7 Quick Takes: New, Interesting, Surprisingly Pleasant

1.

This morning I woke to the sound of the septic guy’s truck rumbling outside my bedroom window.  I started to panic — they weren’t supposed to be here until next week, and I still needed to move some plants out of their way.  Then I realized it was just the tank-emptying guys, not the installing-new-drain-fields guys, and I relaxed.  But I quick put on yard clothes and went out to investigate anyways.

2.

And learned that the drain field guys would be arriving in twenty minutes.

3.

The drain field guys helped me get the last of the plants out of the ground.  Thankfully it’s been wet all week.  Now I’ve got homeless plants sitting in bins in my back yard, waiting for me to decide where to put them.

4.

The most interesting thing was watching the septic guys dispose of trash.  The trench for the drain field is about six feet deep.  They lay the drain pipes, and big columns of mesh-wrapped packing peanuts that are the new gravel of the septic world.  And then anything that needs to be thrown away — shrink wrap, tin cans, old pipe dug up in the process of cutting the new field — they just toss it in the trench.

My sense of order was disturbed, but I reminded myself that if not here, then these items would just be hauled off to be buried in some other patch of earth.  Jon pointed out that you would not want to touch the old drain lines — better to just let the backhoe nudge them back underground.

5.

It is really cool watching a skilled backhoe operator work in a tight space.

6.

Don’t forget to pray for Allie Hathaway.  Thanks!

7.

Le Papillon is a mighty good movie. It’s French, very French, but no humans die and it has a happy ending.  (It does have the obligatory smoking scene.) Beautifully rendered, the language is artful and the English subtitles do it justice.  My five-year-old has watched it more than once, and she doesn’t seem to mind not knowing the words.   The seven-year-old minds – but she needs to practice her reading anyhow.

Helpful film for the French student because the dialog is spare but covers lots of good language-learning territory.   Advanced students will appreciate the word play and the chance to learn a few interesting idioms.  Head’s up, the film ranges over a number of touchy subjects (abortion, mental illness, honesty, fit parenting, the Final Judgement, etc.), so parental presence is called for.  You wouldn’t want to miss this anyways.  Excellent film.  I could watch it three times in a week.

3.5 Time Outs: The Plague-Ridden Lifestyle

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is nothing if not good for Death Star-themed humor.

TV is my friend.

1.

SuperHusband took the relatively healthy contingent to the family reunion [Bethune Homesteaders spared infection — castle residents went straight to our ancestral family’s farm, Curley family kept safe] and I stayed home with the weekend’s victims.  Got a lot of writing done, that’s nice.  But look, Barbecue!

2.

Having spent a weekend holed up in quarantine with an iPod, the Boy returned to the land of the living in order to show me this:

3.

And also this:

3.5

Not half a take, but themed on the halves: You’ll be pleased to know that while I learn slowly, I do eventually learn.  Monday I promised my would-be publisher I could have the manuscript on the new, expanded, book-length version of the catechist booklet done by  June 30th — and assured her that I what meant was “I plan to have it done by the 15th, so there’s two weeks of padding in there.”  Which I felt pretty good about saying, because I know I could get it done by the 1st.

See?  Take the estimated time to completion and double it — twice.  My operations management professor would be so proud.

Curiously, in checking those dates for the writing of this post, I accidentally set my computer’s clock ahead to June 29th.  Don’t worry, I put it back.

***

PS: Link day.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.  Though I can’t imagine there’s anything on the internet to top Barbecue-Zombie-Stormtrooper Day.  Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.

3.5 Time Outs: Plague Journal

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who’s got a time machine of his own going on this week.

One day is like 30 years, 30 years is like one day.

1.

I finished reading Eric Sammons’ new book, and hey, it’s pretty good. A lot good, in fact, and a review is forthcoming.  But today let me caution you: There’s a humility component to this holiness business.

