Kathy the Carmelite!
Next thing you know, Davey's Mommy will have me out buying RHUBARB! (I know you all started the craze, but she'll be the one to put me over the top!)
July 2003 Archives
Am I crazy?
Lately I've been daydreaming about getting a deep freeze (once our basement is dry) and filling it with meat from places like these.
Today is the Feast of St Martha....
Jesus in the House of Mary and Martha (Vermeer)
....patron saint of housewives (among others.)
19 And many of the Jews were come to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.20 Martha therefore, as soon as she heard that Jesus was come, went to meet him: but Mary sat at home.
21 Martha therefore said to Jesus: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
22 But now also I know that whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.
23 Jesus saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again.
24 Martha saith to him: I know that he shall rise again, in the resurrection at the last day.
25 Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live:
26 And every one that liveth and believeth in me shall not die for ever. Believest thou this?
27 She saith to him: Yea, Lord, I have believed that thou art Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into this world. John 11:19-27 (Douay-Rheims)
Too Smart To Be So Dumb": the Moral Tyranny of IQ
or, why I'd rather have Hambet be a virtuous plumber than an arrogant PhD.
This piece reminds me a bit of what my mom and I were talking about last weekend. She was complaining that she could not find a can of sour cherries to make a cherry pie (she looked in three grocery stores and eventually resorted to cherry pie filling), and noted that her grocery store at home was carrying fewer and fewer staples while its deli section was getting bigger and bigger. There are so many people who don't know how (or don't think they have time) to cook from scratch, and it disturbs me that are people out there who don't even think that's a problem (the idea that the only people who cook from scratch are people with too much time on their hands.)
And yet everywhere you look you see more cookbooks, more TV chefs, more expensive cookware for sale. Who's using all this stuff?
Pro-Life Themes on Six Feet Under:
...In the show's second season, Nate Fisher (engaged at the time) confronts an old flame (Lisa) who tells him she's pregnant with his child ? and that she's choosing to have the baby. Keeping with the show's habit of employing ghostly visions and apparitions, we later see Nate working late in his office. A little girl enters, about seven years old."Hi," she says. "You killed me. It was about seven years ago, remember? You drove Lisa to have me killed.
Nate looks up, horrified.
"Oh, don't get me wrong," she says, "I don't harbor any bad feelings or anything. I'm pro-choice. Well, at least I would be, if I were alive."....
I have never seen Six Feet Under, although it seems like the kind of show (an ongoing drama with an unusual setting, big story arcs, and complex characters) that I might like (if my lifestyle permitted my staying up till 11 PM to watch a TV show, and if I weren't too darn cheap to shell out the bucks for HBO, but I digress.)
This is the first time I've ever heard of a TV show that actually showed what the choice in pro-choice means.
I found this link over at In Between Naps
Eternal rest grant him, O Lord....
I wish I had a basketball to throw at his head! What is wrong with celebrity men?
Sadly, 4 mil ain't even enough...
I wouldn't have believed it either....
had Elinor not provided proof. (At this writing, there were no bidders.)
A side note -- Elinor brought this up while blogging about how she enjoys designing and sewing fashion doll clothes. I am not much of a seamstress, but I learned a lot from sewing Barbie clothes (I remember being especially proud of a little frock with darts.) Some people get very upset about how Barbie and her friends (and rivals) warp young girls' body image because of their unrealistic shape. Oh puh-leeze -- she's a DOLL! I don't think girls ever think "Oh, I want to be shaped like Barbie, and I'll develop an eating disorder if I have to!" any more than they think, "Oh, I want to have knees that click if they bend too quickly, and a detachable head, and a button in my back that makes me move my arms, and fingers fused together!"
Anyway, the exaggerated curves on a fashion doll have nothing to do with the wicked patriarchy imposing unrealistic expectations on our daughters' fragile egos. They have to do with making the clothes look right. Since fashion dolls are so small, fabric won't drape the same way on their tiny plastic bodies in the same way it drapes on ours. The exaggerated figure helps correct for that. (This factoid courtesy of Faith and Family magazine.)
So it's not just me:
This is something that comes up a lot both at the Maryland Moss house and when Pansy and I get to chatting: if the 50's were all that great, why were the sixties such a disaster? I've heard many Catholics wax nostalgic for the Church in America in the 40's and 50's, when Mass was in Latin, Sister Mary Ferocious had a great big ruler, Father O'Malley running the softball team, Bells of Saint Mary's, blah blah blah. Yet so many of the pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians, disobedient priests, negligent bishops, and unglued nuns were formed in this milieu. If Catholic faith and life were that strong, why did the sixties just blow Catholic life away? Why were there so many people ready and willing to substitute their own bizarre agendas for the genuine article of the Second Vatican Council ("The Council says we're supposed to have clowns at Mass to reach out to the people! We have to reach out to the people! Except those people who want dignified Masses with Latin, chant, and organ music....") And why were there so many more people who seemed to believe whatever they were told?
I was born in 1970, so I have only known the Pauline Missal (I do like going to Mass in Latin), so I sincerely don't know what Catholic life was like "in the good old days." But when I meet these pious old ladies who don't know how to say the Hail Mary properly (in English!) or don't have a very firm grasp on doctrine, it makes me wonder....
