Nope, I don't have this week's P&P discussion. I'll try for Monday morning.
I do have some thoughts on "Master and Commander" up over at Popcorn Critics, though, if you're interested.
Today I went to Lowe's and picked up a shop light and a couple of flourescent tubes. It's time to start thinking about starting seeds! Today was a lovely, sunny day and I am getting spring fever.
Laura's back from her break! Yay!
Old news, but Vociferous Yawpings is back too.
We've pulled the life links together and updated CURE's link.
Welcome to the blogroll:
Theosis
Republic of Virtue
Popcorn Critics
Goodbye to:
Eternal Rebels. They turned out to be merely temporal and have closed up shop.
Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
You are Ludwig II, the Swan King of Bavaria!
Born with the name of Otto, you became Ludwig at the request of your grandfather, King Ludwig I, because you were born on his birthday. You became Crown Prince at the tender age of 3, and soon after stole a purse from a shop on the basis that everything in Bavaria belonged to you. Tragedy struck when your pet tortoise was taken away; relatives thought the six-year-old prince was too attached to it. Your childhood was lonely and formal. Once, you were prevented from beheading your younger brother by the timeous arrival of a court official. From the age of 14 you suffered from hallucinations.
Despite striking an imposing figure with your great height and good looks, your speeches were pompous to the point of incomprehensibility. You became even more of a recluse, often spending hours reading poetry in a seashell-shaped boat in your electrically-illuminated underground grotto.
You are most famous for building three fairytale castles - Linderhof, Neuschwanstein and Herrenchiemsee - at tremendous public expense. Declared insane and confined to your bedroom by concerned (and embarrassed) subjects, you escaped on 13 June 1886, but were later found drowned with your physician in Lake Stamberg in mysterious circumstances.
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
Thanks to Bob for this quiz.
My husband took my parents to the airport today. I was brave and didn't blubber too much as they left.
We had such a nice visit. We did just a little touring, and a lot of just hanging around and visiting.
We went over to Virginia to see some of our old friends from the neighborhood. One couple still lives in their same house across the street from where we once lived, twenty years ago. Their daughter (also named Peony) came too, with her two little girls -- Hambet was smitten. We all took a trip over to the new Udvar-Hazy Center; Hambet was a wild man until the four-year-old took him by the hand (literally) -- the three children were inseparable for the rest of the trip, and as we left Hambet was inviting them to "come to my house!" I wonder how our parents felt to see a third generation of friendship forming.
If you have been trying to email us recently, you may have had trouble -- Pansy and I were both busy and our email box filled up with over two hundred pieces of SPAM.
We're going to give a new address a try. Correspondence to the Two Sleepy Mommies can be directed to:
twosleepymommies
AT
yahoo
DOT
com
You're Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!
by Lewis Carroll
After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you've had your mind
opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser,
you have to ask yourself what's real and what's the picture of illusion. Little is coming
to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that
it's starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile to much,
and just avoid hat shops altogether.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
You're Watership Down!
by Richard Adams
Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Actually I have never read this book. I've tried a couple of times but I never made it past the first couple of chapters, and it's not because I couldn't handle talking animals.
What Finding Nemo Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
OK, the stoneware and flatware I have been using since my wedding is dwindling. I think I am down to two dinner plates (out of eight), three forks, one cake fork, one teaspoon, but tons of salad plates and tablespoons. I just started looking online for replacements and discovered both patterns are discontinued. My stoneware, Pfaltzgraff Midnight Sun, I found at a site called Replacements, Ltd for $11.99 a plate. It used to be $8 from Pfaltzgraff. What is worse actually is the flatware, Oneida Ledges, they want $9.99 for a teaspoon. I suppose I can shop around some more, but I am not sure I want to replace "outdated" utensils at that price. I suppose even if that is the cost, I cannot justify spending that at this time in my life. Man, all the things we take for granted, like eating on dishes costs so much.
from Steven: Can We Achieve Holiness by a Plan?
brought to us by TSO: Matthew Kelley's Seven Pillars
An oldie but goodie: The Seven Habits of Holy Apostolic People
Without a plan of life you will never have order. --St Josemaria Escriva
Wouldn't it be a cool thing if we lived in a society where planner pages came preprinted with check-boxes for Mass, Angelus, Rosary, etc?
