All of life besides books and running

Reading and running.....ug!

I cannot possibly blog about these two topics.

I am running just so badly....and I know why but I don't want to tell anybody.  It's because I'm old and fat.

And I am reading John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, about which I am just too woefully inadequate to even think of writing a comment.
 He's talking about how we understand God better as we see ourselves rightly and at the same time we learn to see ourselves correctly in the light of the holiness of God.  It is all true, and I will perhaps one day have some good thoughts on it.
 I am also reading the book about the Potato Peel Pie Literary Society ......
 post world-war II in the  Channel Islands,
it is such a delightful little book,
and not on any book list, as I am in rebellion and reading books off list.
Shame.

But......
 today, I am educating my children,
teaching subtraction with borrowing,
multiplication of two two digit factors,
how to construct a good cohesive paragraph,
how to compare two pieces of literature without revealing which one you hate and which one you want to pretend you wrote yourself,
and, where did the Catholic Church fall off the rails,
how could  a white dwarf star be created from the explosion of two red giants,
and what does it mean to be long-suffering and merciful when your sibling is singing jolly songs about your dying hamster.

I have also learned today, as I e-mailed some of you earlier, that the quickest and most certain method of clearing out a room full of teenagers is to say "let's talk about sex"  or "menopause".....it's like magic, and I am suddenly all alone.

I have spoken on the phone today to all the elderly relatives on my side of the family and my husband's family too,  and I am hardly able to bear up under the load of senile dementia.....
 I can already see it bearing down on me like a freight train.
Just ask anyone at my house if I have any short term memory at all.
They will respectfully roll their eyes.

But,  my favorite unexpected discovery today was this:
If you take a bite of crab-stuffed salmon in butter sauce and follow it right quickly with a nice mouth full of Penfold's Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet, 2008
....then inhale immediately,
it is precisely the same aroma and taste you will get at the very lowest level of the New England Aquarium just at the back corner when the rockhopper penguins are being fed.
I am absolutely sure of this, as I tried it several times, and David and Audrey even joined in to confirm.  Amazing.  Like a trip down memory lane. I think I spent about two years on that level in 1992.

And I know this photo is of the Macaroni Penguin exhibit, but it's not far from the Rockhoppers......