Exhibit A:

Why do my renewed efforts at holiness always coincide with the arrival of a nasty evil throat-lung-stomach virus in our home?  Doesn’t our Lord know I have important holiness work to do?

Exhibit B:

Why does a resolution to be more Therese-like and offer up little annoyances for some general heavenly purpose get transformed into:

1.  A multiplication of petty annoyances, and a sudden intolerance for them?

2. A friend suddenly coming down with a horrid affliction (probable bone cancer — femur — please pray for Mrs. P) for which to offer all these things?

3. Thus destroying any sense of virtue I might have otherwise relished, and instead leaving me with a crotchety personality and the knowledge of just how petty it is?

 

So don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Good book otherwise, though.  Great book.

 

2.

I’m going to Dallas!!!!!!!  Yes, all those exclamation points truly are needed.  Because look, it’s like a giant crack convention:

A.  The Catholic Writer’s Conference, which means meeting in person all the people I get to work with on the CWG blog, which really is that exciting because when you get to know these people . . . you want to get to know these people.

B. The Catholic Marketing Network Conference, which is code for “Catholic Bookstores”.  Enough said.

C. And then in case I just wanted to be near the superstars of Catholic internet, there’s the Catholic New Media Conference right there as well.

Quadruple bonus:  I double-checked the back cover of my copy of Happy Catholic, and sure enough, Julie Davis lives in Dallas.  It says so right there.  (I knew it was some place in Texas, but I can never keep Dallas and Houston straight, except to know that confusing the two means wow, a lot of driving time.)  So maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to live out my dream of one day buying the woman a cup of coffee.  Or something.

3.

So here’s the thing: What’s the etiquette on bringing books to be signed at these events?  Because I don’t think I can carry that many books to Texas, and yet it would pain me, just pain me, to miss my chance to get some autographs.  I’m so conflicted.

3.5

Because I met the guy — that’s why.  Neat person.

***

PS: Link day.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.  Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.

PPS: Thus far I myself appear to be spared the evil thing — I thought I was coming down with it last night, but this morning I’m good.  So here’s your mission:  Imagine you’ve already finished praying for Mrs. P and your other serious concerns . . . Would you consider offering up a little prayer for our family, that my other dream of seeing the Bethune Catholic homestead is not thwarted by more plague later in the week?  I so want to go.  I pass the place every non-plague  year on the way to the family reunion, and I totally want to get a child to bake some brownies, and a different child to pack some airsoft guns, and stop in for an hour or two.  Goodness I might even mix up the brownies myself.

I was about to ask that we’d also be miraculously able to attend religious ed tonight (last night of the year), but #2 came staggering into the study with glazed eyes and feverish misery, so I don’t think the virtue of prudence will let us get away with that, even if there were miraculous recoveries in the next six hours.

 

Vocation and Holiness

This morning as I stumbled down the hall, coffee in hand, the fourth grader handed me A Bridge to Terabithia.  “Mom,” she warned me, “don’t let anybody read this for school.  It is terrible.  It has very foul language.”

“Oh?”  I had read it way back in elementary school, but hadn’t looked at it since.  I couldn’t really remember what was in the book.

“Yes.  They use the d-word.  And the parents say things like ‘crap’ and ‘crud’ and ‘you stupid’.  And that’s just in one chapter.”

Ah.  Duly warned.  I thanked her for the head’s up.

1.  Simcha Fisher writes:

We’re so used to seeing our own children, so used to the idea that they’re under our care, that we sometimes forget that the angels rejoice when a young person goes out into the world armed with truth and love, instead of going forth with their hearts cramped and crabbed by an acceptance of abortion.  This is where the battle is fought: in individual hearts.  Each abortion is a tragedy because it ends an individual life—but each heart that is taught how to love is a true and eternal victory.

Yes, raising our children lovingly is commonplace, a duty, nothing new.  So what?  It’s still a big deal.  It’s still the way to save souls.  This is the great thing about being part of the Culture of Life:  everything counts.  You don’t have to save your receipts!  Your good works have been noted, and they will not go to waste.