This would also fit in with Hambet's love of jumping.
Thanks to the Smock for this quiz.
One year ago today, I blogged about the Feast of St.Valentine and of course what I made for dinner. Today I made Spinach Stuffed Leg of Lamb (Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book) and Cinnabon Clone Cinnamon roles (recipe courtesy of Dinka).
Today, I picked up an Amish cookbook to add to my cookbook collection. My Amish neighbor who runs "The Amish Store" seemed surprised I cooked, although admitted to sampling my homeade pannetone when I sent it to her daughter's for Christmas and said it "was really good". Another one asked my husband what I do:
Hubby: She stays home and takes care of the kids.
Neighbor: That's good because women all want to run away these days.
Even though I knew what he meant, this last statement inspired a strange image of women with those sticks with the red with white polka dotted cloths tied at the end to the carry their few parcels running away from their homes.
Gorbulas has been very, very sticky lately. Not sure why, but he has been. He hates when I sit, try to read go online, all he wants to do is nurse. If he is not nursing, forget about it! Last Tuesday, in a fit of rage he snapped the monitor off the top of, laptop, so I had to purchase a new one. In the meantime, if I wake up in the middle of the night and get up, he wakes up. If I try to read, he comes and sits on the book. If I go online, well, we've been there. I am at loss here as to what the problem is except maybe it is a growth spurt like Fastolph just had?
Summa Mama Terry postedposted an alternate Friday Five this week. (These answers are for Friday.)
1. What did you have for breakfast this morning? If you didn't have breakfast, why not? I had a bowl of cereal and some veggie sausage.
2. What's your favorite cereal? Trader Joe's Essentials.
3. How often do you eat out? Do you want that to change? We eat out as a family at least once a week. I would like to cut back on that.
4. What do you plan on having for dinner tonight? Got a recipe for that? Omelettes with mushrooms and cheese.
5. What's your favorite restaurant? Why? I don't really have a favorite. Anyplace quiet with plenty of hot coffee and a Hambet-friendly environment is fine with me. I like the sandwiches at the Cheese Shop in Williamsburg, Virginia (turkey and ham combo, French bread, house dressing. Perfect with hot cider or a ginger ale on a crisp autumn afternoon.)
Our next segment will be Chapters 13-18. If you have any questions while reading these chapters, please feel free to post them here.
I'd like to skip a week and discuss this section on February 27. (I'm having company next week and I doubt I'll have time to prepare a post.) This might be a good opportunity for anyone who's fallen behind -- or wants to join -- to catch up. (For those who may be interested, our last week's discussion and some other background notes can all be accessed from our sidebar, by clicking the button or searching under "Group Read.")
Synopsis:
Chapter 7:
A militia regiment has made Meryton its winter headquarters, and Catherine and Lydia are enjoying the society of the officers. The Bingley sisters invite Jane to dine at Netherfield; Jane gets caught in the rain on the way over, gets sick, and is forced to stay the night. Elizabeth walks over the next morning to see how she's doing. Jane is still very ill, so Elizabeth remains at Netherfield to help care for her.
We learn that Longbourn is entailed to a distant relation (more about entails in the notes) and learn about Mrs Bennet's connections.
Chapter 8: The evening at Netherfield. A discussion of reading and "accomplishments."
We learn that Darcy has a younger sister, and that their house in Derbyshire is named Pemblerley.
Chapter 9: Mrs Bennet comes to check up on Jane.
Chapter 10: Elizabeth's second evening at Netherfield. A discussion of handwriting leads to a discussion of character. Miss Bingley plays the piano-forte. Mr Darcy asks Elizabeth to dance but, with an arch joke, she declines.
Chapter 11: Jane is recovered enough to join the party that evening. Elizabeth and Darcy discuss character and temperament.
Chapter 12: Jane and Elizabeth leave Netherfield.
Summa Mama Terry is having a birthday! For a present, why not send her a little spiritual bouquet? She's even dropped a hint as to her favorite flower.