Appliance Bermuda Triangle
About a month and a half ago my hot water heater broke, so it was replaced. Yesterday my fridge stopped keeping things cold, so all my refrigerated food has gone bad. But you know what, I am semi-prepared. I buy powdered milk in bulk at the health food store and powdered egg whites, so I had the necessary ingredients to make pancakes this morning. I use the powdered milk in things like muffin recipes, I add an extra half a cup for extra calcium. I never use it to, well, make milk, so I do not have the water to powdered milk for reconstitution ratios anywhere. I tried to look it up online I found a recipe book on cooking with powdered milk ! I am not sure why, but I thought that to be the oddest thing, like if I had that book, now all my bases will be covered for any disaster.
While I understand their reasoning, I find this extremely disturbing.
Lileks on the Pryor controversy. (Scroll down.)
Yesterday, Rush was characterizing the attacks on Pryor as "another example of Catholic-bashing." It's kind of gratifying when non-Catholics call this spade a spade.
This post from Kathy the Carmelite (and its sequel) belongs in the St Blogs Hall of Fame.
Can we build it? Yes we can!
Our new retaining wall got put to the test last night when a thunderstorm dumped an inch and a half of rain on us. In the past I would have found a gigantic mud slick on the patio, but this morning there was no mud and only a very shallow puddle.
This really makes me happy. It really makes a difference when you can look out your back window and not have to pretend not to see certain ugly things.
I am going to have to save up for the Rubbermaid composter, though, if I can't figure out a clever way to hide our current set up.
Garden Report
The endless rains of the spring are over and I've gotten a chance to finish weeding and survey my situation.
I did my front perennial bed last weekend. My husband was very distressed when he saw how much I'd pruned, but the black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers had gotten totally out of control and were crowding everything else out. I did pull out one coneflower that looked pretty bad and put one of the thriving rosemarys in its place. Success stories first: the Susans and the coneflowers, the rosemarys, and the purple sages are all doing great. The three lavenders I planted this spring are also growing (though they did not flower -- boo hoo!) One of those three is the one that the critter ate! It came back! So I will be pleased and amazed if it continues to grow.
Now for the failures. The lavender plant I thought was doing so well suddenly curled up and died in the space of a week! I am so disappointed. I had the opportunity to chat with one of our county's Master Gardeners and he suspects that it might have drowned. (My soil is clay, and I did not double-dig the flower bed as I did with the vegetable beds.)
I am also worried about the lamb's ears I planted this spring. I planted eight for the front border, and they looked so nice and seemed to be doing well. But now one of them is dead, another one has only three healthy leaves, and another three have a bunch of yellow and brown sickly-looking leaves. I put soil amendments in when I planted them, so I hope it is not another drainage issue. I may be visiting the Master Gardeners again this week. I fertilized with kelp extract this morning, so I hope that helps.
As for the vegetable beds, the rhubarb continues to survive (I want to put some manure on it) and I am still cutting good lettuce. The carrots are thriving too -- the last one I thinned was about an inch long -- they seem to have liked all that rain!
Best news is that the tomatoes are finally doing something! The two Romas have blossoms and one of them has a tiny green fruit starting to form. Hooray! I also planted a tiny watermelon on a whim, and it has blossoms now too. I lost my first basil seeds when they washed away in the rain, but I have two little plants that weren't washed away, and some of the seeds I replanted have started to sprout. So perhaps I will be making and freezing pesto after all.
My other big news in the garden department is that I finally have started composting! I have not yet found a good place to put it -- it's right in plain view of the house -- but I can always move it.
I had wanted to compost for a while but aesthetic considerations held me back. Compost piles should not smell, but they are a little unsightly, and I couldn't find a place to hide it (our yard is not very large. If the Misguided Handyman had only built a smaller shed instead of the giant barn, and sited it a little bit further from the fence, there would have been a perfect space right there.)
I saw a Rubbermaid composter at Home Depot the other day. This item certainly addressed my concerns about aesthetics, but I don't have $89.00 lying around at the moment. But I was back on the compost kick, so I searched around a little more and discovered that the county has compost bins for free. Nothing as elegant as the Rubbermaid composter -- the free one is basically a length of PVC plastic with big holes for ventilation and small holes for fastening the thing into a tube -- but the price was right.
We set it up yesterday. The instructions suggested elevating it above the ground to improve air circulation, so this morning I went back to Home Depot and shamelessly mooched a pallet junked in the parking lot. My plan is to put some landscape fabric on the pallet (to keep the compost from falling out) and then plop the bin on its little stage. We still have lots of fallen leaves behind the shed, so that should be a good start for the compost.
Some Lessons Learned so far:
1) Start as many plants as possible inside! I am going to try setting up a plant light this winter to help make this possible.
2) Eggshells, eggshells, eggshells! Tomatoes love them, but I also learned that if you crush them coarsely and sprinkle them on the surface of the ground, they will ward off slugs. (I had a problem with slugs under the lettuce.) I don't think I will ever throw an eggshell away again.
3) Get those Master Gardeners on speed-dial. I wish I had consulted them before I planted that ivy; they warned me that it is considered an invasive non-native around here (Vinca would have been a better choice.)