2.  Bearing reminds me, I’m not the only mom who got paid to go to graduate school, in order to prepare for a rewarding career in the ultra-non-profit sector.  I don’t typically feel guilty about this.  Back when I was applying for fellowships, I assumed I’d ultimately end up in some kind of field that was a natural extension of my start in accounting — maybe moved out of staff and into operations, or teaching accounting 101 at the community college, or who knows what — who can really predict how a career will turn?  I also knew that I wanted to be a mom, and that I was intentionally picking a field that lent itself to momness.  Ditching it all in order to stay home and raise kids?  If only I could be so lucky.

At the fellowship interviews, I was asked, “What do you see yourself doing in five years?  Ten years?”

I answered honestly. “Solving problems.”

Which is what I do.

3.  This week at the Catholic Writers Guild blog I’ve been shuffling around the schedule to get all the mundane writer-talk posts pushed off until after Easter.  I didn’t want Holy Week to be chit-chat as usually.   But Sarah Reinhard’s post for today, even though it’s sort of a blogging post, it’s really a Holy Week post:  Remember Your Priorities.

–> Hey and real quick please pray for Sarah’s very urgent prayer request for a family member with a scary, likely life-threatening diagnosis on the way.  Thanks.

4.  You know what?  I just love this photo so much.  I was thrilled with Julie D. picked it out for her 1,000 Words post.  Because I just like to look at it.

5. Holiness versus Weirdness.  It’s a constant battle.  I spend a lot of time just trying to figure out how to live life.  I feel stupid about this, because, well, not knowing how to live your life has got to be one of the marks of stupidity, right?  But at the same time, I live in a culture that doesn’t know how to live life, so I remind myself it’s not exactly shocking that my adulthood be devoted to figuring out what I ought to be doing instead.

And I’m not alone.  Which makes reading Catholic Lifestyle Lit of a decade ago so amusing, because the holiness-fads of years gone by shout out like a pair of parachute pants.  Which is why my children in ten years will be laughing about this over Thanksgiving dinner:

When I wrote about fasting from artificial light in the Register a while back, I got a ton of interesting responses. One of my favorites was from a dad who told me about this family tradition that they’ve been doing for 30 years:

We turn off the light when we leave for Holy Thursday Mass and don’t turn them on again until we return from the Saturday Easter Vigil at around midnight on Saturday.

We got the idea when our parish turned off the lights and had us exit in silence on Holy Thursday. And we entered at the Easter Vigil in darkness which continued until the Gloria. And, of course, Good Friday services were held during the daytime so lighting was not a main focus. So we got the idea to practically “live” this period when Jesus the “light of the world” was taken away from us.

I think we might try this this year. Anyone else going to give it a shot?

My kids will the story of how I read this idea at some Catholic lady’s blog, and when I told Jon, not only did he like the idea, he proposed we just flip all the breakers in the house except the one for the kitchen.

So yeah.  Weird.  I know we are.  I know it kids.

6.  But listen, weird isn’t all bad.  My garden is awesome.  If by “awesome” we mean: I like it.  And I was sitting in it this spring, and realized that Margaret Realy’s book about Prayer Gardens had come true.  I read it, followed the instructions, and wow, it worked.  Highly recommended if you want a little quiet garden-y oasis, and need some ideas about how to make it work.

And with that I’ll cut out the rest of the chit-chat and go be all vocational.  Have a great week, and I’ll see you back here come Easter or so.

3.5 Time Outs: Try Not to Think About It

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who lives with a teenage driver.

Click for the whole story.

1.

When my big kids were little, they played Mass in the bathroom. The necessary accessories were:

• Holy Water
• Bible
• Crackers for Communion

They said the Lord’s Prayer, and read from the Bible, and it was all very heartwarming.