Secret Agent Man fisks recipes:
Canned mushrooms are used by people who've never tasted real ones. I don't think a seriously-miseducated palette is going to hit on a good recipe by anything besides coincidence, and since the recipe already has canned mushrooms, I don't like the odds....Pot-Roast, my friends, is pot-roast and it will remain pot-roast even if it's been slathered in Miracle Whip or poached in root beer. The only thing such trickiness will produce is pot roast with an odd taste, like it was made with Miracle Whip or root beer. God has decreed a universe in which Filet and Sirloin are very, very good and in which pot roast is . . . well . . . what you have to eat a couple of times each month. Trying to reverse that order by jazzing up pot roast is the culinary equivalent of schism.
Summa Minutiae has moved to stblogs.org. Welcome to the neighborhood!
Satan’s greatest work on earth as he seeks to devour souls that are called to heaven is to keep us from praying and getting them to stop that journey. When we look at three disastrous and diabolical revolutions that have taken place over the last five hundred years–the Protestant, the French, and Communist–we find that what they all have in common is the dissolution of monasteries. People who dedicate themselves to prayer are seen as enemies of the State and must be eliminated. They are not considered to be as useful to the State....This article is intended to help the reader to learn to pray and particularly to learn how to pray in silence...
To begin to acquire the good habit of silent prayer (or what we call mental prayer) is not easy for a variety of reasons... To sit alone in your room... or in a church before the Blessed Sacrament and talk to God requires fortitude, patience, and a variety of other virtues, the most important of which are faith, hope, and charity. Faith that He is really here and everywhere, Hope that you will receive what you ask for and that prayer really is of benefit for your soul, and Charity–you pray because you love God above all things and you want to share yourself with Him and you want Him to envelop you with His love. This is no easy task, but well worth the effort.
more....
A great article from Father McCloskey. I have not yet succeeded in cultivating the consistent habit of mental prayer; I think I know what I need to do for Lent. Mental prayer feels weird and unnatural to me -- I'm just not good at it. But the truth is, I just haven't been patient. Every other skill I've learned -- algebra, diagramming sentences, playing scales, typing, taking blood pressures, cake decorating, HTML -- felt weird and unnatural at first. I only learned those skills when I ignored my initial failures and kept at it. If I was willing to show a little fortitude and learn how to hold a pastry bag....
Does anyone out there with a Junior Psychoanalysis kit care to tell me what the "caught unprepared" dream motif means? Please, help me out, because I have this dream at least once a month, and usually all too vividly. It's getting old.
Usually, it's final exam time at college, and I have to take an exam for a class I didn't even know I was registered for and therefore haven't attended all semester. (When the class was Linear Algebra, I woke up in a cold sweat desperately trying to remember matrices.) Or I've messed up the exam schedule somehow and I've missed all my exams.
When I was doing bedside nursing, I had a particularly creepy variation of this dream in which it was 3:00 PM -- time to give report on my patients to the next shift -- and I realized that someone had added a patient to my assignment and hadn't told me, so the patient had not so much as been looked at for eight hours. In the dream, I ran into the room (which had groovy sixties/ seventies rec-room wood paneling) to check on the patient. She assured me she was all right. The really unnerving thing was that the patient in the dream was a real patient whom I'd helped care for in the past -- before she died. She had been worn out with the complications from her surgery and her already poor health, and had just given up the will to live. She had been dead some months already when she appeared in my dream, just as sweet as I remembered her: "Oh, honey, don't worry about it. I'm okay."
So last night I'm in some kind of audience, like in an arena, and we're singing Christmas carols, and suddenly there's a spotlight on my face and a microphone right in front of me and I'm supposed to do a spontaneous solo -- the next verse of "Do You Hear What I Hear?" I was supposed to sing the verse about what the king says to the shepherd boy.
Well, I was totally Caught Unprepared. I got through, "Said the mighty king to the shepherd boy..." but I could not remember what came next. We took an intermission and I fled to an office to search forsome sheet music. I pulled at people's coat sleeves, asking if they had a laptop, begging to use it to hook up to the Internet for a minute to find the stupid lyrics.
I woke up right before I had to go back to the auditorium, and it took me a long time to realize that I'd woken up. I had to stop myself from jumping up and running downstairs at 4:00 AM to look up the lyrics.
Now that I've gotten a chance to look at them, I see that there is no verse where the mighty king directly addresses the shepherd boy. So I'm off the hook.
