Children's Museums

I like Children's Museums.  I like the other kind of museum as well, and have often lost myself in my desire to explore every nook and cranny of those venerable institutions.  But children don't really do well in those types of museums.  They aren't allowed to touch the 74,000,000 year old skeleton of a Pteranodon, for one thing.  Climbing the stuffed elephant in the lobby of the Smithsonian is also strictly forbidden, I've learned.  No touching, no climbing, and certainly no yelling and screaming in museums!  Not very fun for a little boy just itching to play with everything in his environment.

Children's Museums are different.  These places were made for kids.  Each exhibit was specifically built to allow exploration, touching, climbing, and even a little yelling. Just the sorts of behaviors my son loves!

I call this the Pringles Playtime, because I was hungry.

So when we get a chance to take Zane to a Children's Museum, we do.  There is one in downtown San Antonio, and one in New Braunfels, which is the one we visited today.  Every time we go to these places, I get a bit envious.  We didn't have these when I was a kid, and I know that I would have loved them. 

Who would have thought that kids would like to play with big blocks?  Since when do kids like to build things and act like the big adults they see in the world around them?

 

Or paint the latest masterpiece? At a 'real' museum, kids can look at the paintings, but they can't touch or even get up close.  Here, Zane can drive an ambulance, he can be a cashier at a grocery store and ring up some groceries, and he can pretend to camp out in a teepee. At the Children's Museum in San Antonio, he can play an old piano and walk inside the cockpit of an airplane.  Fun stuff!

And if Zane gets overstimulated by everything, he can take a break behind the nearest giraffe, at least until his mom hollers at him to get  the heck out of there.  I am glad that there are places like this for my son, and other kids, to explore their world safely through play.  I only wish they were around when I was a kid!

Wacky Weather.

We've had quite a fun weekend here. We were told that thunderstorms would be heading our way this past weekend. Great, we all said, looking forward to having the rain water our lawns for us.  And the rain did indeed water our lawn.  Our side of town saw around 3 inches of rain, a nice drenching that filled up the drainage ditch behind the fence and brought out the frogs to frolic.  I went about my day, cleaning up a few things, napping, reading, and just hanging out.   A typical weekend, now that Zane's soccer season has ended. 

San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the United States. It takes us about an hour to drive directly across town to the other side.  And the other side got almost ten inches of rain in comparison to our three. 

Three inches of rain in a parched area plagued by drought is refreshing. 

Ten inches of rain tends to drown the land.. 

Three inches of rain soaks easily into the ground and down into the aquifer, our main water supply. 

Ten inches tries to soak into the ground, but the ground can't handle so much, and so the water gathers and rises until homes are underwater, cars are washed away, and the roads are impassable, before it manages to drain off.   

And that's exactly what was happening, thirty miles or so away from my house.  Too much rain, in too little time, and lots of creeks and streams and rivers with banks to overflow. 

People lost their minds, full of disbelief that this happened at all.  No matter how many times these same roads have flooded over the years, no matter how many times this part of the world has been hit by flooding, people still act surprised.  People still ignore the barricades that are put up at low water crossings, and still seem shocked when the rush of the water carries their cars off.  People build their houses in a flood plain, and cannot believe it when they find their house underwater. 

And I suppose when the water recedes, people's memories of this weekend will recede as well.  I may not like it, but I guess that one of the best coping mechanisms that humans have is the ability to forget some of the traumatic things that happen, just so they can move on. 

Because life doesn't stop, does it?  No, life keeps rolling along like a river.  We may try to dam it up or direct the flow of the water, but the river does what it will, and we just get to hold onto the raft and enjoy the ride. 

Holy Spaces

San Fernando Cathedral was founded in 1731 and is the oldest, continuously functioning religious community in the State of Texas. In other words, it's freakin' old. When I am downtown, I like to go there to meditate for a bit.

As soon as you enter the cathedral, you feel the hush. Say what you will about the Catholics who colonized this area, they understood viscerally how to inspire the awe necessary to any House of God. The smell of incense permeates the very bones of this place. There is no doubt that you are in a holy space, whatever your religion. The interior is cool and quiet, a sweet blessing on a hot day. There's something comforting about the permanence of a building that has been here for so very long.

I like to sit in the back. As I kneel, I can sometimes feel the prayers of the millions of worshippers who have come through this cathedral over the centuries whispering around me. When I add my prayers to theirs, it feels like my ghostly fellow penitents give my prayers more power, as my words seem to rise like the smoke of incense into the air above me.

What are some holy or sacred spaces that bring you peace?

Semi-Wordless Wednesday

As some of you know, we got snow here in San Antonio on Friday, February 4th. We got 4/10ths of an inch, and it shut down the interstates and all the schools.



I know what you're thinking. You are thinking, "OMG! Those people in San Antonio are LAME! We've had 14 feet of snow here in the last five minutes and we still got to school on time!" You are probably rolling your eyes at us, too. I don't blame you--I rolled my eyes, too. Until I went outside in my flip flops, and realized that under that 4/10ths of an inch of snow was an inch of ice. Then I was glad they cancelled school.



We got Zane up, put his coat on, got him outside. After all, there's snow out there, and it hasn't snowed here since 1985! And what kid doesn't just LOVE snow?



Zane went outside. His dad made him a couple of snowballs. He threw them, and then he was done. Total time outside: 5.8 minutes. We went back inside, and this is how I know that Zane is my child:

It's Going to be Freakin' Cold

At some point this morning, a cold front is going to show up here. There will be rain and LOTS of wind. This is what we call a Blue Norther, and they really aren't very fun. The wind is going to throw the temperatures here into freezing, and we won't see them rise too much for the rest of the week--a hard freeze. The weatherman even said the S-word--snow. This made the entire city collectively lose their minds in giddy anticipation. It made me cringe.

I hate this roller-coaster weather. If it were just cold and stayed that way, I would get acclimated to it and be just fine. Instead, my brain has just spent the past couple of days enjoying beautiful sunny weather in the 70s. My cats were just in the backyard eating random lizards and just lazing about in their contentedness, while my son tried to pedal his bike around our cul de sac. I actually contemplated putting on shorts this weekend, completely ignoring that the sheer whiteness of my legs can be seen from space. That's how great the weather was yesterday.

My brain is going to have a difficult time adjusting to the sudden plunge in temperature, and is going to be completely useless. I'll be in such a fog that I won't get anything done. Nobody is going to want to get out of bed because it's cold, and who can blame them? Can we cancel school/work on account of hibernation? It really is going to be sleep-in weather tomorrow. I don't want to get out of bed while it's cold outside, either!!