Curmudgeon Gets Comeuppance, Enjoys Cute-Jesus Book

Here’s my weird day:

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.

.

.

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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.

Perfect Contrition

Last night I answered one last question about eternal salvation with a real quick “Yes.”  Under my breath I promised my stricken sidekick, who no doubt cringed to see me treat the subject so briefly, “We’ll cover ‘perfect contrition’ next week.”

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.

7 Quick Takes: Friends, Romans, Republicans

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.

7 Quick Takes: 40 Days

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.

7 Quick Takes: Not Knowing

The other minions have been busy.

1.

The bookshelves in the living room are halfway installed.  (The “during” picture is too depressing.  Sorry no photo.)  SuperHusband complains that my method for organizing books is incomprehensible.  I was determined to load these new shelves in some orderly way that even an engineer could understand.  I’m already having trouble.  Hrmph.

2.

We found a long lost library book!  Someone had helpfully shelved Changes for Kit in the magazine file for Invention and Technology.  I don’t know why I didn’t think to look there.

3.

Do you know what I hate about submitting work to editors I don’t know?  Wondering if they even received it.  New experience for me this year.  In the past I’ve always written for people who had already hired me to do the writing.  People you could just e-mail or pop into their office and ask, “Did you get my thing? Let me know when you’ve had a chance to look at it.”  And it’s not pestering, because those people know you and wanted your work and told you exactly what they wanted.  They aren’t dreading looking to see what you’ve sent.

(Strangers rightly dread.  With people you don’t know? You just don’t know.)

So of course the solution to the wait-a-thon is to move on to the next project, which is easy enough when you are too busy anyway.  And then it’s helpful to already have a back-up plan for “What will I do if this editor isn’t interested?”.  Again, pretty easy.

But at 5AM when you wake up with a busy brain, and you feel bad about always using The Doctors of the Church as your insomnia remedy, because you know it’s going to influence your book review unfairly?    That’s when the weird fears kick in:  “What if my submission got lost in the spam filter?”  “What if I accidentally did something that causes me to look like a completely different kind of idiot than the one I actually am?  Because the one I am, an editor can work with, but maybe I came across like a different, less-manageable kind?”

The solution to that is to think up more likely and less ominous reasons, such as, “The editor has a lot of other work to do.”

But I also think up other things, like, “Maybe his farm was hit by a tornado,” or, “Maybe she’s come down with a pox and won’t be able to work for a month.”  Which leads to a weird prayer life revolving around things like, “If my editor’s house has fallen into a sinkhole, please let everyone be okay, and console him with Your peace, and let my file be safely stored at the office where he’ll eventually get to it sometime this spring.”

UPDATE:  But it is so lovely when you get an e-mail back saying, “My house did not fall into a sinkhole.”  (Actually it said, “Thanks, got it, we’ll get back to you.” )

4.

My typoese is getting weirder than ever.  I begin to suspect a rogue “auto-correct” function.

5.

Mr. Boy’s been having a hard time waking up lately.  Winter + Night Owl + Early Adolescence + School Is Not Fun = Low Motivation.  SuperHusband has started rousing him from bed to take the dog for a brisk walk as soon as it’s fully light out.  The first day he went straight back to bed after and slept two more hours.  Second day I cleared a work area for him in front of a window that gets direct sun all morning.   He hates it.  But it works.

Also I am working on dimming the lights after dinner so it isn’t so bright inside at a night.  Jon bought the house in the mid-90’s.  Early this century he managed to diagram most of the wiring.  I am still being surprised by which switch does what.

6.

Good news! Allie Hathaway’s gotten 2nd and 3rd opinions that offer a much better prognosis.  (And they agree with each other and seem to be the real thing. Yay.)   Alleluia.  Thank you for praying.  Don’t stop.

7.

Why is it that we act as if we’re omniscient, when we know that we are not?  We kick ourselves for guessing wrong about this investment or that career choice, or the new outfit or the right haircut.  Even when we had honestly made the effort to make a good decision.  Even when we cannot know the outcome of our decision, because it involves events beyond our control, or variables that can only be known with time.

And then we are mortified by the ignorance and immaturity our younger selves — selves who had no way of knowing what can only be learned by time and experience.  And note:  Those of us still breathing  are, still, younger selves.

It’s nonsense.  Bad habit.  Rooted in bad theology no less.  I wonder if it’s easier to quit than the complaining thing?

3.5 Time Outs: Near Occasions of Sin

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is willing to count me among his minions, even though I’m also one The Jen F.’s minions, even if I did forget my 7 takes last Friday because I didn’t remember it was Friday.  Nice thing about Fridays is you get a new one every week.

1.

