Spring Break
Apr. 2nd, 2008 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenWe've been busy, since Jet is out of school this week, and it's been driving me a little bit insane as I haven't had the online time or the writing time I'm used to having. But it has been an interesting few days. Full of video games, dinosaurs, plants, and amazing stories of gold, death and justice, and a high school encounter turned miracle.
Yesterday we went to the Denver Museum of Natural Science and History and had a blast looking at dinosaurs, the space exhibits, and the Gold Exhibit which is a visiting exhibit that has nearly a ton of real gold in it, as well as the second largest nugget found and preserved for display. Crystalline gold is a pretty amazing thing, but it was cool to figure out that it has a really high reflective index. It was also cool to see a whole room covered with gold beaten from just three one ounce, 23 carat coins. Gold leaf is an astonishing thing.
We had lunch, saw bugs and a few of the animal exhibits and by 3 we were pretty tired. Both Jet and I snored all the way home. Then, of course, Jet asked me to play video games with him, and I obliged. John made dinner, and I ate and read my homework and then went to class.
It was Corinthians I and bits of II, notable for the Sin City aspects of the city itself. It was a sea port, wealthy from all the trade that went through it and the disparity in the church members there was quite... realistic. It amused me, no end, that Paul was yelling at them for having sexual indiscretions, jealousy between whom had baptized or trained whom, contests between who was better than who else, and the rich were stealing from the poorer members, leaving them out of communion completely. It sound familiar. I guess the Church has always been human, has always failed, has never been perfect, and what we see today is simply the continuation of that tension between what we believe we ought to be and what we are. And in the midst of the depravity and squabbling over who has the better ability to speak in tongues, how women really should be deporting themselves, and the sexual rights of husbands and wives over each other, there are those gorgeous passages about love and about how everyone has their place and part and no one has the right to tell the others that they should not be there. Wow.
It was interesting to see the book as simply an example of the fact that the church has always been filled with fallible human beings. And his exhortations on how to overcome those kinds of problems still ring true. Love leading to respect and understanding...
And then I cracked after class, and stayed on the computer until nearly 2, as I had too much to write after daydreaming about it while half-asleep all day.
Today was filled to the brim, too, but I did the first half in a daze as John had an 8 am meeting so I had to be up to take care of Jet. Though that was mostly origami and video games and breakfast, I was kind of bleary and then I had to load up on drugs so that I could get my shots. I did. And they itched, and knocked me out, so I went home and took a nap. The nap was very useful, but I didn't want to get up. Lunch was fast, and then the boys and I went outside and transplanted nearly 100 tomato plants into bigger pots.
The seeding beds had three or four inch plants, and I figured I did it right this year, as the roots hadn't reached all the way down to the capillary mats, yet. We seeded four more trays of tomatoes and peppers, as the peppers had NOT done well in germination. I hadn't done that well last year, either, so I wasn't too surprised, but the plants had done really well that had grown. So it was worth trying again.
But popping that many plants into that many pots was back-aching work. Especially just sitting on the concrete and getting the plants into the pots and filling them up and packing them tightly enough and doing the next and the next and the next and... they're all looking happier, though. So that's to the good. And I put all the early bearers in bigger pots so that they'll have a little more room to grow before I either give 'em away or do something with 'em. The Sugar Sweeties are in little pots so I can get them into the hanging planters easily when it's time. Moving those things is a pain, but, as with last year, we'll probably be doing the out during the day and in at night thing for most of May. Ugh.
Still... I'll admit that I love the prorogation part of the year. All those tiny seeds springing up and up and growing huge. It's far more fun than the endless weeding, later, or even the really hard work of getting everything picked and in at the right time, ripe and ready and heavy and watching half of it get wasted simply because there aren't enough hands to pick.
From that Jet asked me to play vid games again, so I did.
I got the reward of sushi for dinner, though, so I was very, very glad of that. I ate a Dragon Roll, unagi with avocado and some cucumber and lots more unagi over the whole top of the thing. ♥ ♥ I have been craving unagi ever since I wrote chapter 15 of Twin Souls. laughter So I got plenty and it was good.
We went home. I had a meeting of the Board of Worship and I went and we talked, and mostly just decided what time the service is going to be for the summer. Lots of stories were told in the course of the meeting... some good, some bad, some... miraculous. A teenager the literary consultant had tried, desperately, to help out of a hugely at-risk situation nearly 20 years ago had suddenly, out of the blue, written her an email to thank her for her help, for caring about him. He'd gone on to college and a bioengineering degree and was back in Longmont and wanted to get back in touch.
A little boy was killed in a hit and run several months ago, and the family went to the sentencing the other night and told the story to everyone of the actual hearing and how it went. That the judge actually listened to every family member that was there. She listened and helped each one deal with their part in the whole thing. She told the grandparents who had been watching the child that they were not to blame, that they should leave their guilt there in that courtroom. She listened to and watched the whole commemorative video for the little boy along with the defendant, who cried as well. The defendant got his say as well, and got to say exactly how sorry he was, how much this was going to change his life, and the fact that he tried to talk with and pray with the spirit of the boy he'd killed every night.
Stories. Sometimes they make us human.
The family members felt like they actually got closure, were healed of at least some of their pain.
