Getting dark. Back from a pleasant visit with Mom, Vruba, and Tycho. On the way back north, we went through the Olympic Peninsula with "Pride and Prejudice" on the tape player. Beach 2 had a bathroom so we stopped, and then we couldn't resist nipping down to the sand and heaving foam and lacy remains of velellas. The Hoh Rain Forest was sunny when we arrived in late afternoon, and we saw everything on the list; two herds of elk, mist, snow, moss, an eagle feeding on a salmon, and looming Sitka spruces.

Last post, I said, "I see humans as creators. Not that we made the universe from scratch, but that before us, it didn't particularly need to be appreciated. Now because we can appreciate it, we must."

On re-reading, it sounds a bit flimsy. But it isn't. It's the flip side of that nasty old aphorism, "ignorance is bliss." Once you aren't ignorant, you have a responsibility to do right by stuff. You can no longer blow it off.

We were talking about Wavelet and Catholicism last night. We contrasted Catholicism and Judaism, which respect and encourage thinking, with Fundamentalism, in which belief trumps thinking. "You could try Episcopaleanism," it was suggested, with its three-legged stool of grace, reason, and ritual (I might have gotten those wrong - but they do sound nice, don't they?).

I don't think I could. I have a lot of issues with Christianity (unlike what I've heard from friends, none of my objections have to do with church ritual or hypocrisy - that stuff is an expected side-effect of group dynamics). One of them is the theology that's built around the sin of Adam and Eve; literal or metaphorical. Because we're tainted by our basic make-up, we need saving. I don't buy that. I like what I understand of current Jewish theology; where you take responsibility for the correct running of the universe by following the laws (my laws are different than theirs but I accept the basic principle) and if you screw up ... well, you screwed up. You dust yourself off and try again. The emphasis is on responsibility but not on guilt.

Easter celebrates that our sins are washed away through the willing sacrifice of a man-god? I really can't accept that. Scapegoats are an archetype, sure, but not a very strong one in my psyche. Same with the father who takes the blame for what you did and makes it be all right - that isn't how I experienced my own father's love, which was strong but not expressed at all in that way. I just don't see personal decisions, behaviors, or lives, as things that can be transferred.

I see humans as creators. Not that we made the universe from scratch, but that before us, it didn't particularly need to be appreciated, but now because we can appreciate it, we must. And part of appreciating it is getting our hands muddy in it, and messing with it, and speculating about it, and living it. In my religious thinking, it is by living intentionally that we worship. We don't need to be redeemed from that.

Well, The whole high school (eight of us) boated over to Shaw this morning to learn about macroalgae and kelp. Then we hopped across to Orcas where we took the car to the ferry landing and thence to the mainland. Spent a bit of time with Tomo and then met Tycho at Seattle U and had not only pho but also a taro shake with tapioca pearls at the bottom. Peculiar and worth doing again. A lovely talk with the in-laws followed by bed in the wee hours of tomorrow.

A few years ago, I told one of the English teachers at Orcas High about the fantasy novel I wrote, Baba Yaga and the Fat Princess.She asked about it recently, and I said that what with school and the house addition and all, I've put the final edit and the query letters on hold. "I feel as though you told me someone had just died," she said.

Perhaps. It is important to me to have that novel out in the world. But I recognize that life happens in surges. One year you've got a baby, another year you're adding to your house. If you avoid beating yourself over the head about not being able to fill all space-time points at once, you simply pick up where you left off when the time comes again.

But, at my age, it is more and more clear that I have to decide what's important to fill my time with; I don't have an infinite life span. Prior obligations must be met. I have to earn a living. And then ... I think I'll be a lot less likely to agree to stuff in the future. I've got a pile of unfinished projects that I think are worth taking to the final step.

I think my camera got sand in the track that pushes the lens out when it opens. I pick at it every few hours, hoping to revive it.

I'm wandering around the landscape feeling the way I did 18 years ago when I had two toddlers and David in a rare burst of courage took them for an hour or so, and I'd have this sudden clutch of fear, "Where did the boys go????" and then I'd remember, and then in a couple minutes I'd get this sudden clutch of fear, "Where did the boys go??????" and then it would subside again. It was less relaxing than having them around 24/7.

And that's how it is without the Minolta.

Well, life seems to continue without daily blogging. However, it's a different life. I think I can feel the actual jelly of my brain readjusting as I make shifts from one mode to another. Nowadays, I'm immersed in work and the house addition. It's a lot more outward looking than my preferred mode of being but as a temporary thing I'm enjoying it.

Another change is my decision to worth my way through a high school math text. Yeah, I did major in math in college, but it was the abstract side of math. I love that stuff! What I always felt uneasy about was missing the nuts and bolts part of math--and I'd missed out on it because I deliberately avoided it. What, exactly, is a sine or a tangent? That's theory, and I could tell you. But what the sine of 30 degrees is, that's new for me. I've managed to get through 48 years of life without using that, of course, but it's not the atual facts that I think are important. It's knowing the pathway to get to them, and familiarizing myself with it enough so that it's a path I'm willing to take whenever I choose. For the same reason, I've never regretted learning VW mechanics, even though I haven't owned a VW in 20 years and don't plan to again. I'm not afraid of engines because of those oily knuckle-scraped years.

We are eating chocolate as though rich chocolaty goodness were a more vivid reality than rain, say, or migranes.

I got to milk a goat today for the first time in 17 years! It was great to lean against her flank and listen to her ruminations. Also, it was a small triumph; the kids each had a go at her and she skittered away. Goats have an instict to let their own kids suckle but not just anybody. There's something a tad creepy about their letting humans milk them. Usually they'll only let familiar people milk them. Well, I have met goats before. I don't know exactly what I did but even though we had never met before, she just stood there and cudded.

Later in the evening, we were taking a break from schoolwork and playing Pounce. I'm slow but steady. "Yeah, I know," said Plumosita. "You play Pounce just like you milk goats - you just get in there and out comes the milk."