The people I’m trying to be nicer to are not helping me.  You who chew with your mouths closed? I have no difficulty being nice to you.  It is the people who pick fights at the breakfast table.  Those people.    I’ve had to switch acts of contrition, not just because I blank out in the confessional so I need something short and easy, but also because, well, I can’t exactly avoid “whatever leads me to sin”.  No sense pretending.  I think my pastor gets it.  He can’t avoid me all the time either.

2.

Speaking of bad influences:  I was having some trouble with the new Mass translation at first, not because it isn’t beautiful and everything, but because the first time I heard “like the dewfall” during the consecration, I giggled.  Not out loud.  But my lips sort of twitched.  I hope everyone else was looking at the altar. My trouble is the people I spend my days with.  They are so . . . juvenile.  It rubs off.

3.

This morning I read the wrong day’s Mass readings. The page marked in my missal had both January 3 and January 4 on it, and did I know what day it was?  No.  I didn’t even wonder. I just read.  But hey, you have good stuff to look forward to tomorrow.

–> First let’s just admit it, 1st John can be a little overwhelming, hmmn?  Even if it does fit right in with that whole “resolutions” theme we’re all talking about.  But I like this bit here, I think makes a good hinge for the could-be scrupler:

It was to undo all that the devil has done, that the Son of God appeared.

So that’s my consolation when I read in Psalm 97, “Let the rivers clap their hands,” and my brain goes all middle-school on me, not in a good way.   But look, here’s a nice river picture to clean the imagination:

The funny thing about poetry and photography, is that they aren’t like the real world.  Rivers don’t have hands that clap.  If you stand in the Narrows of Zion Canyon, this picture is not what you see.  The water isn’t all pearly and shiny.  It’s wet and icy cold, and you aren’t thinking about how it looks (normal old water), you are thinking: Snowmelt.  And the walls of the canyon are not so flat and washed out; they surround you, and make you forget the entire rest of the world, and you can touch them, and you would never have believed in them if you had not seen them yourself.

But people like the photo.  I think because the shiny-pearly water makes it feel like fairlyand.  Like rivers with hands that clap.   Like the world as we know it is supposed to be, if only the wreckage were undone.  Which is how you feel standing there in the canyon.  You know that whoever made this is so much bigger than you.  And entirely able to undo the madness.  And that you were meant to be a part of that.

3.5

. . . sidewalks.

Please.  Cut it out with the weird car ideas.   Just build a sidewalk.  A good one.  Wide.  With proper curb cuts.  That goes all the way to store.  Just like roads — we don’t build roads that stop abruptly because one of the neighbors didn’t want to cede a right of way, but hey, just drive over the grass and through the ditch, road picks up again in half a block.  Real sidewalks.  Don’t call yourself an environmentalist, or a fuel-security guru,  and then make it impossible for people to walk places.

7 Quick Takes: Advent was good.

Coffee was lost and now is found. Go read.

Lately I’ve encountered a lot of talk about Holiday Burnout.  People who are just sick and tired of Christmas.  People really struggling to feel the Advent-Love.  People who know they’ll go to bed on the 25th exhausted, disappointed, and thinking, “Is that all?  It ends like this?”

You know what?  I’ve had a wonderful Advent!  Peaceful.  Joyful.  Can’t-wait-for-Christmas.  Genuinely looking forward to 12 Days of All Things Good.  Here’s what it looked like:

1.

We had The Plague.  Not a really bad plague.   Not the kind that depopulates cities or disfigures previously-beautiful people.  Just a day or two of  “Hey, death seems like  a nice idea!” and then several weeks of non-contagious laying around, sleeping all day, and sticking to activities that require no lung usage.   So visions of bustling around doing holiday things?  Out the window.  Gone.  No-Can-Do.  Didn’t happen.

2.

Dumb luck.  For reasons that have nothing to do with  my own clever planning, 80% of our regular weekly activities finished for the year by the first week of December.  80% less driving around. 80% less herding cranky children.  80% less repenting of uncharitable thoughts towards stupid careless clueless other drivers.

And then back in early November  I had recklessly committed a labor-intensive Advent catechist-project; we had to cancel it when we realized it would conflict with The Immaculate Conception.   Good thing, since I was barely standing up straight for my last RE class December 7th.

(Shocker: The kids were NUTS that night.  Pure crazy-power that class.  They can smell weakness.)

3.

I chose not to over-commit. We went to a few of our very favorite (or very necessary) holiday events.  But the rest, even though they promised to be good and wonderful, we chose to skip.  I don’t like long, loud, chaotic festivities.  I know other people love that stuff.  Cookies! St. Nick! Bags of Trinkets!  I do not love it.  We skipped it.  Everyone is happy.

4.

