Click to see more takes.

1.

This, my friends, is marital harmony:

Taken not to document our perpetual clutter problem, but to test the new lens somebody earned by building these things for me.  That’s love.  12 feet of plywood heaven.  Worth the wait.

2.

PS, no there will NOT be boxes of books on the space-where-the-counter-goes forever.  Countertops are out on on the work bench in the garage.  Soon they will be finished — repeat: FINISHED — and then there will be an interesting collection of geeky artifacts strewn across the desktop in what looks like chaos but is actually carefully arranged nerdvana.

3.

Did you know that every. single. museum. is closed on Monday?  Except the Fire Museum.  So that’s where we dragged grandpa for his last day in town, because sitting in the house on a rainy day playing Angry Birds does build fond memories, but you can only do so many hours of that before the mother notices it is a school day and she would like very much to get something done that counts as school, and look, hey, field trip!

Here’s a link to the Fire Museum Network.  Some of the state-by-state links are old, but the museums are likely still around even if the webpage has expired.  We’d had no idea this was in our town until desperation had me googling random possible museum ideas.

4.

So is it just me, or are fire-fighters not the coolest, nicest, manly-men in the universe? Not only do they run into burning building to rescue people, and keep whole towns from being demolished*, but they are, you know, friendly.  Every time we’ve popped into a fire station with a five-year-old, there was a guy who was totally ready to give us a tour.

5.

If you haven’t taken your small children to meet fully-garbed firefighters, do it.  They need to see this:

And know that it’s a good guy.  Specifically: the person they should be looking for and calling for, in the event they are stuck in a fire.  Because it easy to mistake someone dressed this way for something out of the bad-guys-who-give-me-nightmares department [monsters, aliens, death troopers, etc.], and decide to run and hide.

6.

Allie Hathaway.  Once a week whether you need it or not.

7.

Want to feel like a stellar parent, even though you yelled at your kids seven times before breakfast?  Here’s our two-step method for teaching kids to evacuate when they hear a smoke-detector go off:

a) Open the oven to take out that freezer-burned casserole you’re gonna try to pawn off on the kids as “food” tonight.  There goes the alarm again.  Sheesh.

b) Hand out candy to everyone who runs outside and towards designated rendezvous point.

Conveniently, you can do this every night at dinner.  Even really super little toddlers learn fast when there’s candy involved.

*Also ours do: High- and low-angle wilderness rescue, hazmat, swiftwater, ground-collapse . . . anything that involves getting your trapped body out of a place it doesn’t belong.  There’s boats at the fire station.  Boats.  We had a great chat about rescuing people entrapped in the rapids at a lowhead dam.  Our local guys had worked out a seriously cool technique.  (Hint: Don’t try it at home.  That dam wants to eat you up and never spit you out.)

1) Dropped kids off at Grandma’s house.

2) Stopped in at local Catholic bookstore to say hello to owner, give update on catechist booklet progress, pretend I was there to buy books.

2a) Of course I knew I’d find books to buy, so I wasn’t dissembling.

3) My friend Sarah Reinhard’s lenten booklet, Welcome Risen Jesus, was smack in the center of the Books-for-Lent display.  Yay for Sarah!

4) Well it isn’t expensive, and my DRE will like it, so I pick up a copy.

5) I read it.

See, here’s the situation.  Look at this cover:

Do you not see the problem?   I’ll give you a second to observe.

.

.

.

Cute-Jesus.

I am a curmudgeon.  I’ve been grumpy and old at least since the age of reason, and I expect much, much earlier than that.  My favorite people in the world are 80-something and crotchety.  [They keep dying.  I have to make new friends pretty often.  Luckily other people get promoted.  There seems to be something magic about the big 8-0 that really brings out the critical thinking skills in a new way.  It gets even better at 90, but not everyone makes it that far.  The world can only bear so much common sense, I guess.]

My favorite weather is foggy.  Silent.  Nobody around.  My religious art runs to icons and creepy gothic statuary.  This is a book cover: Gargoyles.

I don’t do Cute-Jesus.

Happy?  Okay sure.  Friendly?  Yes.  I like people.  Even cute people.  Jesus loves cute people as much as He loves anyone else.  But I would not see Cute-Jesus and think, “Look at that cover!  There’s a book I need to read.”

And that’s awkward, because it turns out?  It’s a book I need to read.

