7 Quick Takes: Lucky Women

Where is the brain? The other Jen F. wants to know. Trust me, it's not here.

1.

It’s been a long few days here at the Castle.  I would be very grateful for your prayers.

2.

This is hilarious: “Teach Yourself a New Culture in 100 Easy Lessons”, in which we see how a Haitian man studying English describes the pictures in the reading book.  I want the whole series.

 

3.

Lent report:

1) Yeah, we pretty much stink at prayer-n-fasting.  Especially when housework is supposed to fit in their somewhere.

2) But I did have an Adrian Monk Moment, and clean the yard in a frenzied response to stress and frustration.  It looks really nice.  Or it did 24 hours ago, anyhow.

3) And then here’s what happened: We planned to meet Fr. W for lunch because after six months of trying, dinner just wasn’t happening.  Too busy.  And we decided that ‘at the restuarant’ was smarter than ‘at our house’.  And this morning I thought, “Yes, I’m so glad it’s at the restaurant, because this place is a wreck.”  And then I realized: “This place is waaaaay cleaner then the first time he came over last summer.  For one thing, at this time I would not need to send the children out on an hour-long mission to “get rid of the disgusting things”.

So, yes.  Progress.  Not as stellar of progress as my vivid imagination had envisioned.  But it’s something.

The Fitz House, Now 75% Less Disgusting!

4.

You thought you could just pray for my intention up there in #1. No can do.   Allie Hathaway. Right now. 

. . . Okay good. Thanks!

5.

Helen Alvare e-mailed me (and 18,000 of her closest friends, I’m pretty sure) with the reminder that:

 . . . The Obama Administration has put real accommodation of religious employers, insurers, and individuals off the table. And they have managed to get leading media to continue to claim that women are on the side of shutting down religious witness on the issue of the “free” birth control in employer insurance plans.

If you’re female and you haven’t signed the Women Speak for Themselves letter, do it now, here.

And this the Facebook page:  facebook.com/WomenSpeakForThemselves.

[H/T to the inimitable Mrs. Tollefsen for the head’s up about the letter and the encouragement to sign it.  They let me on, so they’ll take anybody.]

6.

Bearing links to a really cool history article on eugenics, politics, and the Irish in 1940.  Click on her link and read the whole thing — very well-researched and written account of a suspicious marriage certificate, and the man who made it so, 52 years after the wedding took place.  For that matter, if you’re having withdrawal because you don’t like how my 3-D life is interfering with your goofing-off schedule, Bearing’s been pretty much rocking the house lately, so you just go read her for a while.

7.

And that’s it.   Catholic Writer’s Conference starts tomorrow.  My yard is clean.  My blog is sad and lonely.  The weather is beautiful.  My truck is pale yellow from the pine pollen.  My 5 year-old has a new green plaid outfit made by her 10-year-old sister from scrap fabric, just in time to keep the neighbor kid from pinching her tomorrow.   I have given up all hope of predicting the future, and now consider my calendar to be a work of speculative fiction.

Oh speaking of saint’s feast days, last night I read the account of St. Abraham Kidunaia.  And I thought as I read, “Gee, his poor fiance, abandoned on the eve of the wedding, when he fled to the desert and locked himself in a cell.”  And then I read a little further, and concluded: “Probably once she learned he was planning to wear the same goatskin coat for the next 50 years, she was okay with it.”

 

7 Quick Takes: Doing it Wrong

Click to see more takes.

1.

My ashes have worn off.  Anyone know where I can get them touched up?  I made it till Sunday being moderately virtuous in the life of prayer and penitence, and then . . . well, some of us are more “childish” than “childlike” in our faith.  But God is merciful, and every day is new.  Back to it.

1B

I’m contractually obligated to tell you:  You are doing Lent wrong.

At least, I think that must be a line in the Catholic Bloggers Handbook, because that seemed to be the theme this past week.  Probably my punishment for too much internet and not enough diligence.

Take away lesson: If you are praying and fasting the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, and entirely too lightly, we the Catholic Bloggers of the World are here to let you know.  You see how convenient it is, giving spiritual direction to complete strangers?  So much simpler.   You can say thank you anytime.

2.

But if you are putting sand in your holy water fonts, that is just plain wrong.  It’s not my fault that I have to link to the grumpiest priest on the internet in order for you to find that out.  Tip for mothers of tween boys:  My son loves Fr. R.  What’s not to love, between the guns and the complaining about lousy hymns?  The girls got mad at me for reading one of his posts aloud — bad language (for our house).  I used the “just quoting a priest” defense.