We’ve hit our Christmas / Advent decorating sweet spot.  It took us a few years to figure out what this looks like for us.  When does the tree go up?  When do we decorate it?  What about lights and colors and all that stuff?  I know it is the pasttime of a special kind of Catholic to agonize about these things.  I agree it is silly to lay down some Universal Law Of When The Tree May Be Lit.

But I think it is important to self-examine just a little.  To try things out and see how they feel.  Our culture flat out stinks at observing Advent.  If we want to do it, we’re on our own for figuring out how it’s done.  It is a happy year when we the members of the family can agree that we’ve found an approach that works for us, and hits the right balance between preparation, penitence, and joyful expectation.

Double-bonus for your resident Complainer:  I totally 100% approved of the way my parish handled Advent decorations this year.  Not that it’s any of my business to have an opinion on these things.  But it was nice all the same.

5.

I live in a cave.  I don’t watch TV.  I don’t shop.  And every year from Thanksgiving to New Year’s I turn off the radio, because I’d rather have silence than cheesy holiday songs.  These are not due to my amazing virtue and spirit of penance.  I have very little virtue, and a purely intellectual spirit of penance.  These are self-indulgences.  They are me doing what I prefer to do.   But they conveniently shield me from the onslaught of Giftmas Propaganda and bad (Christian) or blasphemous (secular)  music.

So I totally get it, if you who bravely suffer these things have lost your Advent Love after enough weeks of torment.  I would too.  I am grateful for my sheltered life.

6.

Don’t forget to pray for Allie Hathaway.

7.

Jen Fulwiler at the Register ponders, “Why no Catholics among the top 100 Mom Bloggers?”  My answer is this:  We don’t do that.  If our homes are all in order, with lovely decorations,  Craft A Day, and beautiful meals on the table every night . . . that’s our cue to have another baby. 

We don’t live showcase lives that we can peddle on the internet to those longing for Housewife Wonderland.   We focus on our highest  priorities, and we let the rest be someone else’s calling.  Our lives will never be magazine pretty.  My house is not that clean, the only reason I have baked goods lined up is that I trust the nine-year-old with brownie mix and I wasn’t being strict enough about math homework, and we didn’t even get to sing this year, because, well, plague.

We lives our lives poured out. Full and running over.  Everything that is not essential to our calling, we set aside.  And in the process we do not end up beautiful, famous, or rich.  But we do get joy and peace.

From the Archives: PSA: Sunday Obligation

I posted this last year, and several people found it helpful. 

This year, my same exact friend is having the same exact scruples.  December is a hard month.   What one person can work around easily, will sink another.  We don’t all have the same resources to help us overcome Mass-obstacles.  The great news is that God is fully aware.  He’s on the job.  Personally Responsible for making sure your state in life is one that can help you get to Heaven, even when you genuinely can’t get to Mass. 

 

***

Originally posted 12/10/2010:

Recap for the spectators: Catholics are required to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. (The HDO’s are a handful of major feast days throughout the year.)  But you are excused from this requirement if you have a serious reason you cannot attend.  It’s a prescription, not a sentence.

So . . . on an internet forum, a catholic mom writes along the lines of:

I think I might have to miss Mass this Sunday because of <<insert serious reason that undoubtedly excuses her, not subject to debate>> but I’m not sure it’s okay, because I missed mass last week, too <<insert more serious reasons>> and plus I hate to miss so much church this time of year. What do I do?

The answer is:  The Precepts of the Church are unchanged by what month it is and what happened last week.

It is of course a good sign if you regret having to miss Mass so much.  It is is likewise good to recognize that Advent is a special time of year in the life of the Church.  But that doesn’t change the Sunday Obligation.  There isn’t a secret calendar showing weeks when you can skip based on a flimsy excuse, and other weeks when you have to show no matter what.  Likewise, there isn’t a cosmic attendance policy giving you so many unexcused absences and then you fail the course.

You either can come, and therefore you  must.  Or you cannot come, and therefore, well, you cannot.

Much simpler than people fear.  The Church is not out to get you.  Well, okay, she is out to get you.  But in a good way: She is out to get your soul into Heaven.  And she knows that under ordinary circumstances, attending Mass on Sundays and Holy Days is what your soul needs.  So go if you possibly can.

3.5 Time Outs: Vocation Reality Show

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, whose plan for internet domination will no doubt culminate in underground bunkers.  Every indication the  Alvin- and-Chipmunks warning is not an idle threat.

Click the Picture to Learn about the Secret Lair

1.

Byzantine Christmas.  A friend sends in this link to a Byzantine Christmas menu.  Yummy.  FYI for those who can’t get enough of all things Byzantine, she forwarded it from the Byzantium Novum yahoo group.