That... amazes me. That anyone that might judge might do so with so much empathy and compassion for everyone that was there. Gives me an odd kind of hope that the whole concept of restorative justice can still be made true.
Yesterday we went to the Denver Museum of Natural Science and History and had a blast looking at dinosaurs, the space exhibits, and the Gold Exhibit which is a visiting exhibit that has nearly a ton of real gold in it, as well as the second largest nugget found and preserved for display. Crystalline gold is a pretty amazing thing, but it was cool to figure out that it has a really high reflective index. It was also cool to see a whole room covered with gold beaten from just three one ounce, 23 carat coins. Gold leaf is an astonishing thing.
We had lunch, saw bugs and a few of the animal exhibits and by 3 we were pretty tired. Both Jet and I snored all the way home. Then, of course, Jet asked me to play video games with him, and I obliged. John made dinner, and I ate and read my homework and then went to class.
It was Corinthians I and bits of II, notable for the Sin City aspects of the city itself. It was a sea port, wealthy from all the trade that went through it and the disparity in the church members there was quite... realistic. It amused me, no end, that Paul was yelling at them for having sexual indiscretions, jealousy between whom had baptized or trained whom, contests between who was better than who else, and the rich were stealing from the poorer members, leaving them out of communion completely. It sound familiar. I guess the Church has always been human, has always failed, has never been perfect, and what we see today is simply the continuation of that tension between what we believe we ought to be and what we are. And in the midst of the depravity and squabbling over who has the better ability to speak in tongues, how women really should be deporting themselves, and the sexual rights of husbands and wives over each other, there are those gorgeous passages about love and about how everyone has their place and part and no one has the right to tell the others that they should not be there. Wow.
It was interesting to see the book as simply an example of the fact that the church has always been filled with fallible human beings. And his exhortations on how to overcome those kinds of problems still ring true. Love leading to respect and understanding...
And then I cracked after class, and stayed on the computer until nearly 2, as I had too much to write after daydreaming about it while half-asleep all day.
Today was filled to the brim, too, but I did the first half in a daze as John had an 8 am meeting so I had to be up to take care of Jet. Though that was mostly origami and video games and breakfast, I was kind of bleary and then I had to load up on drugs so that I could get my shots. I did. And they itched, and knocked me out, so I went home and took a nap. The nap was very useful, but I didn't want to get up. Lunch was fast, and then the boys and I went outside and transplanted nearly 100 tomato plants into bigger pots.
The seeding beds had three or four inch plants, and I figured I did it right this year, as the roots hadn't reached all the way down to the capillary mats, yet. We seeded four more trays of tomatoes and peppers, as the peppers had NOT done well in germination. I hadn't done that well last year, either, so I wasn't too surprised, but the plants had done really well that had grown. So it was worth trying again.
But popping that many plants into that many pots was back-aching work. Especially just sitting on the concrete and getting the plants into the pots and filling them up and packing them tightly enough and doing the next and the next and the next and... they're all looking happier, though. So that's to the good. And I put all the early bearers in bigger pots so that they'll have a little more room to grow before I either give 'em away or do something with 'em. The Sugar Sweeties are in little pots so I can get them into the hanging planters easily when it's time. Moving those things is a pain, but, as with last year, we'll probably be doing the out during the day and in at night thing for most of May. Ugh.
Still... I'll admit that I love the prorogation part of the year. All those tiny seeds springing up and up and growing huge. It's far more fun than the endless weeding, later, or even the really hard work of getting everything picked and in at the right time, ripe and ready and heavy and watching half of it get wasted simply because there aren't enough hands to pick.
From that Jet asked me to play vid games again, so I did.
I got the reward of sushi for dinner, though, so I was very, very glad of that. I ate a Dragon Roll, unagi with avocado and some cucumber and lots more unagi over the whole top of the thing. ♥ ♥ I have been craving unagi ever since I wrote chapter 15 of Twin Souls. laughter So I got plenty and it was good.
We went home. I had a meeting of the Board of Worship and I went and we talked, and mostly just decided what time the service is going to be for the summer. Lots of stories were told in the course of the meeting... some good, some bad, some... miraculous. A teenager the literary consultant had tried, desperately, to help out of a hugely at-risk situation nearly 20 years ago had suddenly, out of the blue, written her an email to thank her for her help, for caring about him. He'd gone on to college and a bioengineering degree and was back in Longmont and wanted to get back in touch.
A little boy was killed in a hit and run several months ago, and the family went to the sentencing the other night and told the story to everyone of the actual hearing and how it went. That the judge actually listened to every family member that was there. She listened and helped each one deal with their part in the whole thing. She told the grandparents who had been watching the child that they were not to blame, that they should leave their guilt there in that courtroom. She listened to and watched the whole commemorative video for the little boy along with the defendant, who cried as well. The defendant got his say as well, and got to say exactly how sorry he was, how much this was going to change his life, and the fact that he tried to talk with and pray with the spirit of the boy he'd killed every night.
Stories. Sometimes they make us human.
The family members felt like they actually got closure, were healed of at least some of their pain.
That... amazes me. That anyone that might judge might do so with so much empathy and compassion for everyone that was there. Gives me an odd kind of hope that the whole concept of restorative justice can still be made true.
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