Anyway, I figure it’s best to go ahead and get the boy hooked on crotchety right-wing gun-enthusiast priests, because then at least our arguments can be fun.

2B

The boy recommends you watch Matrix run on Windows XP.  I agree.

3.

Are we the only Catholic home where the wall and floor beneath the mini-holy water font are now very, very blessed?  I’m divided between whether that means we are very bad Catholics or just that much more desperate for God’s blessings.

4.

If you want to do one thing right today, quick stop reading and say a prayer for Allie Hathaway.

5.

Look, I’m a grown-up now! I told Lisa Mladinich that she’d have to re-name her site “Pretty Good Catechists”, or “Amazing Catechists Plus Also Jen Sometimes”.  She told me the no, she’s expanding the “amazing” brand to reach out the “It’s amazing anyone let you be a catechist” segment, and I was the perfect choice to lead that charge.*

Anyway, I posted one column at AC introducing myself, so if you aren’t sure who I am, quick go look.  I’ll stick up a regular catechist-y column sometime soon, and you can be sure I’ll let you know about that.  Double bonus if you go: You can see my picture instead of just a pile of rocks.  My writer friends are all patting me on the back.  Because now if you ever meet me somewhere, and I’m trying to stick my head through a very small window, sideways, you’ll be able to identify me right away.

6.

There’s a rumor that my first column at CatholicMom.com is going to appear tomorrow (Saturday) morning.  I’m interested to see what I have to say.  Something about homeschooling.**

7.

Blair of Blair’s Blessings pointed me (and many others) to the free audio stories for kids at EWTN’s site.  Do you see how happy and sweet her kids are?  She does things right.

***

*That is a COMPLETE FABRICATION. Lisa Mladinich is a friendly, cheerful person unlike your hostess here, and she would never ever say something like that.  I had to make it up.

**Lisa Hendey has you send in your first two columns before you start.  I don’t know which one she’ll put up first.  I love the suspense — now I have to get on the internet right away at 9:00am Saturday to find out.

7 Quick Takes: I’m not ready yet.

Click to see more takes.

1.

Lent Report:  The festival of cleaning combined with our new penitential life is starting to show results.  Neighbor kid who lives in a clean house all the time is unimpressed.  But I am.  For one thing, the finally collasping remains of the Leaf Fort have now been moved to a newly-constructed giant compost garden, where in theory we’ll grow fewer insects and more compost this year.

2.

On the other hand, less school work is being accomplished.  But we will catch back up.  We are still in the initial stages of our new, clean life, and there was some digging-out to do.

3.

I have at least one child interested in attending daily mass more often.  (By “more often” I mean “at all, ever”.)  I’m going to see how doing just Fridays works.

4.

But “just Fridays”, I mean to say, “Yesterday I did not race the kids to mass and adoration even though in theory we could have squeezed it in on the way to Grandma’s house, but seriously?  It wasn’t going to work. ”

As I told Father last week, sometimes trying to haul everyone to church is a near occasion of sin in itself.

I want my kids to associate weekday mass with peaceful, reflective times with God, not with Mom Yelling At You That Your Pants Need To Be Ironed Because You Did Not Put Them Away Properly And Quick Get That Food Off The Table Do You Not Remember We Are Cleaning Up After Ourselves Because We Are Growing In Holiness Quit Making That Face At Your Sister.

 

5.

But what I did do yesterday was something new: I read a book during adoration.    Dropped the kids at Grandma’s, returned library books, then stopped by the church as I sometimes (not always) do on a grandma day.

Normally I would pray for a very small amount of time, and then go over to McDonald’s, buy a cup of coffee, and read a book.  I always puzzled over people who read during Eucharistic adoration, because it felt sort of like if you had an audience with the Queen of England and you whipped out a magazine because you were so bored.  You know, because it’s so much more reverent to dash in,  say hello, and wave goodbye with a, “Nice seeing you, gotta run off to McDonald’s now”, right?

The book was Knox’s Retreat for Lay People.  And it would be a good helpful book if read at McDonald’s.  But read right there in the presence of Jesus? Wow. What a difference.  Talk about a serious book club.  Each point became something I could pray about — that is, talk face to face with Jesus right then and there.  Not contemplate while gazing at the ceiling, or the clouds, or even an icon or crucifix.  But right there with the Real guy.  Sheesh.   I’d never guessed.  Seriously cool.

 

6.

Pray for Allie Hathaway.  I can’t think of a better way to spend your Friday.

7.

