MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

Fall & Summer

We've had a mix of fall and summer this week. After having a frost at the end of September, we rose into the mid-80's this week, a little heat wave after I'd already gotten used to cool-weather clothing, after DH had taken out the window air-conditioners, after I was ready for summer to be gone. I wasn't in the mood to "Think Summer" when most of my garden is crispy, crushed and slain. There are mums and asters, at least. And this is one of those times when the beauty of living in a mature city really shines through, with trees making towering tunnels of gold and red and brown to drive through. Gorgeous.

It's been a funk of a week for me, with too much going on, every night
a busy one with meetings and outings, making our goal to get the kids
to be in bed and actually fall asleep by 9 PM impossible. Our kids
never want to go to sleep, read in bed and goof, and are often still
awake in bed at 11 PM. I know this isn't unusual kid behavior, wanting
to stay up late, but oh, the mornings are pretty pathetic around here,
with sludgey, grouchy kids fighting to stay till the last possible
moment in that same bed they didn't want to sleep in the night before.
They need more sleep. And I need our mornings to go more smoothly
because it is a partucularly awful way to start your day, yelling so
much at the kids to get ready. So we've been trying to instigate being
in bed by 9 PM with no books, to tapes, no goofing and no lights on.
They still fight it and still stay up later than you think they would
in such a circumstance, but we were starting to see improvement the
week before last. But last week it all blew apart with all the
busy-ness. Time to try again.

One of the things that kept last night busy was DD and older DS
needing to participate in their church school class. Now that they are
in 7th grade, they are a part of the Youth Program in our Unitarian
Universalist Church ([1]here's a UU link if you're curious about this
religion). In 7th grade, they have a program called "Our Neighboring
Faiths," and kids learn about a variety of other religions to enrich
their own knowledge base and help them on their own spiritual journey.
Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Native American, Catholic... I can't
remember what else, but the kids will attend a religious service for
each one, and have discussions before and after. Last night was our
first one, and we got to go to Temple Israel, a reform Jewish
congregation. We had a wonderful docent who talked to us about Judaism
and the services, and answered our questions. We attended a more
relaxed family type of service (it was a special service, not the
usual longer Jewish service), and we had about 29 kids and many adults
there to chaperone. Really, it was an amazing experience and a real
opportunity to learn about another religion that I'd heard a lot about
but never particiapted in. I really liked the tone of the service, and
how nurturing and respectful the Jewish religion is. Not that I'm
converting or anything... but I can definitely weave in strands of
what spoke to me there into my own spiritual collage.

References

1. http://www.uua.org/aboutuu/uufaq.html

Posted by sapphire at October 11, 2003 12:00 AM