There is, of course, the final verse in which the king exhorts his people to pray for peace, because the Child, the Child, sleeping in the night, He will bring us goodness and light, etc. I wonder which king the songwriters were thinking of? Did they forget that there really was a king, and that his name was Herod?
Great, here I am fisking Christmas carols! Well, I might as well do the whole Scrooge and reflect that if I had to have my sleep interrupted by dreaming about a Christmas carol, I wish it had been over a cool carol, like being asked to sing O Holy Night in French or something like that, instead of some silly song about some made-up king and a talking lamb. Do You Hear What I Hear is not on my short list of favorite songs. Other Christmas songs I can do without: The Little Drummer Boy, Frosty the Snowman, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, and those two contemporary ones that our choir insists on doing every week (one has a perky little hook with the lyrics "on the road to Beth! lee-hem!"; the other has Gloria in excelsis Deo in the chorus; both sound like they should be on the soundtracks to videos with stop-action puppets.) Ding-dong Merrily on High is okay with me as long as I don't have to sing it.
over at Sparki's.
Thanks, Alicia, for the heads up.
because my map is kind of pathetic compared to Peony's, especially since many of these I merely did just stop over in the airport. But it looked like too much fun to pass up. I am actually very ashamed I have not been to Vermont since I live right on the border practically and I my husband drives there daily.
create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide
1. The Group Read discussion for Chapters 1-6 is up! Come post your questions, answers, thoughts, questions, favorite lines, observations, long comments, short comments....
2. Happy Birthday to Erik! Alas, I saw the announcement too late to plan my menu, so I will have to have roast pork and Sapphire martinis another time.
3. I did make pizza last night. I tried using bread flour to make the dough and was very, very pleased with the results.
4. I also had my very first grease fire in the kitchen. Yikes! It was all my fault, too -- I just was not using my brain. I had filled a saucepan with water and bit of olive oil and brought it to the boil (the plan was to use it to cook the sausages for the pizza.) I got sidetracked washing the dishes, though. I looked up and realized the pot had gone dry. I turned off the burner and removed the lid. I neglected to move the pot off the hot burner, though -- really, where was my brain? -- and all of a sudden FOOM! the remaining olive oil ignited. So there I was with flames shooting up ten inches into the air, and all I could think of was "oh no! the microwave!!!!!"
So I pulled the flaming sauce pan out from under the microwave and realized that you really do need both hands to extinguish a fire. I have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, but I couldn't remember where it was. (It was under the sink, behind the dish drainer and dish pan. ) By now my husband had heard me yelling and he came in to see what was going on. I put the pot down and he started for the sink to fill a cup of water to throw on the fire.
By this time I'd recovered my wits. I grabbed the can of salt that was sitting on the counter and threw salt on the fire to smother it -- it worked right away. (The microwave and pot seem to be okay.)
When my sister was small, she gave my mom with a present: a small coffee can filled with baking soda and decorated with crayon drawings of fire. She'd made it in Brownies. The idea was that you kept it by the stove so that you always had something at hand to smother a fire. I think I need to make one of those, since I cannot count on having a Brownie to make one for me.
I was also disturbed to realize that the smoke alarm didn't go off during this little adventure. So at the least I have a battery to replace. If I don't get it done this week, maybe I can get my dad to do it for me when he comes next week.
OK, I finished watching Shogun. It ended with Toranaga saying "Soon Anjin-san, I will reveal to you why I must have destroyed your ship to save your life. Build another ship and I will destroy that too. There is much I need to learn from you my friend, and I reveal all to you." And then it ended. Why did they have to destroy the ship to keep him alive? What happened to his dirty crew-were they on the Erasmus when it burnt down?Did Vinck like die of a heart attack or something? If Father Alvito had nothing to do with his ship being burnt down, then why did Mariko's conversation with him perpetuate the ship to be burnt down? What about Buntaro, last they showed him he was growling "Anjin..." but never showed him again. Did I totally miss the point of everything or was the movie that bad and the book explains it all better? I even watched it with subtitles (I am deaf in one ear and find if I do not use subtitles, I miss a great deal of points). I don't know, at the end my husband and I were like "I don't get it."
