{"id":2131,"date":"2018-11-29T19:40:36","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T02:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=2131"},"modified":"2019-05-03T19:41:20","modified_gmt":"2019-05-04T02:41:20","slug":"have-i-bored-you-to-death-yet-about-my-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=2131","title":{"rendered":"Have I Bored You to Death Yet About my Birthday?"},"content":{"rendered":" \n

Did I tell you about my birthday? More appropriately I should ask, have I bored you to DEATH yet about my birthday? I actually can\u2019t believe how much I have talked about it this year. It\u2019s weird, like I’m possessed by a birthday-carer or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, doesn’t matter. I have<\/strong> to tell you about my husband\u2019s gift! Not ONLY did he get me the present I *hinted* at by saying, \u201cI would like a chamois to dry my car when I wash it,\u201d (I love it when someone hears my answer after asking a direct question)\u2014he also bought me a pair of binoculars. BINOCULARS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First off, I love them. Actually, there\u2019s a lot of background to this, and I wrote a long blog about it on my \u201cspiritchal\u201d blog<\/a>, but I\u2019ll just tell you the gist, which is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With those binoculars\u2014I saw Neptune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neptune, my friends! Never had I ever thought about looking at Neptune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally, the plan was to use them to watch the moon rise. We did! It was the night of the full moon last Friday, and we parked at a field and watched the reddish-orangish orb slide silently over the ridge. And through the binoculars we could tell the surface is BUMPY.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know, for those of you who have had this experience, I probably sound like a dip. But it was seriously amazing to watch\u2014quite a spiritual experience. One that we repeated the following night by climbing a ridiculously steep mesa as a night hike with our kids so they could see it too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\u2026Neptune! I was expecting the moon, but not one of the farthest planets in the solar system. And Uranus was there too, but I hate that name. Can we sign a global petition to change the name of that planet, please? It\u2019s so icky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had this app on my husband\u2019s phone that was a star map. If he held it up to the sky, the map of stars, planets, galaxies, constellations appeared. Then we could aim our binoculars at the different beauties of Creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was amazing and cool and unexpected and wonderful. Still, a week later, when I shut my eyes, the images are still floating there, giving me joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And better, I still have the binoculars. They\u2019re mine! I can use them any morning or night to see what is out there for us to see.<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did I tell you about my birthday? More appropriately I should ask, have I bored you to DEATH yet about my birthday? I actually can\u2019t believe how much I have talked about it this year. It\u2019s weird, like I’m possessed by a birthday-carer or something. Anyway, doesn’t matter. I have to tell you about my husband\u2019s gift! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OUjT-yn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2132,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions\/2132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}