I should not have been surprised by this.  I know Sarah R.  Yes,  she is undeniably cuter and perkier than me. But she’s on the mark.  Head on straight, clear-thinking, no-holds-barred normal Catholic lady.  Of course she’d write a great book.  And if it takes Cute-Jesus to get her message into the hands of people who need it, bless those Liguori artists who make it happen.

I have commissioned my children to make a Curmudgeon-Approved stamp to put on the front of these types of things, to assist any of my readers who might have been likewise thrown off by the artwork.  In the meantime, here’s what you need to know:

• There’s a meditation for each day of Lent and the octave of Easter.  Practical, no-nonsense Catholic spirituality.
• Each day comes with a different suggested prayer, personal sacrifice, and act of charity.
• I’d say it’s best suited to maybe ages 5-and-up.

The suggested sacrifices are very Thérèse.  Don’t complain one day.  Drink only water one day. Sleep without your pillow, and offer up your discomfort.  I really really like the changing up of the sacrifices, because it gives some realistic focus for those of us who want to do everything, but actually we’d completely stink at even doing a couple things all Lent long.

It’s a Lent for normal people.  I love it.  I repent of ever thinking grumpy thoughts about cartoon-y Bible-story pictures.

Okay never mind I did not really repent I am not that holy.  But seriously.  Good book. 100% buy-recommend for readers who want some good solid achieveable Lenten goals, no saccharine, no goofiness, just reliable practical advice grounded in every thing that one particularly sensible parish priest you had* was trying to tell you all those years.   You could cover it with some nice gargoyle stickers if that would help you.

UPDATE: The boy has applied the stamp of curmudgeon-approval:

*He’s 80 now.  Or was for a while.  Or looks younger but actually, yes, he’s fully grown-up on the inside, don’t let the smooth skin fool you.

We needed to keep moving with the class.  “Yes” was an accurate answer; Perfect Contrition was the detailed version.  We will cover it.  I assure you.  Do not think, dear junior theologian, that I would for a moment water down the faith.  No way no how.

***

Very late at night, I remembered where it was I learned those words: Perfect Contrition.

I was 17, kind of Catholic, and way behind on sacraments.  This beleaguered pair of faithful, practicing Catholics was tasked with the job of turning slackers like me into confirmandi.  Fast. We met once a week in a small group, and they walked us through the most essential essentials of the Catholic faith.  What do you do if you are bleeding to death by the side of the road and you are guilty of a mortal sin?  Perfect Contrition.  [If I recall correctly, they brought motorcycles into it somehow.  Fit the audience.  Totally.]

I can’t remember the name of the couple who taught me those words; I do remember their daughter was my friend (she went to a different school), and that she gave me a rosary for my confirmation, because I’d never had one and I’d told her how much I wanted one.

It eventually broke from excessive use, but that was later.  Also, I went to college and left the Church.

***

The parable of the sower popped up this week.  Several years ago my pastor helped me greatly (and presumably everyone else who heard his homily), by pointing out the gardening solution to the problem: Compost.  If the soil isn’t so great, keep working on it.

There’s something else, though, that Perfect Contrition brought to mind: Weeds.  And wanted plants that act just like ‘em.

Have you ever completely given up on a plant . . . determined it was dead and gone, and never to be seen again . . . and then it pops up one summer when you’d given up all hope?  That’s weediness.  The ability of one lone seed to sit hidden in the ground for years, and then when the time is right, it shoots up and takes over.

That’s what those words, Perfect Contrition, were to me.  That little good-weed seed.

***

Catechists, don’t lose heart when everything you say seems to get lost.  When you watch a student who was once so eager to learn about God suddenly grow up and move out and completely walk away from the Catholic faith.  It wasn’t that you did nothing.  It wasn’t that all your work was a failure.

The human heart is not some tiny little square of the garden, stuck with its rocks and thorns.  It is a vast and varied territory.  What you teach becomes these tiny grains of faith that spread everywhere into your students’ souls.  There’s good ground somewhere in that garden.  Somewhere in a corner you didn’t even see, didn’t even realize your words had reached.

And twenty years later, your very words — words like Perfect Contrition – come sprouting out of  a mouth you’d had every reason to assume was a lost cause.  And they come out, and your long-ago student who can’t even remember your name, who might have once even said, “I didn’t learn anything in religious ed,” your student knows exactly where that seed came from, and who it was who cooperated with the grace of God to put it there.

***

Also, God knows.  And He does not lose track.  Not ever.

