specimen catalogue on a nearby touchscreen which listed things like "Garfield's Vertebrae" and "Sickle's Leg". It was time to go, before I left my own contributions to their sample collection all over the museum floor.
It's a skull selfie - a skelfie! Expect this to catch on fast on social media.
So, you use these to...no, let's move on.
"Take a picture of me here, Daddy." He certainly has a good sense of the macabre, like every doctor I've ever met.
If my brain was as big as this I'd be wise enough to visit a different museum.
Things in jars that I walked past quickly.
Pete inevitably found the one model train in the whole place - his true obsession.
This is the skeleton of the space monkey. They don't say if he looked like this when he came down or if it happened later.
Yellow fever, in case you ever see it.
Wait...is that...THAT IS SOMEBODY'S LEG! THAT IS SOMEBODY'S LEG!
Abraham Lincoln was shot by this bullet in 1865. America is still trying to pass sensible gun laws.
It's the "wet lab" complete with helpful steps so that toddlers can see what they're doing in there.
Not sure why a pizza cutter is in a medical museum. That is a pizza cutter, right?
OK, I saw a film where one of these burst out of someone's chest. I did not realise it was a documentary.
Pete orders "Guiteau's Brain" from the library stacks.
And now it is definitely time to leave before I discover that anything like any of this is inside me.