Now my current 5-year-old has taken to setting up a church for the hippos and bunnies.  The required items are:

• Drum Set
• Offering Envelopes
• Collection Basket
• Bulletins

She makes sure there’s a nursery in her pillow-fort church building.

2.

She also likes to play pirates.  I tried to serve her hardtack and sauerkraut for lunch today, but she wasn’t convinced it was real pirate food.  She voted for fish sticks.

3.

A friend is keeping the kids for us this weekend so we can get away for a couple vacation together.  We priced hotels in one town (expensive, yikes), looked at the time required to go down to our favorite patron’s free beach house (too long a drive), decided camping was too much bother to count as R&R,  and now are trying to decide . . . which room of the house?  We keep telling the kids we’re gonna sleep in their bunkbeds while they’re gone.  They think we are joking.

3.5

 . . . James Herriot.  Seriously.  Me.  I’d never guessed.

***

It’s Link Day.  Guys you  get your man card punched double if you leave boy links on a girl blog.  Surely you aren’t going to be out-linked by a girl, are you?  One link per comment so you don’t get accidentally stuck in the automated spam dungeon.  Jane-Austen themes purely optional.

Oh and look, I have a link.  I stuck up a post at Amazing Catechists yesterday, on how to teach about the sacrament of marriage when your students’ families are not 100% on board.  I meant to wait a bit before posting it, but then I needed to send it to somebody, so I went ahead and put it up.  One thing that might surprise you — this is a topic where the United State Catholic Catechism for Adults really comes into its own.  It’s as if the bishops have some practice with these situations.

3.5 Time Outs: Reading, Writing, Housekeeping

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who didn’t call my parents when I skipped class last week.

Picaken Alert - Viewer discretion advised.

1.

Dorian Speed’s taken up the discussion of Catholic Arts and Letters over at her place.  I’m glad she did, because I was totally stewing over that OSV article.  Rather than be a combox hog, I put my comments into a post at CWG.

(Hint: Anyone who says “there’s too much catechesis out there” is just itching for a fight.)

2.

We’ve got a big fat Lenten FAIL going on here at the castle.  Vomitorium duty sure didn’t help, but let’s be honest, it was already falling apart before ever I was thrust down the black hole.    But if there’s one thing I’m good for, it’s perpetual hopefulness.  Is there any chance Good Housekeeping is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit?  I think a need a mega-novena.  Or probably just to get back on the wagon.

3.

Ah, but look, I do have a special intention for which the grace of Holy Spirit is needed.  If you would please, just go ahead and pray.  You’ll know your prayers were answered if you never, ever, have any idea what it was you prayed for.  That would be so great.  I would love it.

3.5

When I’m sick, I read.  It’s my vice.  So last week I pulled down one yet-untouched book in the rainy-day queue, read half a chapter, was disgusted by the unexpectedly crass language, and threw it away.  Then I picked up selection-in-waiting #2, and wow!  Who knew I’d love . . .

***

Okay that’s all for today.  I’m trying to catch back up on my Kolbe Reviews this week, get the other half the Doctors of the Church review re-written since the internet ate it on Thursday afternoon as part of my need for Jen-mortification, and I’m hoping to have something new up at Amazing Catechists, I know not when, but soon.  Ish.

Meanwhile, It’s Link Day.  Other people than Sandra are allowed to post links, though she’ll always be the leader, since she specializes in finding cool stuff.  One link per comment so you don’t get stuck in the spam dungeon.

7 Quick Takes: People, Places, Things

Click to see more takes at Betty's place.

1.

Until yesterday, I had no idea — zero — about the history of shipping orphaned British children to the colonies to work as indentured servants.  I did know about the American orphan trains, thanks to the picture book on the subject.

You can read about the British Home Children at Rose McCormick-Brandon’s site, The Promise of Home.

2.