It's still the New Year. I know because I keep writing the wrong date on my checks.

1.

There’s a short list of things I can only do with 100% concentration:

• Clean my desk.
• Order a new toner cartridge.
• Read Pope Benedict.

I’m sure there are others, but those are the one’s I’ve noticed.

2.

Which is why it is taking me 10,000 years to get my review done for this book:

So I’ll just tell you it’s a good book.  At least, the first half is.

–> But last week, St. Alphonsus Liguori was our saint for the chapter for religious ed, and of course I knew he was going to rock, but I secretly thought he might be a boring saint, but look, he’s a Doctor of the Church, and hey I have this partly-read book and maybe he’s in it.   Sure enough, yes, Liguori rocks.  Seriously cool saint.  Definite patron-to-catechists action going on.

Funny story though: I always research our saints because usually kids prefer a good re-telling with lots of dramatic (but censored) details, and I didn’t want to show up at class and just read from the textbook.  But I told the kids to flip to the page in their book with the big picture so they’d have something to look at . . . and they just wanted to read aloud.  So I let them.

3.

Today I discovered one thing I can do with a steady flow of distraction and interruption: Work on the homeschooling book.  Indeed, sitting on the couch staring at the backs of two children who have to be watched constantly in order to get their homework done?  It practically inspires.

I think I can knock out a 1,000 words a day just between 11am and noon, after littles have been sent to recess, and I’m sitting there playing overseer to the big people.

3.5

The other thing I do to keep from going barking mad while kids are doing school homework and can’t really be left alone but also don’t need help the whole time?  Mindless cleaning jobs.

Which is how I finally got around to asking what I’d started to ask last time I attempted to clean the porch: “Why do we have a bread bag full of dirt stuffed in a pillowcase?”

The other people are talking about things more interesting than politics. Click to go see.

1.

I watched the debates last night.  Seriously entertaining.  Much more fun than any political debate I’ve seen in ages.  Also, enlightening.

2.

Here’s the thing: I live in a cave.  I don’t enjoy TV the way other people do.  So I had never, ever, seen any of the four candidates speak on TV.  [I'd heard Santorum live once, but in a completely different context.]  Now that I have seen them, many mysteries are solved.

3.

For example: Newt Gingrich.  As a child in metro-DC in the ’80′s, yes, we talked about politics in the backseat of the car as our parents shuffled us around the beltway to youth group activities.  I remember then, that Newt was this creepy, untrustworthy politician guy.

[I also remember my dad being livid, livid, at the evisceration of Poindexter.  Who until scandals broke I had known of only as 'a dad of one of the one the boy scouts'.  Apparently a super nice guy in regular life.]

So, Newt.  When I heard he was running for president this year, my thoughts were:

1. He’s still alive?
2. I mean sure, Strom-Thurmond-Alive, of course.  But Running-for-President-Alive?  It was a stretch.  I guess when you are a kid, people seem so much older than they turn out to be later.
3. He’s this shifty beltway insider named after a reptile an amphibian.  What is the appeal?

4.

My goodness that man is charming!  CHARMING.  Did you see him open that debate?  He’s brilliant.  Utterly untrustworthy, anyone who is that smooth.  That loveable on stage.  But now I get it.

In order of Charming:

1. Gingrich.
2. Romney.
3. Santorum.
4. Paul.

So if you get your politics from TV and not from print, yes, it all suddenly makes very much sense.

5.

But you know what makes me angry?  Back last century, everyone knew that torture was wrong.  It was the stuff of satire.  Now, suddenly, it is very difficult to find a candidate who opposes torture.  You can expect to be treated as daft and unsophisticated if you insist your president be the non-torturing type.

People want charming.  Kingly.  From last Friday’s Mass reading:

⁶And the word was displeasing in the eyes of Samuel, that they should say: Give us a king, to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord.

⁷And the Lord said to Samuel: Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to thee. For they have not rejected thee, but me, that I should not reign over them.

⁸According to all their works, they have done from the day that I brought them out of Egypt until this day: as they have forsaken me, and served strange gods, so do they also unto thee.

⁹Now therefore hearken to their voice: but yet testify to them, and foretell them the right of the king, that shall reign over them.

¹⁰Then Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people that had desired a king of him,

¹¹And said: This will be the right of the king, that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and put them in his chariots, and will make them his horsemen, and his running footmen to run before his chariots,

¹²And he will appoint of them to be his tribunes, and centurions, and to plough his fields, and to reap his corn, and to make him arms and chariots.