“I’m Not Ready Yet” is what our first pair of preschoolers would call out from the bed in the evenings.  They’d lay there in their room, shouting out in a chorus, “I’m not ready yet!  I’m not ready yet!” in protest of their bedtime.  We have it on video.  It has now entered the family vocabulary as our all-purpose expression of dislike for less enjoyable responsibilities.

In other bits of castle dialect these days: Everything is coming back to Mr. Timn.

 

3.5 Time Outs: Mardi Gras

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who makes Tuesday everything it should be and then some.

Indulge yourself! Click the photo to see a veritable feast of internet treasures. Or a picture of foreign donuts.

1.

Catholic Blog Day.  What I had planned to do today (actually, yesterday, but let’s not quibble) was empty out my inbox of the 10,000 fabulous links kind people have sent my way lately.  You will have to wait.  Only the very most last-minute one makes it today:  The first Catholic Blog Day is tomorrow, Ash Wednesday.  The topic is penance.  Remember that you can use your scheduling super powers to post ahead of time, if you are planning to fast from blogging for some portion of the next 40ish days.

Hey, listen, how about we just make Tuesday a post-your-link-in-Jen’s-combox day?  Would that be so bad?  No.  You would love it.  One link per comment so you don’t fall through the automated trap door into the Spam Dungeon, where I never ever look anymore, because, ick, lots of spiders.

2.

The Festival of Cleaning  is not my favorite thing.  Let’s just say that Lent is going to hit very, very hard around the castle.  Should I do like I did a different year and also give up yelling at the kids?  I think yes.  I mean, every time I go to confession I resolve to give it up, so I guess Lent would be that time, right?

[Re-cap for the un-initiated: This year our family is going to Clean Up After Ourselves for Lent.  Reminder for the familiar-with-fitzes: Try not to laugh so loud.  You’re shaking the internet.]

3.

This book looks really cool.  Now I want to read it.

Also: Registration deadline for the [free!] Online Catholic Writers Conference is Feb. 29th.  That’s both for registering as a participant and/or as a presenter.  If you are newly-registering, it takes a couple days for the final approval to go through, so don’t panic at the wait.  You should sign up now, because you probably will not hate the whole entire thing, but the only way to be sure is to register and then go look when the time comes and see.  FYI it is for everyone of all skill and experience levels.

Oh and hey, in fixing 50% of the typos in take #3.5, I was reminded that Tollefsen fans should note the new article up at Public Discourse, “Mandates and Bad Law“.

3.5

It is not this shiny anymore.

The spiders reminds me of a true story, which if I’ve told you before you are going to hush and not spoil it for the people who want to read the second half next week:

When we first built the green castle, that summer Ev would not play in her little kitchen in the basement.  She kept telling us, “I’m afraid of the bad spiders,” and she wouldn’t go into it.  Eventually we got around to investigating. And then we were glad she’d held her ground on refusing to associate with the bad spiders, because it turned out they were . . .

3.5 Time Outs: Feminine Genius

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, without whom Tuesdays would be so . . . different.

Not everyone's a girl-blogger. Click the photo to find out what the guys are saying.

1.

I don’t see an official announcement yet, so I won’t spill the beans on the details, but I’ve been instructed to spend the next month or two pondering the word women.  I can’t decide if I was the intentional choice for that one, or just lucky.  There are so many seriously-girlesque-with-hearts-on-top ladies out there in the Catholic blogosphere, and here I am, feeling pretty fashionable when I’ve got on a new black t-shirt and jeans instead of an old black t-shirt and jeans.  Then again, I am not the only Catholic homeschooling mom at my parish who played rugby in college.

But anyway, it’s got me thinking about that word.  Okay I’m familiar with the biological details, but what, exactly, is it that makes girls different enough to get their own apostolic letter?

2.

Ladies, will somebody please tell Larry the secret code for getting all those cute little post-it-notes above his frog?  Dorian?  Hallie? Fulwilinator? Anyone?  Anyone?  Please?  He’ll never even own half of Tuesday, if that frog keeps hiding away his linkfest inside the frog cave.  Maybe someone should check with Mrs. D. to confirm he’s in good standing and can be admitted to auxiliary membership.

UPDATE: Larry says you get what you pay for.  Not his fault he’d rather spend his cash on the worthy Mrs. D.  Masculine genius, right there.  I’m with it.

3.

Internet Valentines:

At CWG, Karina Fabian applies the bacon analogy to the new non-compromise.  If you like her post, she asks you to please share it around.