I am lost
On Saturday we went to a 6 year old's birthday party which was fun. The husband and 10 children of the family I blogged about before were there . Before they left, the husband told my husband to come over for a get together. So I picked out one of my more modest modest outfits and we went. It was a nice day, but at the end she asked where do I get the "gumption" to wear the mantillas I wear (black lace) to Church because they are distracting when Church is for prayer...
So where do you find doctors who think breastfeeding is not very important?
Among the recipients of Traveling Fellowships from Bristol-Myers, Squibble/Mead Johnson -- the makers of Enfamil formula.
The Prussian Green Money Pit
That's our house. The Prussian Green Money Pit.
When Hambet was born, dh and I were living happily in a little condo within walking distance to a Metro stop. It had two bedrooms (though the second one was kind of tiny) and one bath. After Hambet arrived, though, things started getting a little tight, and we started revisiting the idea of getting a house. It looked as though we were going to be out of luck, though -- we really wanted someplace accessible to public transit (dh works downtown), but all we could find were townhouses in the remote suburbs.
We did come across a townhouse in Kensington that we liked, but before we could get our act together to call a realtor, someone else put a contract on it. But now we were hooked on the idea of buying a house, so we decided to go ahead and put the condo on the market. We got a contract very quickly, so now we needed to find a place to live. Nothing we looked at, though, seemed right.
Finally one evening we were driving back from a showing through a neighborhood we hadn't been through before -- slightly older houses surrounded by mature trees -- and there was this pale green house (that sixties, after-dinner-mint shade of green) with a For Sale sign in front of it. Our agent arranged a showing and we went that Saturday to take a look.
It quickly became apparent why the house still had the sign: it was a pigsty. Apparently the sellers had missed the memo about cleaning up your house before showing it (and the follow-up memo about leaving the house while the showing is in progress.) The sellers' little boy ended up showing us around. The front rooms were in pretty good shape, but some of the rooms were so full of junk you couldn't get past the doorway. For some reason, the kitchen tickled my fancy -- it had cheerful yellow walls, a big bay window, and the original copper hardware (and copper-colored ovens!) The family room had a filthy turquoise carpet and was decorated in brightly painted children's handprints, as if the Blair Witch were running a kindergarten. (We later deduced that the seller was allowing her sister to run a day-care out of that room.) The yard was also a wreck.
The funniest feature of the house was a weird addition stuck on the back of the dining room. It didn't have windows, like a sun room (one of the windows didn't even have any glass) and it didn't have water, electricity, or a finished ceiling. It did have peeling wallpaper and a vinyl floor.
But the house seemed to be talking to us -- saying not getttttttttttt outtttttttttttttttttt, like haunted houses, but helllllllllllllllllllpppppppp meeeeeeeeeeeee! The mom was also talking to me, dropping me little hints about how desperate they were to sell (the father had been transferred to Atlanta.)
We were worried about the basic systems of the house, especially the furnace and about the basement, so we were relieved when the housing inspector, a gentleman our realtor recommended, gave them a clean bill of health ("oh, don't worry about that white powder on the basement walls and that black stuff on the drywall -- a little baking soda will take care of that! And the furnace looks about fifteen years old. The addition? Solidly built -- you could turn that into a cute little covered porch. The ovens both work, too.") So we went ahead.
We moved in on Friday afternoon, and that evening turned out to be the first cold evening of the year. We turned on the furnace and.... nothing. The furnace man who came the next day doubled over laughing when he told him what our inspector had said. "Try 35 years old. You may want to consider a new furnace, or else you'll be seeing me a lot this winter." We had our new furnace installed in a week.
This turned out to be a recurring theme: "Your inspector told you what?" In the kitchen, the top oven turned out to have no working thermostat and the bottom's broiler coil could not be replaced ("what color oven did you say it was? Copper? .....um, you're not going to be able to find a replacement part for that oven, ma'am.") The little addition turned out to be wrecking the drainage around the yard, and was a virtual monument to code violations. (We dubbed it "they mystery room" and finally had it demolished last fall.) The latest "he told you what?" moment was the basement (it looks like we're going to be getting a drainage system put in in October).
At one point this house was owned by someone who fancied himself Mr Do-It-Yourself. He really shouldn't have bothered. He built the mystery room, rewired the thermostat, and did all kinds of other things that must have kept his Guardian Angel busy -- it's a miracle that the house has not blown up or slid off its foundation.
Although having a fixer-upper is a good way to get into a house, in order to fix it up it helps to have a knack with tools or to have a lot of extra money. We have neither, and it seems like every time we start getting ahead something else comes up with the house. I sometimes get really frustrated and regret our decision to choose this house. But at the same time, what else would we have done?
Meanwhile, it's gratifying when we make improvements. I think this house was "the weird house" for several years (between the misguided handyman and our sellers, who had three barking dogs and about a dozen extra family members living in or using the house.) It took a while for the neighbors to get used to us. But this spring, we finally met our neighbors to the west side. One of them apologized for the overgrowth on their side of the shared fence but promised, "now that we have nice neighbors I'll cut that all back." (He did, too, while we were on vacation. They had let it grow to block out their view of the mystery room.)
Our latest little project was a retaining wall in the backyard. Our house is a split-level and our back yard slopes from west to east, so every year a little more of our yard washes down the street. It would stop to rest on our patio in the form of a huge mud puddle. The mystery room had only aggravated the erosion, and the Misguided Handyman had knocked down the original retaining wall.