¹³Your daughters also he will take to make him ointments, and to be his cooks, and bakers.

¹⁴And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your best oliveyards, and give them to his servants.

¹⁵Moreover he will take the tenth of your corn, and of the revenues of your vineyards, to give his eunuchs and servants.

¹⁶Your servants also and handmaids, and your goodliest young men, and your asses he will take away, and put them to his work.

¹⁷Your flocks also he will tithe, and you shall be his servants.

¹⁸And you shall cry out in that day from the face of the king, whom you have chosen to yourselves. and the Lord will not hear you in that day, because you desired unto yourselves a king.

We insist our president be “presidential”.  Impressive.  Someone the Europeans and the Iranians will respect.  So that’s what we’ll get.

6.

Allie Hathaway.  You know what to do.

7.

If you want regular normal-people election coverage of the SC Primaries, of course you would never read this blog.  Instead you’d visit Brad Warthen.  Whom I love the way my dad loved Poindexter, so just you be quiet (here*) if you don’t like his politics.

*Rant away at his place.  He’ll love it.  Plus my FIL arrives tonight, so if you post here for the first time and your post gets stuck in moderation, it is not because I hate you, nor because I fell into a bottomless chasm.  I’m just busy seeing flesh-and-blood people this weekend.  Also, voting.  I’ll catch back up with the Internet come Monday or so.

–> My father-in-law arrives tomorrow night, and I’m sure that eight hours of talk radio will help him advise us.  He’s a DC-area plumber, so he’s totally at ease with that feeling that you’ve done something necessary, but now must wash your hands*.

In the meantime, I depend on my internet friends.  Imagine my voting in the Republican primary Saturday will somehow impact which candidate faces off with Obama in November.  Which button on the touchscreen should I push?  Why?

*I actually enjoy plumbing work.  It is peaceful. Satisfying.  In contrast, though I take perverse pleasure in living in an open-primary state, and therefore every year getting to see who has the most interesting ballot, then wandering down to the corner school to meddle a bit . . . I always feel like whether I vote or not, either way requires sacramental absolution after.

Click to read Manly Topics.

1.

Dark pleasures of homeschooling parents:  Listening from the other room as your spouse valiantly tries to help a child with his homework . . . and noting that your spouse, too, is on the verge of breaking into swear words.

2.

Who took the dry-erase marker off my refrigerator?  I need it because . . .

3.

Middle of the dark I wake up with busy-brain.  I hear the neighbor’s truck outside.  Must be getting near dawn.  Which means: Stay still.  Do not go to living room and read The Doctors of the Church for a bit to settle down.  DO NOT GET A DRINK OF WATER.

Because: I need an undisturbed waking temp. Need.

Need.

***

I lay there a while.  I wonder if the truck I heard was not my neighbor but the people who go around breaking into cars.  I wonder if those people ever did read the Teacher’s Manual they stole last time.  I wonder if the SuperHusband set his car alarm so that we’ll know when the car-breakers are opening his minivan whose side doors only open when the vehicle is locked and the alarms are set.  I wonder what the car-breakers will think of the giant load of junk filling the back of my truck.  Do they want old children’s games with missing pieces?

No, it is not the car-breakers, because the neighbor starts his truck up again and begins moving it around the yard.  He does this.  He loves backing up.  Precisely.  He has to back up many times.

And then he drives off, and it is silent.  And still very dark.  I worry: Is it actually close to waking-up time?  Or is it the middle of the night and my neighbor is doing his late-night things that he sometimes does?  Nuts if I’ve been laying here all quiet and still with no drink of water and no prospect of sleep, and it’s actually 1 am and not 6 am.  I wonder why I have no clock on my side of the bed.  About three times a year, I want one.

***

I give up.  Grab thermometer, head to living room.  Yay: 6:45.  Double-Yay:  99.0.

One of these years my kids will understand why they sometimes find summer-weather temperatures written on the door of the fridge in the middle of January.

3.5

Roman Holiday.  Of course.

But my friend’s recent struggles to get the care she needs (nothing wildly expensive) leads me to think nationalization of social supports is a very bad solution. Here’s why:

Government-run services are much harder to shut down if they become corrupt, incompetent, or unsafe.  It takes, literally, an act of Congress.  (And then some).  In comparison, privately-run services can be boycotted by consumers, or in the case of safety-violations, legitimately shut down by government regulators.