I would read the book, but not if it is equally disappointing. The romantic dialogue in Latin between Mariko-san and Anjin-san was quite sighable though, I will give it that. "Thou art beautiful and I love thee." Oh sigh.
Again, I am not jumping on a bandwagon to bash my Bishop-at least not in this case. He says he is innocent, and I will back that (like my opinion means anything if I did not). We know it is not uncommon for people to use situations like this for whatever reason in their own agenda. I also have some other thoughts I will keep to myself.
Yesterday I had the privilegde to listen to a local radio talk show host personality whining about how they could do this to "his Church" and "ecclesiastically rape him" for an hour as we sat in the car taking the kids to their bowling league. He presented the question "call in and tell me what you think, should priests get married?" Like a Dodo, I called in.
"Pansy calling from her cell..."
"Hello Mr. Martin. I am calling regarding the question 'If priests should marry?' No."
"Well. why don't you think they should marry?"
"My father is clergy, and it is very hard on the family. There is so much to do and be done, and he does not nerely have all thre responsibilities of a priest. It would be too hard, either the Church or the family would suffer."
"Your father is a priest?"
"No, sir a deacon."
"A deacon? What faith is that?"
"Roman Catholic, Sir"
"St. Peter was married and that's good enough for me. Anglican priests are married and their families do not whine that they feel neglected."
"I am not sure 'neglected ' is the term-"
"Let me talk! In the early Church, they stopped priests from getting married so they could not pass land on to their families and so they could control the priests. What other reason could you possibly have tpo believe priests should npot get married?"
"Because a priest stands in for Christ who is the Bridegroom of the Church-"
"THESE PRIESTS THAT ABUSE LITTLE CHILDREN ARE EVIL! EVIL! A PRIEST CANNOT GET UP AND PREACH HOW TO ACT RIGHT AND PERPETRATE THESE CRIMES-"
"Well of course their actions are evil-"
"I DON'T BELIEVE YOU OR YOUR EXPLANATIONS ANYMORE! THE CHURCH IS EVIL >click< BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!"
This is actually the typical Albany Catholic, and ofr a moment I forgot before I called that this was about Church bashing because he talked about how he was a reader at his parish, the local Catholic High School his son attends, his son's confirmation last year. Any time you talk Church anything. be it the sex abuse allegations, or a simple Parish Council meeting, all it is is a frenzy about how the Church is horrible, it needs to change. Why do people bother calling themselves Catholic? Oh well.
In the meantime, someone on the homeschool email list sent an email stating that the Bishop has a letter to be read in graphic detail (i.e. cover your children's ears) denying the allegations. Why can't you ever just go to Mass in this diocese? The driveway might be closed anyway...
Update: I thought the letter was not that bad graphically, and was timely. It also set my mind at ease. The fact that we must hear about "sexual abuse" from the pulpit more and more probably has more to do with the times than just the fault of the Bishop.
I did not count Arkansas, Idaho, and Oklahoma, since I've only passed through them on my way to other states. I only counted states where I've been as a destination.
create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide
there were w few items I desperately wanted to make my life whole and complete.
*Toe Ballet Shoes-but since I was under 12, I could not have any. I made due by walking around with Dixie cups on my toes.
*A Baby Chick-so cute and fluffy. I asked for one for Christmas when I was 4 or 5 and never got one. So I attempted a few times to hatch an egg from the fridge to no avail.
*A Mickey Mouse Phone-so I could call Mickey Mouse I guess.
*Stilts-all kids need stilts so they can walk around and pass as grown-ups. I compensated again with the Dixie cups.
Welcome to the Group Read!
First, my thanks to Hambet, who obliged me (and, at this writing, obliges me still) with a very early and very, very, very long nap while I tapped out my illiterate musings.
In case anyone needs it, a very brief plot summary of the first six chapters:
Chapter 1: Mrs Bennet tells Mr Bennet the exciting news: Netherfield Park, a nearby estate, has been rented by Mr Bingley, a young man with a more than comfortable income. Mrs Bennet is delighted by the possiblity that Mr Bingley might marry one of their five daughters, but is much vexed that Mr Bennet will not promise to visit Mr Bingley and begin the acquaintance.
We learn the names of three of the Bennet sisters: Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia.
Chapter 2: After much teasing, Mr Bennet finally reveals that he has visited Mr Bingley.