We built the wall last weekend, and yesterday Hambet and I finished backfilling behind it. Like I often do when I get into the swing of a project, I got a little carried away. We live close to a Home Depot, so it's distressingly easy to give in to impulses. After we finished backfilling, we graded it and planted ivy -- the plan is to establish an ivy groundcover, for the area is heavily shaded. I put in little stepping stones leading up to the outlet and the spigot and then mulched the whole area. At one point, when I was twiddling with rocks, I thought oh no, I'm turning into my dad! (My dad is a little prone to getting into endless landscaping projects involving rocks, terraces, and raised beds. But it was so gratifying!
I wanted to go back and plant the whole hillside in ivy but my dh says no for now (I lost track of time while I was digging, so he came home from to find a filthy wife and son and an empty table. He ordered pizza and even gave Hambet a bath while I finished the work and cleaned up the yard.)
October's going to be a big month for us because in addition to the basement work, we also have long-standing plans to renovate the kitchen. I quickly fell out of love with the copper handles, because the cupboards attached to them are too small, and with the tile floor, because it's hard on dishes and little boys' heads.
So when I complain about my house, or seem to be always working on something, or wanting to work on something, that's because we live in a money pit. I still have this weird sense somehow that God wants us here, in part to intervene in the life of this house. Although I'm not a great housekeeper, I do feel like God wants us to take care of all His gifts to us, including our material blessings, and I almost feel sorry for the house because it was neglected and allowed to "get sick."
Ugh.
I am feeling very dull this afternoon. It's hot and sweltering outside -- come on, thunderstorm, and be done with it! Hambet is just puttering around munching on a cracker.
This morning we took my husband to a doctor's appointment and then dropped him off at the Metro. After that, a few random errands, including a stop by Borders -- it occurred to me that we don't have a copy of the Three Little Pigs and that perhaps it is time to introduce Hambet to the story.
A search on Amazon reveals over 250 editions of the Pigs -- Cajun pigs, revisionist pigs, lavishly illustrated pigs, and so on. Borders didn't have any copy in stock, but that's okay -- the saleswoman was looking for it among the expensive picture books and that isn't quite what I was looking for.
I wish Little Golden Bookswere more widely available -- that's the kind of thing I was looking for. When I was little (back when phones had dials, televisions had antennas or rabbit ears, and dinosaurs roamed the earth) many of our books were little and inexpensive but still had good stories and nice illustrations. Nothing clever or postmodern, just the Three Little Pigs, the Billy Goats Gruff, stories about fire dogs and penguins at the zoo...stuff like that. I know that we're supposed to Encourage Reading In Our Children and all that, but it would be easier to do that if you could get nice, sturdy books at a reasonable price.
I thought it was just me and I was starting to think I was being a little harsh, but I was sooo relieved to see this article in Catholic Exchange.
Last night I was watching the Dateline interview with "Jen and Ben" and they compared them to other "great couples such as Hepburn and Tracy". My reaction really was one of disgust because Spencer Tracy was married.
I am sorry, but to my own fault, one of the things I have a hard time being charitable about is adultery. To me it is making a choice to love, honour and protect someone forever by marrying them and then throwing them to the wolves. It is not just getting carried away, it is a series of cruel and selfish choices. It should not be glorified in Hollywood as a "great romance".
Here is the Article but you need either a subscription to AOL or the magazine to view it. In the meantime, here is the blurb on breastfeeding:
20 rules to break nowDon't drink red wine with fish.... Don't read in dim light... Change the oil in your car every 3,000 miles.... Anybody know who makes these rules? Or-even more mysterious-why we blindly follow them? Here, 20 examples of what "they" say-ironclad conventional wisdom whose time has come and gone. Now, go ahead and
leave that laundry in the machine overnight...don't breast-feed your child?
most likely: "In the long run, nothing," says Boris Petrikovsky, chairman of the department of obstetrics-gynecology at Nassau University Medical Center, in East Meadow, New York. When you're bottle-feeding, you know exactly how much food the baby is eating, and Mom may be less tired because Dad has no excuse to sleep through 3 a.m. feedings. "There is also absolutely no conclusive data on breast milk's effects on brain development," adds Petrikovsky.
worst case: "The biggest downside of not breast-feeding is that the mother misses out on some of the bonding," says Petrikovsky. And since breast milk is specially designed to meet the nutritional needs of infants and contains antibodies that help protect them from a variety of illnesses, "babies who are breast-fed are more likely to have a stronger immune system and be sick less than formula-fed infants."
One, I cannot add a thing to Sparki's blog except this doctor is a dork and why do they not enlist the opinion of a pediatric nutrionist as opposed to an OB/Gyn? Maybe I will go ask a dermatologist how best to treat Gorbulas' asthma next week.
Scooped.
I had intended to fisk this appalling article from Real Simple magazine, but Sparki beat me to it.
I do intend to write to Real Simple. The fact that being bottle-fed is a major risk factor for developing a devastating intestinal disease (name doesn't come to mind, Hambet is climbing on my head at the moment so I'm a little distracted) -- among other diseases -- would seem to suggest that breastfeeding is not a "waste of time."
Mixing formula, on the other hand, seems like a colossal waste of time. Why go through all that chemistry stuff when you can just lift up your shirt and nurse the baby?
