Passion and Distance and Time and Family. And Love.

It's 10:38pm and everyone else is down for the count, and I really should put the pizza away and go to sleep, but I let myself read blogs tonight and really enjoyed it, and now I want to blog some more myself.

I've been staying away from reading news during the week because I find I am less passionate about the personal things that matter to me when I read too much news and commentary, and I don't want to lose that passion just so I can say I know the horrid state of the world.

I've only been reading emails and yahoo group digests, and that after lunch. And allowing myself to skim Facebook once per day. (Okay, twice. But I know these people in real life and like finding out if my cousin's new job is going well or if the son of my friend from high school enjoyed his first day at school. I'm really bad at face-to-face small talk, and even worse at chatting on the phone, and I think FB is helping with that. But I'm not here to blog about FB.)

Now I've gotten distracted by my own tangents and forgot what I wanted to blog about.


***


I'm going to a family reunion in less than a week, all by myself. Many of the cousins I grew up with will be there. We seem to see each other every few years. I'd like to get together more, but I live way in Texas and they live mostly in California. (I'm the one that moved, but I have to admit I like living in Texas, even though I miss my family. I think my family should move to Texas, I really do. Trust me, it grows on you.)

I wonder what we will talk about. I hope everyone brings lots of memories to tell. I'm running out of good stories for my kids. Every once in awhile on the way home from Wednesday-night church, the kids will beg for childhood stories, and I have told pretty much all I can remember.


***


And now it is 11:10 and really time to put the pizza away and go to sleep. Time waits for no one.

Don't you ever wonder at that? The relentlessness of time. It just keeps coming-- it gets later and later, no matter your intentions-- no matter how worthy the pursuit, time waits for no one. Wild. I've contemplated it with a timer and it is the same. Unyielding. Whether Internetish dilly-dallying or rushing to see a sick friend-- nothing can delay the juggernaut of time. It rolls over everyone.

11:16. See?

Reminds me of a Wendell Berry quote I saw on a blog once. I have never read a Wendell Berry book, but I dearly hope to one day. I liked this quote without even seeing it in context. It seems to capture the supernal quality of love:

Love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it... It is in the world, but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.

11:26. Enough. I must get to bed. We are finite beings, we fallen creatures. Time limits us, our physical bodies limit us, our lack of riches limits us. We live within strict limits, whether we accept it or not.

Except, perhaps, in love? And what does that mean, exactly?

High Hopes

Nesting

We're goin' in. Startin' school tomorrow. And in celebration of the fact that we visted San Antonio not once, not twice, but three times in the last five months, the kids and I decorated the schoolroom fiesta-style.

Sort of a happy-normal-day treatment for back-to-school. :O)))

Aravis says it looks fiestive.

I wish I could post a picture, but we are having issues with our rechargeable batteries and our charger. I'm charging different batteries now, so perhaps I'll post a picture tomorrow evening.

Here are two pretty senoritas who decided to join the party:



And a close-up of the tissue paper flowers:



And here is Mi Tierra in San Antonio. We ate supper there on one of our visits. They really know how to fiesta!



To further the fiesta, Goggy and Grammy brought over frozen chocolate chip waffles and blueberry pancakes. (Just what we need the first day back to a disciplined routine-- a bunch of simple carbs for breakfast! Our taste buds love them, but our brains grow sluggish on such food. I have bacon, so perhaps we will be fine.)

We're having build-your-own-burrito-night for dinner. I meant to have guacamole too, but could not find satisfactory avocadoes. :( Perhaps some will turn up tomorrow.

I don't know what is with me this weekend-- I have had so much energy. I think it must be knowing that this weekend is my last chance until Thanksgiving to get some big things done. I painted the girls' bedroom yesterday, in addition to adding three meals' worth of beans to the freezer, baking a lasagna for church, writing a blog post, and laying out the kids' memory work and recitation assignments. Today we were at church until around 2:30, and then I moved everything back into place in the girls' room, hung pictures, did a load of laundry, talked on the phone with a homeschool friend who is also beginning school this week, had a visit with my parents, helped the girls make festive flowers and tissue cutouts for the schoolroom, and then decorated that room with the help of Aravis. Mariel and Cornflower did some very cool drawings on the chalkboard-- chili peppers, bullfighters, and lovely ladies with flowers in their hair. I suddenly feel the need to set out my copy of Ferdinand.

It sounds like I'm nesting-- that's it! This must be the homeschool version of nesting. It makes perfect sense to nest just before life takes a busy turn, no matter what that turn may be.