This week we met the governor’s dog, Simba.  I can’t find an image for you, but if you book a (free) tour of the SC Governor’s Mansion, the odds are in your favor.  (We also caught sight of the first gentleman, but he saw the tour group through the window and slipped around to a back entrance.) 

This is my new favorite historic building tour for kids, because it is a real live occupied home.  Which means nothing is roped off, and you are allowed to touch things.  Mostly the kids did not touch things, because they have sense and know better than to put their fingers on somebody’s dishes or plop down on the living room couch.  The downstairs area that you tour looks exactly like your grandmother’s formal living room that even your mom isn’t allowed to go into without permission.  So you put on living room manners. 

But the tour guide did have us all pull out dining room chairs to inspect the deer-hoof carving on the feet of the chairs.  If you poured out a bottle of SC Concentrate, that building is what you’d get.

3.

After a jumbled first-round of Sacrament of Confession last week, I re-booted and had a much better second half.  Helped that we had laid the groundwork the week before; also that I revised the study guide so that the students didn’t have to copy so much off the board.

My trusty teenage assistant was out sick last week.  Lucky for him, we didn’t do 10,000 Gun Questions  until this week.  He agreed, it is a very fun class.

4.

I’m still only halfway through writing report cards for Q2.  Quarter break is almost over.  Need to crank the rest out and mail off a couple quarters worth of grades and work samples to Kolbe.  Not something that Kolbe requires (unless you want a transcript from them), nor that is a legal requirement for us.  But I am finding that it helps me teach better, if I have that extra grown-up looking over my shoulder.

5.

My daughter (the Bun – #3 child) loves beanie-snaps.  She’s having some for breakfast-dessert.  These:

#4 would eat sour cream exclusively if we let her.

6.

Pray for Allie Hathaway.  Also for the repose of the soul of Fr. Robert Fix.

7.

Wealth. Luxury. Every good thing.

Wealth is this:

I’m sick – evil horrid can’t-sit-up-long chest cold.  The boy is sick.  Locked-in-the-bathroom vomiting sick.  The girl is doing homework, housekeeping, and keeping after two littles.  It’s cold in the house.  Who is going to get a fire going in the woodstove?

Oh, right, we have that machine.

Walk down the hallway, flip switch, push button.  Instant warm house.  Every room.  Just like that.

Double wealthy: I push aside my accountant-y tendencies, and ramp the heat all the way up to 65.  Luxury.  Love it.

PS: Everyone is much better today.

PPS: Please pray for the Hathaway family.  Pray in particular for the health of the eldest of the young Hathaways, who is my daughter’s very dear friend and an awesome person on every count.

CRS – Somalia Famine

If you are looking for a way to feed refugees of the famine in Somalia, Catholic Relief Services is there.  Here’s the CRS main page.  (H/T to Red Cardigan for the head’s up.)

 

***

Utterly unrelated, but it has to do with CRS: Larry’s Beans makes really good coffee.  100% fair trade, shade grown, and either organic or transitioning to organic.  And wow, good.  Good.  CRS is one of their partners, though I learned about it through an evangelical friend who used to own a coffee shop, and now runs a local Larry’s Beans purchasing co-op.  Yes.  Sometimes (okay, usually), I think of my evangelical home group as a The Gluttony Group.  Because we eat that well.  But we also talk about God and stuff, so it’s a wash.

Home again.

Momcation successful.  More news later.  If your e-mail to me is sitting all sad and lonely in my inbox, I promise to dust it off and respond soon.  Ish.

Two notes for now:

1.  Wow, it is really neat to have a place that is home.  To be able to go off on vacation someplace superior in weather, scenery, traffic-planning — generally better in every way –, and then come home to a hot, muggy, concrete-laden, weed-infested corner of suburban sprawl and just grin with happiness at being HOME.  And have no desire to live anywhere else.

I like that a lot.

2. Please pray for John Hathaway and his family.  I want very much to keep him in exile here in this fallen world a little longer (a lot longer), but he threatens once again to make his escape. Please pray.