New Breed of Men: Metrosexuals
Metrosexual: (noun) Of or pertaining to a straight, urban male who is eager to embrace and even show off his feminine side, especially when it comes to expensive haircuts, designer suits, and $40 face cream.
This is not a book review because I did not read the whole book yet. What I have read has been sort of an Examination of Conscience for Financial Household Management. The author, Amy Dacyczyn (pronounced decision) believes that most people have financial troubles (or at least can make more use of their money for example in the 80's with four children on an under 30K a year salary, she saved $49.000 in seven years and used it as a down payment on her dream home) by saving more as opposed to earning more (two income families). She might just be a woman after my own heart. But man is she frugal. I suppose it becomes a habit, but in the meantime thinking of ways to save money like that 24/7 makes my head hurt.
I have to say, I am not totally ashamed of myself, there are things I do do. We do not eat a lot of meat, I buy in bulk, I make a great deal from scratch, keep lights off at night (and use oil lamps when necessary), use cloth diapers, wash out ziploc bags, my husband cuts the boys' hair, just to name a few (although I refuse to cut moldy parts off of fruit or pour hot water in the bottom of a ketchup bottle to make it stretch-gross). People are often surprised how we have 4 children on one modest blue collar income and are not on any assistance or starving. Still I could do better.
My biggest problem is something everyone knows is a financial no-no. I like to eat out. Once a week, after cooking almost everything from scratch, watching our foods for dyes,preservatives and cholesterol, I have to get a weekly grease fix. What a hypocrite. I know this bad habit (and it is a habit because I have been unsuccessful in just saying "not this week") is what is going to keep me from my dream farm house on a few acres in Schoharie County, NY, I have begun to look at the "why's" of this habit.
Number one is I am burnt out. At the end of the week, I am sick of chopping onions, doing dishes, looking at the inside of my kitchen and wearing clothing that it is OK to splatter tomato sauce on. I want to get out and get cute. Also, there are times when, for example, someone drops by and stays until like 4.30, so I will order a pizza. To remedy this, I am going to attempt to fix things like casseroles to put into the freezer for days like this, and all I have to do is pop them in the oven.
Reason number two is I get tired of the taste of my own cooking. Do not get me wrong, I am a pretty good cook. Not an Erik Keilholtz kind of cook, but a pretty good (as Peony would say) a la femme cuisine cook. I would not eat my food at all if I could not cook well. But once a week I am dying for something like buffalo wings, or french fries, a burger, General Tso's chicken, you know those things that are hard to make at home-especially since I have no idea how to fry anything. This one is more tough to remedy. I have found two interesting sites that may help. One is Copykat.com and the other is Top Secret Recipes. It's like I need a junk food fix or something.
What I am looking for are recipes for something like Hot Pockets for when the kid's are hungry and I can stick in the microwave, but make myself without all the sodium, fat and preservatives. Would anyone have such a recipe?
The Rosary My Way
As a child I learned a rosary decade was basically one Our Father followed by ten Hail Mary's and one Glory Be. Later, I do not remember when, I learned the Fatima prayer to be said after the Glory Be. Now for reasons I cannot remember I say :
Come Holy Spirit
Come by the means of the most powerful intercession
Of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Your Most Beloved Spouse
and
Saint Michael the Archangel protect us
and may the souls of the faithful departed
through the mercy of God rest in peace.
I think I picked these up saying rosaries with groups at various places, but I do not remember specifically where.
Also, at the end of the rosary, I say an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be for the intentions of the Holy Father for this month.
Now here is the funny thing. Whenever I am with a group of people and they say "hey, let's say the rosary" everyone seems to have their own way of saying the rosary. That would be interesting enough, but it is funny because after the Fatima prayer, out of habit I will go into my "Come Holy Spirit..." and there is this awkward moment because three other people are saying Oh Sacrament Most Holy, Oh Sacrament Divine, All Praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine...
I wonder if there is like group rosary saying etiquette, like just stick with the Fatima prayer?
Show us that you are our Mother.
A blessed Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel to all, especially to Steven and Kathy (and all other St Blog's Carmelites), and to Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Carmel in Port Tobacco, Maryland!
Flos Carmeli
O beautiful flower of Carmel,
Most fruitful vine,
Splendor of heaven,
Holy and singular,
Who brought forth the Son of God
Still ever remaining a pure Virgin,
Assist us in our necessities.
O star of the Sea,
Help and protect us.
Show us that you are our Mother.
Bummer
On Saturday all the family men-folk (my father, his three sons, my husband and Posco-all with the exception of Gorbulas and Fastolph) went to a Met's game. My mother, Rosey-Posey, Gorbulas, Fastolph and myself went raspberry picking. I accidently forgot the raspberries at my mother's house and today she dropped them off. I got out my jars, pot and canner and was all set to make some raspberry jam only to find the raspberries all molded over. Bummer. Now I have to put all my stuff away. :(
Jeff Culbreath blogged about the "new masculinity" a few days ago
I don't know, I am thirty years old. For the period of time I was dating, one thing that struck me is we are living in a time where "masculine" is synonomous with disrespect for women. I realise that perhaps there was no time where women (or any group for that matter) had a golden age. But it seems to me being a man meant being responsible for your children and sticking to your commitments. Now it is some sort of strange charicature personified by WWE.
