Saturday, November 9, 2024
Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Da boys
God is our refuge and our strength.
Margaret wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home while I picked up the boys for ice cream and the Austin Aquarium. Handel’s offers a four scoop sampler, so we each picked a flavor and added one more to share. Birthday cake (it’s Miles’ 8th birthday on Nov 11), Blue Monster, French Silk Pie and Strawberry. After several bites they left the rest for me and played outside in the playground Handel’s built for their customers. Lots of kids!
I noticed while I sat inside that the boys were picking up big rocks (not quite boulders, Jasper said) and rolling them up the slide to the fort on top. The rocks were getting bigger and bigger. No one else was using the playground, not at first, and then three Asian kids (from the Philippines, I think) came outside and so Miles and Jasper rolled the rocks down the slide, carried them across to the fence and threw them back over, where they belonged. And I was for the thousand millionth time amazed at how regular rocks and sticks and leaves and water make for more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Which, speaking of monkeys, and lemurs, and macaws and snakes and such, the Austin Aquarium was just down the road. First, though, we got some green tire valve covers from O’Reilly’s Auto Parts. “Do we have to stay with you, Grandpa?” No, you can wander. So they did, mostly hiding from me and sneaking a look now and then. I couldn’t find the tire valves, but Miles did and handed them to me. Oh, yeah, thanks!
Before we left their house we measured both boys and all the bikes they had in the garage, all passed on by neighbors, all with mostly flat tires.
So we flipped one of the bikes upside down, pulled our tire inflator out of the car, plugged it into the cigarette lighter plug and set to work. “Push those buttons till they say 48 psi. Push the on button and listen to the sound of flying air. Take the inflator off one tire and put it on the next.”
Again, so little makes for so much. Everything can be pretty wonderful with little guys like Miles and Jasper. But we did lose a valve cover!
Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh.
At the Aquarium a friendly attendant gave us three times the tokens we bought, so we had fun feeding krill to the sting ray and dry pellets to the fish and ducks. Miles had one token left to exchange for a prize in the gift shop. We were out of tokens before we got to the sharks, and so they went hungry.
A sting ray’s skin feels like soft, wet felt. Its mouth is underneath its wings, and so you hold a single krill between two fingers and try to get your hand down under the sting ray. It knows how close the food is and has trouble being patient. Its teeth bite, but gently.
At the Austin Aquarium the signs say DO NOT TOUCH. But the NOT is crossed out. All through the place touching becomes the thing you do. We loved the feeling of a warm iguana, sitting under its light. Miles poked his finger through a fence to check out a very large boa constrictor. A giant tortoise walks free and of course, invites touches from kids not much taller than the tortoise, who was eating greens from a big bowl when we walked by. Was the tortoise a boy or a girl? Not too sure. We couldn’t turn it over, after all.
Eventually they were ready to leave, but I insisted on reading them a couple of stories in the library nook in the back of the aquarium. How I Became a Pirate and A Whale of a Story. Pretty cozy. Pretty sleepy.
Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
Back to their house Jasper went upstairs and brought down his taco blanket, fuzzy, white, with a few brown scars from the frying pan (so to speak). He curled up beside Andi for a few minutes, but then he asked her to make him a taco. Literally. So she poured some imaginary cheese all over him, and some extremely hot sauce, slices of avocado, and finally refried beans in his mouth and ears. He giggled. She giggled. She rolled him up and popped him in the frying pan.
“Grandpa, make me a dessert taco.” So he rolled out of his blanket, and I spread vanilla icing and sprinkles all over him, and then whipped cream, and finally orange sherbet and ice cream – vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate ice cream (that flavor went down around his pants, of course). I pressed some gummies into his ears and his mouth and his nose. We rolled him up again, and everyone was happy.
The temple of God, which you are, is holy.
 (Ezekiel 47, Psalm 46, 1 Corinthians 3, 2 Chronicles 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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