We meet the other two Bennet sisters: Mary and Kitty (Catherine).
Chapter 3: Mr Bennet may have met Mr Bingley, but he does not cough up much information to the ladies of his household and they must turn to their neighbors. We meet Sir William Lucas, who is delighted with Mr. Bingley. Mr Bingley himself comes to call at the Bennets, but does not get to meet the young ladies. He is invited to dine, but cannot accept the invitation. He does attend the ball at the Meryton assembly-rooms, and brings guests: his sisters, Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley; his brother-in-law, Mr Hurst; and his friend, Mr. Darcy. Mr Bingley is lively and sociable, and a big hit at the ball. The neighborhood is ready to like Mr Darcy as well -- he is handsome and very rich -- but Mr Darcy quickly makes it plain that he is not interested in being liked. He only dances with Bingley's sisters, and flatly declines even being introduced to any other lady. Elizabeth Bennet overhears Bingley urging Darcy to loosen up a little. Bingley offers to ask someone to introduce Elizabeth to Darcy, but Darcy coldly refuses. Elizabeth is offended, but not crushed.
Chapter 4: Jane and Elizabeth discuss the ball (and Bingley's sisters.) The narrator gives us more information about the Bingley family, and shows us the Netherfield party's opinions of the ball.
We learn that the Bennets reside at Longbourn.
Chapter 5: The Lucases call upon the Bennets, and there is more discussion of the ball.
We learn more about Sir William Lucas and meet his wife, Lady Lucas, and their eldest daughter Charlotte.
Chapter 6: The Bennet sisters become better acquainted with Bingley's sisters. It is two weeks since the ball, and Jane and Bingley are growing fond of each other. Charlotte thinks that Jane should drop her guard a little and be more encouraging to Bingley.
We learn that Mr Darcy is growing interested in Elizabeth. He starts paying more attention to her. At the Lucas home, Elizabeth notices his attention and responds by teasing him a little. Charlotte invites Elizabeth to play at the pianoforte, Mary is next to play, and soon there is dancing. Sir William Lucas, that genial fellow, suggests that Darcy dance with Elizabeth, but Elizabeth declines. Darcy is not hurt; his interest only increases. He mentions his interest to Miss Bingley, who immediately starts teasing him about the happy life he will have with Mrs Bennet as a mother-in-law. Darcy ignores her as she prates on. We are given a strong hint that Miss Bingley might wish to herself capture Darcy's heart.
When we first installed comments, we considered posting a comments policy. We had seen the combativeness, flame wars and general nastiness that sometimes cropped up at other blogs, and we didn't want that for our blog. We figured there were plenty of other places for those who liked that kind of combat to fight their dogfights and stamp their little "kill" stamps on the side of their airplanes. We wanted TSM to be one of the places a reader could take a break from that kind of thing.
We never actully posted a comments policy (beyond a playful "no trolls") because we never really needed it. Our readership was small and shared our vision. (A mysterious penchant for turning even the most serious threads into discussions of pizza, cookies, hairstyles, clothing, and beer also helped.) We have had to edit or delete very few posts and have only had to ban one commenter. There has been the occasional flash of temper here and there, but overall the tone of our comments boxes has been civil, friendly, and free of personal attack.
That's the way we want to keep it. It's especially important to us now, for we are seeing many new names in our comments boxes. Some of those new names will be those of young readers -- homeschooled tweens who are here for the Group Read. We don't want any of these young readers getting flamed, and we don't want to see any of them being shown a bad example.
So:
We don't play rough here. We don't like profanity, blasphemy, flaming, personal attacks on anyone, or general incivility. We may edit or delete offending comments -- or ban offending commenters -- at our discretion.
[C]ivility is considered a higher good than First Amendment rights here. Incivility will be uncivilly suppressed. -- Church of the Masses comment policy.
*My husband stayed home today because last night. when he uh. tried to leap over a snow bank, and flipped over (it was almost funny-the kids were looking outside the window and said "hey Mom, there's some kind of animal out there," and it was my poor husband crawling out of the bank covered in snow) he lost the car keys. So he could not look for them (or leave the house) until the sun came up, and by then he was late, so he took a personal day. At first I was starting to think we were suffering from some type of denomic bad luck, but after he found the keys, I started to think my Guardian Angel took them so we could have a much needed day off.