It is a little more insidious than bad television. Each Friday night my husband gets a lecture for coming home after work instead of going out to the bar. His co-workers say things like "Oh, the Old Ball and Chain tells you what to do! " After a while some of that mentality rubs off...
My Geek Rating:
21.30178% - Geek
i am pleased that this test included questions for grammar geeks like me.
Handling a Two-Year-Old's Addiction
So we're not the only ones! Hambet loves "Buzz and Goody" -- I have to keep the cassette hidden and the TV and VCR unplugged, because he's figured out how to run the movie by himself. I have no idea what it is about this movie that so fascinates him. He gets very excited when Buzz comes on -- jumping up and down, shouting "Buzz! It's Buzz, Mommy!"
At least we like the movie (we own it because I bought it for myself, before Hambet was born.) I still love the airplane chase scene (and I still leave the room during Jessie's song before I start choking up -- when I was pregnant that song had me bawling.) There's a lot to like.
Diagnosis gets Girl, 5, Out of Wheelchair
How I wish they'd gotten a comment from Peter Singer, just to show how stupid he is.
Thanks to Greg Krehbiel for this link.
Woo-hoo!: The Rhubarb Compendium
Includes recipes for rhubarb sorbet! I can't wait!
I made my pie this morning, and although I still need more practice in getting the pie to look pretty (I keep putting the top crust off-center) it tasted pretty good (if I do say so myself....)
This is going to be a quick catch-up post, my to-do list for today is running off the page. Our vacation was a lot of fun, but very busy -- we almost needed a vacation from the vacation -- and there was a lot of stuff waiting for us when we got back.
The drive up went very well, except for brutal traffic in Wisconsin -- not only that construction-related jam I blogged about earlier, but also heavy vacation traffic through the entire state. Construction traffic in Minneapolis.
We got there on Friday -- just in time for me to keep my nail appointment with my sister and her bridesmaids (all that hurry for nail polish that started chipping the next day!) The wedding was the next day, and everything went great. My sister looked lovely warning: estrogen alert -- her dress had kind of a matte finish, with princess lines, beading, and little cap sleeves. She wore a tiara with a little veil in the back. Bridesmaids' dresses: deep purple. Flowers: Gerbera daisies, in those really intense jewel colors, in ultra-simple bouquets (they looked great with the deep purple dresses.) The groomsmen behaved themselves (whew!).
If I had been the bride, I would have been a little dismayed that one of the young altar servers chose to wear pink flip-flops with her little cassock. But I think my sister was being very careful to not sweat the small stuff -- the only thing that really plucked her nerves was when the photographer started asking for all kinds of cheesy poses that she hadn't requested ("now, put your face to your bouquet like you're smelling the flowers. Close your eyes -- praying face -- that's it! Okay, again. ...")
The rest of the weekend was more wedding and family stuff. We took a day to go out to my grandmother's farm -- we had a nice visit with Grandma and brought tons of rhubarb back with us for my other sister (she brought it back in her ice chest, along with a root to get her own plant established.) We did make it to the lake in Minnesota, where we had a nice time with our cousins. One of my cousins has a little boy close to Hambet's age, and they had a great time playing together in the sandbox. Unfortunately, the weather was a little choppy so my aunt had to scrap the boat ride idea. I was hoping to get to see the bald eagle and hear the loons, but no such luck.
Our most ambitious day trip was when my husband, tired of the Midwestern custom of visiting = hanging around eating cookies and rhubarb punch left from the wedding, proposed a trip to Bismarck (about three hours away.) We didn't get as early a start as I had hoped -- my dad chose that precise morning to detail our car for us, including some kind of windshield goo that makes the water bead on the windshield -- and then we spent a little bit too much time in Jamestown, ND, at the Pioneer Village and Buffalo Museum (home of White Cloud, the white buffalo.) So we didn't get to Bismarck until around two in the afternoon. We did see Fort Mandan, the Lewis and Clark museum, and -- our main destination -- Fort Abraham Lincoln, from whence General Custer rode to his fate at the Little Bighorn. (Hambet's favorite part: the chickens roaming beind the restored house of General Custer.) We could have spent a half a day at each site, plus another day in Bismarck itself, so Peony's Travel Tip is to allow lots of time for touring central/ western North Dakota -- plan to stay overnight, there's more to see than you think and the state is way bigger than it looks on the map.
On our way back from Bismarck we ran into a horrific thunderstorm. So there we were, out on the prairie, trying to outrun the storm (no luck, it was blowing up to 50 mph) track its progress on the state map and hoping it didn't turn into a tornado (it did, south of us.) We were so grateful for my dad's windshield goo, it really did make the rain bead up. If we hadn't had it I don't think we would have been able to see a thing.
One of the nicest things I was able to do was just have a chance to hang out with my mom. On the Fourth of July she gave me some lessons in pie-making. It was fun to just mess around in the kitchen with her.
Our drive back was not quite as smooth. My husband was so aggravated by the traffic on the way up that he vowed to stay off the interstates on the way back (he also wanted to make a few side trips.) One of our side trips was to the Cathedral of St Paul (in St Paul, Minnesota.) We also stopped by the Effigy Mounds National Park in Iowa. For some reason, Hambet balked at taking the walk to actually view the Mounds, so we ended up just watching the movie in the Visitor's Center. Well, actually, my husband saw the movie, I saw the museum, and Hambet colored in the children's area and charmed the ranger into giving him stickers.
