Miscellaneous

The environmental attorney I work for has had a case that he thought was headed for settlement suddenly turn out to be headed for trial instead, which has meant I have suddenly had almost more work than I can squeeze in sorting documents. This is, on the one hand, not the most scintillating of tasks, but on the other, one that it is easy to keep at for hours on end even when I'm seeing cross-eyed (unlike research and writing which require a certain degree of mental clarity) and I am attorney enough to know the joy of billable hours.

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Between work and school, then, I have been happy to let the cleaning part of life slide, until DOB started having dust reactions. He thinks it's more because of moving offices last week, but I'm thinking that not vacuuming in a month is not very helpful, so I have been getting reacquainted with the vacuum cleaner this weekend.

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I came across this link that reminded me of another not-actually-in-the-Bible statement I should dispute: "God will never give you more than you can handle." Actually what the Bible says is, "God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can resist." We are promised grace for temptation. We are not promised that we will never be taken beyond our physical, emotional, financial, or spiritual breaking points. I've been there and I know it's not true.

But not only is it false, I wonder if the very presence of the idea doesn't make us cold to each other. It's a pat, comfortable thing to say, "Well, you know God won't give you more than you can bear." Or, in other words, "Depart in peace: be ye warmed and filled." If God's not going to give those folks more than they can handle, then the rest of us don't really need to get involved, do we? But sooner or later most of us are going to come across more than we can handle; that's why we are commanded to bear each other's burdens.

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Late Friday evening I went to call the kids in for bed and discovered that Dot had outclimbed her range in the fir tree. Deux was up with her, being stuck above her in the tree. They did fine for a while pretending they were Tigger and Roo, but eventually Deux figured out  a way around and Dot began to panic. I climbed up to retrieve her while DOB talked with her about the advantages she would find from being a bird, which kept her distracted until she had to face the terror of me trying to lower her. Fortunately we had a friend visiting who helped bridge the last distance to DOB and solid ground.

Before we were up the next morning, they were all climbing the tree again, though Dot was careful to only climb as high as she was sure she could get down. I am very appreciative of gutsy kids, though I did wish a bit that they could have given me a little more time to recover.

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After doing classes at the Y through the fall and winter, we have decided to call it quits for now. The kids are tired of going to classes, and I am tired of being in a loud building full of moving people for three hours every Saturday morning. DOB shall have to just do his workouts by himself. Except for all those loud, moving people. Maybe I will take the kids to the park. Or maybe I will sleep in while they climb trees.

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I have moved and brightened up my homeschooling blog, so if you want to read the details of what we do and very occasional pontification on educational subjects, that's the place to go.