Double FYI: No, I am not planning to cook all this.  I just like thinking about these things.  My 9-year-old has baked some cookies, though.  That’s a step up from last year, in terms of our ratio of homemade-to-store-bought Christmas foods.  Thank you  nice religious ed family who sent the mason jar of cranberry cookie mix.

Oh, and look what my DRE gave me (and all the other catechists, I’m pretty sure) for Christmas:

Mine is not this exact one. Mine is smaller and has just the Holy Family, and the stable is an arch shape.  But it’s from the same project and very similar. It looks super cool.  Maybe I could get some photographer guy I know to take a picture.

2.

If five-year-olds had to choose their vocations:

“I do not like most boys.  Most.  They make you play army all day.  But there is one boy I do like:  Jesus.”

The boy who makes her play army all day still doesn’t like girls, either.  Except when he can get one to run around the yard brandishing weapons.   In eight years I will have four teenagers.  Seriously enjoying the easy years.

3.

SuperHusband points out that hunting season only lasts two more weeks.  During which he will be designing and building shelving for the living room.  Not shooting things, and maybe his friends won’t be shooting things either?  Maybe the dog does not need her own stock pot from Santa after all?  Also, maybe my living room will not have the “Tornado Strikes Shed, Library, Toy Store, and Art Museum, Deposits Contents in Suburban Home” look?

Okay, no, let’s not overreach.  But at least I’ll be out of excuses.  That’s a start.

3.5

. . . they said she had torticollis.  In a five-year-old?  I’d only heard about the newborn kind.  I had no idea about the sort that makes a small, non-complaining, previously perfectly happy (if resistant to bedtime)  child suddenly start moaning and kicking her feet in intense, intractable pain.  The worst of it lasted through the night, and it took nearly a week of Rapunzel Therapy to effect a complete cure.  But she’s good now.  Next time we’ll know what it is.

***

Remember last week when I mentioned a vague specific prayer need?  This week, pick your favorite saint-who-suffered-slander-from-enemies, and ask for a little assistance on that same job.   Thanks.  Have a great week!

3.5 Time Outs: Jesus Fairyland

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy for inspiring countless countable numbers of bloggers to add structure and scandalous images to their Tuesday.  But not that scandalous — take a look at his 3.5 takes to see not see images far worse than derelict toddlers.

1.

I won a prize!  Oh it cheers me up.  Lisa M. encouraged me to turn out for the Amazing Catechist Giveaway, which I did not want to do, because, well, I didn’t want to be commenting just to indulge my book lust.  But you know what? I didn’t have to fake it.  There’s useful information in that place, and friendly bloggers who answer combox questions, which means even more useful information.  Needless to say, I learned about a pile of new books I want to check out, and look, I won one of them:

And now it is in my hands!  I can’t wait to read it.  Yay!  Check out the Keep Infants of Down Syndrome blog, if you are like me, giving Catholics a bad name by chewing out telemarketers for major charities that seek to “prevent birth defects” by killing off the people who don’t meet spec.  Yeah, I’m cranky.  Killing innocent people makes me cranky.

2.

Respectable Christians are sending Sarah Reinhard photos of their Advent wreaths. I don’t qualify.  Here’s the one we used to have:

That’s Santa and his reindeer, flying towards Christmas.  (Which had not arrived at photo time — observe the recycled candles.  There cannot be a single shade of purple.)

Allow me to explain: I did not donate this item because it was too tacky for me.  It was because, well, look how big it is.  You can store a lot of books in that cubic foot.  My one vice had to give way for the other. But you who own proper Advent wreaths, send in your photos.

3.

Dear Small Children of Mine,

We have been building a model of Bethlehem in our living room every Advent since before the eldest among you was even conceived.  It pleases me greatly to combine Lego, Fischer Price, and Playmobil structures into a giant sprawling representation of the Holy Land.  I am not the least disturbed when the Seven Dwarves turn out for the census.  Presumably the Romans counted even the very short and sneezy.

But I draw the line at calling it “Jesus Fairyland”.  It is Bethlehem.  B-e-t-h-l-e-h-e-m.  Get it straight.

Sincerely,

That Catechist Lady Who’s Supposed to be Educating You

3.5

Rapunzel, opiate of the masses. This weekend I shipped the Y chromosomes off to Hunt Camp, Eldest Daughter did homework Friday and then spent the weekend at her friend’s house, and my two listless littles watched our new library find: Tangled. Continuously.  From 9AM Friday until 3PM Sunday, with breaks only to sleep, attend church, and sometimes to eat.  I got a lot of work done.  And hey, it’s a pretty good movie.  Edifying, even. And boy am I glad my 5-year-old is still enthralled, because last night at the ER

***

Relax.  I will finish that story next week.   All is well here.  Offer up your suspense for the half-dozen people I’m praying for who have real problems.  One in particular needs you today, desperately.  God will know which one.  Thanks!