After we left the Mounds, we were driving along through Wisconsin and were going through a town when I yelled, "Stop the car! What is that thing?!" That thing was the Dickeyville Grotto. So we stopped and took a look around. Basically the pastor of the parish built this thing out of concrete, colored glass, and whatever else people gave him (including broken china, petrified wood, and antlers. The little house-thing has an altar (still used on special occasions) and there are walkways surrounding a Fatima statuary group, a series of niches with statues of the Apostles, and a patriotism gallery centered around a statue of Columbus. The parish has set up a little picnic area with restrooms for the pilgrims, and a little gift shop with postcards and brochures.
My first thought when I saw this wonder was "how weird!" Is it tacky (although charming and sincere?) Does it matter?
copyright 2003 Two Sleepy Mommies
It was shortly after our visit that Hambet started throwing up in the car. At first we thought he was just car sick, but he kept getting sick after we'd stopped for the night. (It turned out that he had coxsackie virus. He is doing better now.)
I really decompensated on the trip home and ended up leaving all kinds of things behind in the motel rooms (including one of Hambet's books, Hambet's slippers, dh's souvenier postcards, and the candy dh bought for his office.) They have forgiven me but I'm still kicking myself.
So now we are trying to get back in the routine. I am still catching up with the laundry, and we have a jillion house projects waiting for us. (At least the basement didn't flood while we were gone.) One of those projects is evicting the chipmunk that lives under our porch -- I set a trap last night but so far no luck. Another project is building a small retaining wall next to our patio -- we're going to try to get that done today.
I am going to pull out the notes I made after Master Class with my mom and try to make a pie today (rhubarb.) I also would like to finish weeding the garden.
Time to brew some coffee and get started!
Are Young Catholics Cultural Orphans?
I touched on this briefly in my Barbarians Anonymous post of June 18 (sorry, archives not working at present.) I need to get serious about researching and adopting some of these customs; Hambet is getting old enough to enjoy them.
Budding Priest?
Today we were saying the Family Angelus at noon, and Gorbulas got out of my arms and tried to get a Rosary from our Rosary rack. I was impressed. Perhaps a budding priest? Maybe not. I am thinking it is every Catholic mother's mission that we look for signs that our sons may become priests in everything they do.
Peony tells me her Hambet blesses her with "Ho-wee wa'er". Maybe I will be the friend of someone whose son became a priest.
Wallowing in Self-Pity
I recently rented Frida. Funny because my curiosity about Frida Kahlo was aroused in a conversation with Peony about eyebrow waxing. After that it occurred to me I did not know who she was, so I looked her up to educate myself. I was intrigued by her paintings. I would never hang one in my home for fear of giving the kids nightmares, but she is able to portray the pain in her life from things that many of us can relate to such as the suffering of experiencing miscarriages, obsessing over unrequited love, or the frustration of living with debilitating health problems . However, while she illustrates very well her sadness ( and I actually wish I could paint so I could have the same outlet) her paintings lack hope and are filled with the self-centeredness depression without the Church (and place to channel that suffering-uniting it with Christ's suffering) brings. She did not have children, so I guess it is a moot point because maybe she did not have other responsibilities, but I cannot relate to spending hour upon hour painting self-portraits to channel all that sad energy to nothing constructive. Maybe I am judging too harshly because the paintings do make me say "ah, I have been there..." and that takes great talent and emotion on her part. Yet they do not inspire me to pray on these events, but to lock myself in my bedroom with a fifth of vodka and go to sleep for days.
As for the movie, funny thing. Literatelly like three days after Peony and I had the conversation about Frida, I was at our local movie theater with my family to see Twin Towers (which is a really nice theater except they are geared more towards the Avant Garde) when I saw a poster for Frida. My husband was on vacation and I thought maybe I would take advantage and do a "Mom By Herself" date and see the film, but that never came to pass. I finally got around to renting it this week.
Part of the problem for me was something Hollywood does a lot lately. In two movies that come to mind, Tom Hanks was a nice and misunderstood hitman in Road To Perdition. In Panic Room Forest Whitaker was a nice burglar. No one stops to think perhaps these characters would not be nice people? Same in Frida. In the interviews with the cast and director, everyone talks about how much Frida Kahlo "loved life". Um, has anyone looked at the same paintings I see? What they really mean is she lived amorally. She was an adulteress, a pervert, rumored to have beaten one of her female lovers to death with a crutch and married to a man who could nor would not stay faithful, who was a Communist, a cannibal-just not very nice. Yet this movie tries to portray them as fun-loving free-thinkers and people with society's best interests at heart. Whatever. Typical.
Visually, I did like the movie. Lots of colours set in Mexico. I just do not think it is telling the true story. Just another point about how wonderful it is not to follow the rules.
Pampered Chef update:
Back in May I blogged about how Pampered Chef had been bought by Berkshire Hathaway, a major corporate donor to Planned Parenthood.
I am pleased to report that, due to protests from Pampered Chef staff and customers, Berkshire Hathaway has dropped support for PP!
Here's BH's news release (requires Adobe Acrobat). This article also discusses BH's decision (and the petulance with which it was announced.)