When the system doesn’t work, there is nowhere else to turn.  Taxpayer-funded, universal-enrollment systems squeeze out private providers.  The money I could have spent on private fees has already been mailed to the government in taxes.  I no longer have that cash on hand.  The vastly diminished demand for privately-provided services also means therea are fewer private providers available to choose from.

“Universal” services shortchange the poor.  The supposed reason for creating nationalized services is so that the poor have access to the essentials they need, such as medical care or education.  The reality of government-run bureaucracies, however, is that they favor the upper-middle class — the people who have the resources and connections to work the system to their advantage.

How, then, to help the poor? By helping the poor.

Those who truly cannot provide for themselves do indeed need our assistance.  One can reasonably argue that in a large, diverse, and mobile society, government-provided alms are a legitimate way of caring for those who might otherwise be overlooked by private charities.

But the whole nation cannot need alms.  It is a mathematical joke.  We cannot all be poor all the time.

At least it isn't Saturday. I could have done worse.

1.

The bookshelves are in!  People say my library method makes sense!  Or at least haven’t complained!  The countertops still need to be finished.  Photo coming sometime after that.

2.

If you have an e-mail sitting in my inbox, yes I will reply soon.  I’ve been sidetracked by regular life.

3.

Cleaning my house.  Yes, really.  That’s what I’ve been doing all week.

4.

Because Lent is only 40 days away.  And this year for Lent, our family is going to Clean Up After Ourselves.

5.

It’s not that we’re slobs.  It’s that I can write a sentence beginning with, “It’s not that we’re slobs,” and no one senses any kind of irony or sarcasm there.  They await some other explanation, thinking skeptically, “This better be good.”

But let’s just clarify right now:  I could never ever qualify for one of those slovenliness reality shows.   We do like order and cleanliness.  We do.   Almost obsessively, in some pursuits.  But housekeeping?  There’s always another project that’s just a little bit more pressing.

You know all those movies where they tell you to slow down and enjoy life?  Or spend more time with your family?  Or focus on __________ that really counts?  We should be banned from those movies.  We need the movie where the family-centered protagonists have an amazing revelation about their misplaced priorities, and learn it might be okay to put dishes straight into the dishwasher after dinner.

6.

But you can wait just a second before you put away that glass, and say a quick prayer for Allie Hathaway.

7.

So we’re having a Carnival of Cleanliness, in an effort to make Lent less penitential than it otherwise would be.   You remember that line in A Mother’s Rule of Life, where she mentions  in passing that before you begin, make sure there’s A Place For Everything, and Everything In It’s Place?  Yeah, we’ve been working on that sentence for half a decade now.   And we’re close.  So close.

We're still cleaning up after the party here. Click for links to the responsible people.

1.

The  in-laws called to find out why I’d posted a link to the Baby Name Wizard in Facebook.  Was there something they should know?  Yes.  My nine-year-old had to write a piece of historical fiction as part of her Caddie Woodlawn literature study.  She picked depression-era.  I pointed her to the name wizard because I had this sneaking feeling “Kaitlyn” wasn’t such a period name.   She’s found her new tool.  Those graphs.  They are addictive.

2.

Take, read.  Betty Beguiles has a free e-booklet out: Dressing with Intention.  I completely 100% recommend it.  Excellent advice for building a workable wardrobe that you can afford.  Accountant-approved.   Short, readable, encouraging, spot-on absolutely right.  You cannot get better than that.   Stop now and click the link, then come back later to finish here.

3.

My friend Sandra sent me these pics:

She’s thinking of sewing her wedding dress along these lines.  Is that not seriously cool?  I told her to do it.  No question. She has serious Jane-power going on, so it will be fabulous.

(Do you understand how relieved I am when I learn that someone I really like is also a Jane Austen fan?  I mean, yes, I have a couple very dear friends who don’t get the Jane-thing, and we adapt and focus on our common ground.  But see, this is why there are more mom-bloggers.  Because we can talk not just about Jane Austen, but about dressing like Jane Austen, and how our friendships are affected by Jane Austen . . . you begin to see.  Football is not the same.  Not.)

3.5

Not always, but sometimes, when your daughter is in the Pit of Oppression over things that she can’t control and really are upsetting, even though no one else seems to understand that, but being nine is Not As Easy As People Say, the best thing is to put the littles to bed, pop a giant pot of popcorn, fire up the DVD player and watch