Also hidden in the CWG Monday line-up (yes, I am personally responsible for the post pile-on, go ahead, flog me), Ellen Gable Hrkach tells you the cold hard truth about the work required to succeed at self-publishing.  Now you know what it is traditional publishers have been doing all these years.

And super-bonus: Today we have an actual Valentine-themed post. Ordinarily Kathryn writes on third Tuesdays, but I bumped her up a week when I saw what she had planned.

I think the similarity of color-schemes between the CWG blog and the Vatican website is coincidental.  Only Ann Lewis knows for sure.  Has anyone noticed whether she’s got the Vatican-spy secret decoder ring?

If you know someone who takes that last question seriously, you need a dose of masculine genius:

Perfect valentine for your budding junior apologist.  Nothing like a good argument with a lunatic to really make an adolescent boy enjoy religion.

Free girl-book, today only: My friend’s mom Christine Bush has her kindle romance Cowboy Boots on sale today for Valentine’s Day.  Free download.  I haven’t read it yet, but thought it was worth a look at that price.

From my inbox: The Catholic Company is offering 14% off all orders today only, use coupon code LOVE14 during checkout.  Timely if you owe your godchildren across-country some good Lenten reading.  I imagine there are other discounts to be had today, feel free to share your info in the combox.

3.5

Sursum Corda?  I saw it on a Confederate battle flag.   SC’s 7th Batallion.  The full motto is Sursum Corda – Quid Non Pro Patria? on a field of blue with a cross made of stars in the center.  It was made by the Ursuline nuns in Columbia. Very cool detail: metal sequins on the stars.

If you go [no visit to the Inferno is complete without a quick stroll right past the inner door to the State Museum and on to the end of the hall where the good exhibits hide], call ahead and arrange a tour with the curator for education, Joe Long. He isn’t Catholic, but ask him to tell you his St. Anthony story.  It’s a classic.

The only kind of water that ever, ever, touches the single malt my Valentine sent me.

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.

3.5 Time Outs: Sursum Corda

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who, I am sorry to learn, does not like leftovers for breakfast.   Read the whole tragic childhood tale by clicking the photo:

The Fulwilinator is on leave . . . will Larry finally seize power, or will SuperGirl Hallie Lord keep him at bay?

1.

You’ll never guess where I saw the words Sursum Corda last Friday, when I was busy not getting my seven takes up on time for that other person.

***

Also I learned later in the day:  Though “Sursum Corda” sure sounds like the name of a papal encyclical, it isn’t.

Which means: I gave somebody a little bit of wrong information.  Nuts.  But I also gave a lot of correct information.  For example, you would have found it in this book – p. xxvii.  And others like it.

2.

But you know, if you google the words Sursum Corda + Pope Benedict, you get a lot of hits.  Is it my fault I spend too much time on the Internet reading this stuff until it becomes one giant jumble of confused trivia? Wait, don’t answer that.

3.

You may have noticed that adolescent boys don’t necessarily google these same topics.  Which is why I have begun a massive print propaganda campaign, in which I subscribe to the publications I think my child should read, then leave them on the bathroom counter for him to discover when he’s hiding from his math homework.

Might I add that Catholic Answers, Envoy, OSV and The Register run some seriously good articles?  It is as if all the stuff you read for free online is not the very best of contemporary Catholic writing, and that there is value to be had in paying writers for their work.  I never guessed.

3.5

So your hints for the solution to #1 are:

A.) The Inferno.

B.)  In which city you can still see this guy’s house:

C. )  And this hat. Which causes me to pun horribly every time I see it:

Mighty Mitres, Batman!

3.5 Time Outs: Eye Candy

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy.  It was time for a new theme picture, and I thought it should fit the reality of Larry’s attempts at Internet Conquest:

There is no escaping the girl power, Larry.

1.

St. Barbara:

This is a close-up of my friend Sandra’s Icon of St. Barbara that she painted for a fundraising auction.  You can see the whole thing at her art page.  FYI, this is a pic of the almost-completed icon, I think she still had some details to work on when this was shot.

2.

By the same artist:

3.

And something completely different:

The tulips he bought because he loves me.  The photo he took because he needed it for his presentation this Friday.

3.5

It was because a certain child threatened a sibling with, “I’m going to put a bag full of dirt in a pillowcase in your bed for a pillow.”

Of course.

For the record: I am so grateful the threat was never fully carried out.  After about 7pm, I don’t do drama.  Just no.  No.

7 Quick Takes: Works in Progress

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.)

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.

.

.

.

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.