Before the wedding, my sister invited me to come with her and the bridesmaids to get our nails done. While we were at the salon, the topic of Pampered Chef products came up (I think in the context of bridal shower presents.) As the manicurist started on my nails, she mentioned, "I like Pampered Chef products, but I heard they got bought out by a company that supports abortion! Isn't that awful? I don't think I could buy anything from them any more!"
It was soooooooo refreshing to be in a place where your manicurist could assume that you, too, thought that supporting abortion was a terrible thing to do.
Good article on Catholic Exchange about Affirmative Action.
I am sorry about the slow blogging, and I would comment more, but I am seriously drained emotionally as of late.
The Prayers Are Working!
Gorbulas had a follow-up appointment and his lungs look good! Thank you so much!
If I may be so bold for one more request? We have had a few more life stresses at one time than I think I am capable of handling gracefully. One is Gorbulas' health, another is my father-in-law totally dissed us for Posco's First Holy Communion. The emotional fall-out is putting a big time strain on my marriage. If some prayers could directed in that direction, it would make a huge difference.
New Routine
Now that my 18 month old has "severe" asthma, I have to keep him on a variety of medications which makes me nervous. Do not get me wrong, I am very grateful for the fact that there are medications to give him the ability to breathe. I fully understand that due to original sin, there is illness in the world, and I am so blessed to have food, shelter and two hospitals within walking distance. The medications upset me though.
Before we had to give Gorbulas albuterol in the nebuliser, and perhaps Pulmicort on an "as needed" basis. Now he has to have albuterol treatments around the clock every four hours, he has to be on Prelone syrup two times a day for four more days. which is a steroid and has a ton of nasty side effects, including candidiasis and all the nasty side effects associated with the disease so my poor baby will probably be fighting this for the rest of his life and never be able to eat a carb again. After four days, I have to teach an 18 month old to use an inhaler because the dosage of Pulmicort (another steroid) for the nebuliser is not strong enough. This is until, well, until hopefully he outgrows asthma, or I can figure out a way to cure him with some type of diet and filling my home with a bazillion ionic air filters.
Again, I am amazed at medical science. (I am just venting because I am scared for my little guy. That is why I have this blog right, to vent?) I am also amazed at the way God created our bodies. When Gorbulas' lung collapsed, it caused his chest cavity to fill with air, where it would normally be filled with lung. The air is not supposed to be there because God created our bodies to have a negative air space (vacuum) in our bodies which is what keeps the lung inflated. Maybe I am too emotional, but I always in awe of our God when I learn a little bit more about how he constructed our bodies.
Speaking of which I took the little guy's dressing off this morning when I gave him his bath. God bless him, I never saw a kid who puts up with people ripping Band-Aids and surgical tape off of him. He just looked at me an smiled. The area of his cheek bones are all scabbed over from the surgical tape used to adhere the oxygen tubes to his face. I made a horrible blunder trying to wash some of the adhesive off with a wash cloth because it is getting all black and nasty. I made his face bleed when I wiped over the area with the wash cloth. I did not realise how delicate the scabs were. But the little wound in his side where they inserted the chest tube looks good and I hope God will take good care of it.
Back From the Hospital
We have been in the hospital since Sunday night with Gorbulas. On Sunday he woke up with what appeared to be croup. I called the doctor and she told me that the treatment for croup and asthma are the same, so to be vigilant with his nebuliser treatments.
At first the treatments eased his wheezing, then around 5 PM, they did not do so, even when we administered them back to back. We called our doctor and brought him in. His O2 was very low (82 percent) and he was clearly stressed. The doctor admitted him to the hopsital as immediately.
I went and stayed with him. The first thing they did was give him a chest x-ray. The next morning, the nebuliser treatments were still not taking effect and he could not stay saturated with O2 on his own. The doctor reviewed his x-ray and said it looked like his left lung was collapsed. They took a second x-ray to make sure that it indeed was collapsed. As a result they called the surgeon in.
The surgeon put up his x-rays and showed us his chest cavity where his lung should have been, was 3/4 of the way empty. Treatment was inserting a chest tube. Ugh.
The head thoracic surgeon came into our room, clapped his hands and asked "whose staying to watch?" I could not. I took my rosary and stayed down the hall, but my husband stayed to watch. They gave Gorbulas something to "consciously sedate" him. He did not stay sedated too long because I heard him screaming down the hall as they put the chest tube in. I prayed to Mary that this was a small moment where I could imagine in a small way how she felt when her son was being crucified.
As soon as he had the chest tube put in, he could breathe and stopped coughing. He was also very drugged up on tylenol with codeine. They took the tube out yesterday, and so far he is doing very well, but is still wheezing. The doctor said he is not out of the woods yet, but he allowed him to go home.
Yesterday morning his nurse said to me:
Nurse:He is getting quite the reputation.
Me: For what?
Nurse:Because of how cute he is. Every report about him is finished with "he is so cute and has beautiful eyes"
Me:Oh
Nurse:It is amazing how well he is doing. He is such a little guy and has been through a lot in the past few days. It says a lot about you and your husband. We see so many kids in here that are so screwed up because of their family life, and it affects their recovery...
Me: Oh gosh, crop it up to attachment parenting.
Pansy and Peony: The Two Sleepy Mommies
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