Of Mailboxes and Museums

Please tell me that my title reminded at least one person of Steinbeck's novel? Please? A famous, amazing writer I'm not. It was clever though, right?

I had a clever line today. I cracked myself up. No one else actually laughed, but many comedic geniuses go unrecognized, I've heard. I think the saying is something like, "A comedic genius is without honor in her own kitchen." Something like that....Anyway, Brian ate a piece of deer meat sausage and then breathed on me just to gross me out. (I tend to freak out about people breathing on me, especially when they've eaten something with a strong flavor.) Instead of freaking out, I wittily said, "Hello, deer." Funny stuff, right?

All right, I'm all done looking for props. On to the real stuff. I'm just in a silly mood and had to work some of it out.

Sometimes you go to the mailbox and you open something that's not a bill, not junk, just something unexpected. Something that reminds you that God hears. He doesn't just tell us he'll provide, he actually does. Maybe it's not always the mail. Today it was. He likes to keep us guessing around here. Guess what we're doing tonight? A little online Christmas shopping. Whoo-hoo!

We took a field trip today with soon-to-expire passes to the Wildlife Experience museum. The place was practically deserted. With temperatures skyrocketing all the way up to 12 degrees, slightly icy roads, and just a week after Thanksgiving break, the school groups were not there. We felt pretty spoiled. We had one-on-one attention from all the museum employees and the entire Imax theater to ourselves. Elijah could talk as loudly as he wanted to...and he did. We saw an excellent show about the Alps and a guy who did a really difficult climb.

Joseph took a museum quiz about sharks and he missed two questions. Technically, he missed three, but the third one required a belief in macroevolution and I'm positively bursting with pride and joy that he missed it. Actually, when I heard his reasons for the two that he missed, I'm not sure they really were misses. The museum employee was a little stubborn on the point and informed us the quiz was written by Princeton so he wasn't going to argue with it. All I was thinking was....from the mouths of babes....

1) Can sharks talk to each other? He answered no. The Princeton answer was yes. His reason? Sharks cannot talk. They can communicate, but they cannot talk, except in animated films. I am pretty much agreeing with him on this one. Poorly worded question.

2) Are sharks more dangerous to humans or humans to sharks? He answered that sharks are more dangerous to humans. The answer was the other way around. The way he interpreted the question was as a one-on-one encounter. Again, I think he had an excellent point and the question was poorly worded. Without context, the question was wide open to interpretation.

On our way out of the museum, we noticed the outdoor sculpture of a wolf that had ice going from its head all the way to the ground. I asked Joseph if he remembered the part in one of the "Little House on the Prairie" books where it was so cold that cattle suffocated from their breath freezing their heads to the ground. He didn't remember, but he started talking about what he did remember from those books. At one point, he asked about a particular book and I told him it was the one where Mary went blind. He said, "Oh yeah, wasn't that because she looked at the sun too much?" Whaaaa?? Brian and I totally cracked up. To his credit, Joe remembered quite a bit about the books, but we're not quite sure how he got scarlet fever confused with staring directly at the sun. I guess it's time to read them again. Elijah hasn't heard them yet and they are actually great for boys or girls.

And now? Time to cook dinner for the circling, carnivorous hordes.