Snow in Spring?

Mistake. Never head to church in spring clothes without checking the weather report first.
"I'm freezing!" I complained to Asherel, as we hurried across the church campus.
"Oh Mom, it's not cold! It's spring!"
I held out my hand, and caught a little snowflake.
"Then what is this? It is snowing!"
"No, it is not....oh....wow. It is snowing!"

This is just plain cruel of mother nature.All winter long we sit in the living room, bundled and ready with cross country skis in hand, scarfs triple wrapped around our throat, waterproof mittens on our hands, furlined boots on our feet. And we sweat, and wait.....any moment now the snow will arrive!

And it never does.

Until, we put on sandals and thin cotton capris, and yellow shirts.

Admittedly, the snow was very tiny, and very brief, and mixed in with the drizzling rain, so few people noticed, but it is still officially spring in the south and snow just shouldn't be making an appearance among the tulips and dogwood blossoms. Normally I love incongruity. It snaps me out of the doldrums. I like surprises. I like my neat little boxes around life shattered. I love the idea of a jumbo shrimp, a virgin giving birth, a boat built in the desert that has never seen rain until it rains for 40 days and nights, the least of all people on earth being chosen to produce the Savior of Mankind.....

But I hate being cold. And snow in the spring is just not funny.

Isaiah 64

 ¹ Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
   that the mountains would tremble before you!
² As when fire sets twigs ablaze
   and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
   and cause the nations to quake before you!
³ For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
   you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.

Flinging Things like grumbles

19 degrees! This is the sunny south, home of palm trees and skin cancer capitol of the world. Some in congress are threatening to ban homeschools because we might not teach the "accepted fact" of global warming and here we are with some scientists now thinking, oops, maybe we are entering a new ice age.  Based on the chill factor this morning, I'm leaning towards the ice age crowd.

And normally, a day like this calls for a rare fire to be built in our fireplace, marshmallows melting on hot chocolate, and never getting out of our warm jammies. But instead, GUESS WHO volunteered to help at a dog agility trial OUTDOORS all day? I volunteered a couple of weeks ago, when it was sunny and 50 degrees. It seemed like such a good idea....then.

But I am not complaining. I know it sounds suspiciously like I am, but that is because you only read the words and not the tone. Asherel will use the day as a training practice for Honeybun who has a big trial coming next weekend in Matt's college town. So Matt will get to see his little sister run in an agility contest for the first time. But Asherel worked 8 hours yesterday on her other Science Olympiad project with her team-mate Josh and his dad, and she is tired. They built a trebuchet. She is exhausted and less than thrilled about 19 degrees outside and a day also not spent flopping bonelessly somewhere to just rest. Besides, some little things went wrong in the trebuchet constructing....like it doesn't work. But they are pretty sure with some adjustments, it will work. Still, after two days of pounding,hammering, sawing, forcing.... it is  not done yet.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with middle age weapons, a trebuchet is a catapult, but one that operates with a counterweight rather than taut ropes released to power the catapulting arm. In this Science Olympiad event, her team has carefully designed, built, graphed and calibrated their trebuchet.  When the judges tell her the size of both the projectile and the counterweight, her team will be able to tell them exactly where to place the "castle" which they must try to hit.  The further away a castle is accurately smashed to smithereens, the more points the team accrues. Thus, we spent a lot of time researching and designing a trebuchet with maximum fling power and accuracy....theoretically. Thus far, it doesn't work. There is some theory and even math involved, which we did review before building our small scale prototype. But this is not as hard supposedly as getting our helicopter to fly....after all, this was a weapon used in the dark ages back when people were too illiterate to confuse global warming with ice ages.

When it is finally built, we will spend the last 8 weeks before the contest flinging objects and graphing how far varying weight flings varying projectiles. The functional benefit of all this work is that we will be ready should a nuclear arms treaty ever be enacted. At that point, we will have the most powerful weapon allowed to mankind. If we win the Science Olympiad event, we intend to then take over the world. And when we do, the first thing I will outlaw as new Emporer of the World is 19 degree mornings....and complaining because I am sick of all my grumbling which I fling far too powerfully even without the aid of a trebuchet.

Job 9: 27-28
²⁷ If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint,
   I will change my expression, and smile,’
²⁸ I still dread all my sufferings

Psalm 142: 1-2
¹ I cry aloud to the LORD;
   I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy.
² I pour out before him my complaint;
   before him I tell my trouble.  ³ When my spirit grows faint within me,
   it is you who watch over my way.
In the path where I walk

Philippians 2:14
Do everything without grumbling