Peace

Two days of relaxing and talking with friends about the crap that's been bothering me. Knowing that who people care about me read this blog and then forcing me out of the house to be social.

Visiting with very young children, carrying them around until it feels as though my arms are going to fall off.

Knitting again, and getting into knitting flow headspace, where I don't think about my fingers moving and they just do, creating something out of nothing. Having my work appreciated. Teaching someone how to turn a piece of string into a piece of fabric.

Coming home to a space that has space, and is beautiful. Realizing that I made my bed this morning, totally unconsciously because if it was messy it interfered with my room.

My brain has been unkinked, smoothed out. It's like having a giant knot loosened, and then have it just fall softly apart.

Magic.

A Big List of Stuff

(rant)
I'm in this class. We're regurgitating the textbook in presentations and that's all the class is. Grr...the prof hasn't taught us anything all term. Also, we haven't had any feedback on any of our assignments, we're losing out 14+ hours of teaching time (out of a possible 36) and we have a quiz tomorrow. ARGH! Now I have several choices. I can take this quiz tomorrow (Friday) and having a four day weekend and only needing to go to school on Wednesday, taking it next Tuesday and having a three day weekend only needing to go in Wednesday or taking it Friday and needing to go in Tuesday, Wednesday AND Friday. I need to go in tomorrow anyway, so I think I'll decide when I get there. I emailed my prof and hopefully she'll give me my feedback. I'll be a lot less stressed if I know that I had a high enough mark that I could just not take the test and I'd still pass the course. It's only worth 25% of my mark and I need 76% to pass. Yuck.
(/rant)

I followed a raven yesterday. It was pretty cool. :D I also ate vast quantities of huckleberries after picking them myself, walked through a Japanese garden and looked at some beautiful museum objects. I looked at all of these pieces of art that were all so different, but they all had one thing in common. Someone, somewhere had a vision of beauty, and they took materials...clay, paint, wood or wool...and made these incredible representations of their thoughts. This...THIS is what I want to do.

Today I went through a community centre near Chinatown and learned about the work that they do, including a breakfast program for the children in the area. It was awesome. I'd been worried about getting into an inner city school when I finally had my own classroom, but now I'm almost HOPING to be put in a poorer section of the Lower Mainland. I've got a bunch of ideas for how to help my students. We also toured Chinatown, including a Taoist temple. It was really neat! I burned some incense and said a prayer while there were seven or eight people (monks and nuns?) chanting and ringing chimes. It was truly amazing.

This has been a pretty spiritual week. Between ravens and museums and gardens and incense and picking my own food, I'm feeling awfully serene, despite the annoyance of this class. Could this be because I've only got two more class days??? I think it might be!

Also! I have an auction up on ebay via my friend...Phantom of the Opera tickets...fifth row, August 11th. If you're interested, please bid, or let other people know that they're there. Thank you!

Zen Garden, originally uploaded by Random Synapses.

From the yard of the house we stayed at on Pender Island.

YAYY!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm THIS CLOSE *fingers pinched really close* to being completely better. This weekend was enough to shove this cold/flu/plague out the door. YES!

Also, I am jealous. I wish to go here. Maybe next summer. I also want to create a labyrinth in my backyard.

I've gotten slightly rehooked (is this a word? do I care? nah.) onto gardening and want to redesign my parents' back yard. Currently it's very shady with a lot of lawn and places completely groundcovered and a half assed vegetable garden. Oh, and a cute little shade garden that I found and added to a couple years ago. I would like to open it up to the sun and create a bunch of smaller spaces to move around in depending on the mood one is in. I would also like to clean out the (ugly!!) ground cover and make my vegetable garden full assed and tidy up the shade garden and plant a few more things there.

Yikes. And I was planning on having ANY spare time this summer??