*We decided to take the kids to see Cheaper By The Dozen. No the driveway was not open, but we had a pathway plowed. and it was a balmy 27 degrees today, so getting down the driveway was no sweat. It was actually fun because my husband insisted on pulling Fastolph, Gorbulas and myself in the tobagan and the older two played in the snow the whole way.
*We went to the Apple store which is like Scary Geek Central and bought a new keyboard because Rosey Posey spilled tea on the keyboard last night. Every email I attempted to draft this morning was sans the 'm' key so all my letters read as if I had a stuffed nose. Man is that store a rip off. I also need a new adaptor plug which was $79 bucks, that will have to wait. My husband managed to tape this one up to keep it working, but if I suddenly drop off line again, it is because I still refused to spend that $79 bucks. Then the Sales guy asked why we did not have the warranty and my husband was like "because it is a lot of money." The Geeky guy was like "it's only like $30 a year." Only? Does he make enough selling computers to raise four kids and spend $350 on a warranty?It is amazing how the older I get, the cheaper I get.
*We went to the second of two places labled "The Amish Store" in the area. The first is a bulk goods shop, this was more of a general store, which did not have much. The owner however is my next door neighbors mother and it was nice to chat with her a bit. I mentioned I was upset because I have yet to meet her daughter because of the snow between us, and she told me her daughter has expressed the same sentiment.
*I have been renting Sho-Gun from Netflix.com. I remember loving it as a child, but truthfully all I really remember is how lovely Lady Mariko was and how I wanted to be like her. Now that I am watching it again I am struck by how 1.it's like all late 70's early 80's. I mean like everything else in that time period, it's all narrated by like Orson Welles and stuff. 2.It's all anti-Catholic (or it is so far). Lots of stuff about Catholics occupying Japan for money and stuff, and lots of Jesuits calling the hero, the Protestant Anjin-San a heretic who will burn in hell. How annoying.
I was fooling around with graphics and came up with a button for the group read:
Help yourself to the image if you'd like to put it on your blog -- just put link tags around the img src code to link it back to the group read. Please drop me an email if you need help with the code.
And, to any graphics gurus out there -- if you could help me understand why my text goes all funny when I shrink my buttons, I would be most grateful.
Heard a John Kerry speech today: ended with "Purple Haze", I think. As a Hendrix tune for the campaign, it's better than "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire," which would be the most inapt Kerry tune imaginable. He has no fire. He wouldn't catch fire if you doused him in kerosene and shot Roman Candle balls at him. He's a sopping-wet asbestos poncho. But it was the 60s music that made me shudder. It appears that in the middle of the new war we're going to revisit the most important war ever, Vietnam.God no. Please no. I think I speak for millions when I say that I am deathly sick of the counterculture sixties. The music, the war, the protests, all the hagiography - it's not a reflection of the era's importance but the self-importance of the generation who hung on the bus as it trundled along down the same old rutted road of history.. I'm tired of hearing about the boomers' days of whine and neuroses; I'm weary of ritual genuflection to their musical icons; I'm utterly disinterested in most of the pop-cult trivia they hold so dear. We'll probably be better off when that demographic pig has been excreted from the python so we can see the era clearly without choking on the smoke.
Read the rest here.
Thanks to Alicia for the heads up -- and congratulations to her on her nomination.
And thanks to whoever nominated us!
I mentioned before my four year old is eating everything in site and it drives me nuts because I view it as gluttony. It is hard to get out of the house to get food with 5 feet tall snow drifts in the path of my front door, so I am very frustrated when I buy a hude bunch of bananas on Sunday, to see my four year old has eaten them all by Monday afternoon and no one else had a chance to have one. Especially when I purchased enough for everyone to have one a day for the week.
I try to cook healthy and yummy meals, and the rest of the family assures me I do.I am also frustrated that after I found Fastolph sitting in the corner of the pantry on a pile of banana peels, he will not eat his dinner.
I know the poor boy is hungry, he waited until dinner last night and practically consummed a pork tenderloin on his own.
I also think he is bored. His siblings do schoolwork all day, and even though I do some with him, his attention span is not very long. Poor guy is sort of in the odd
man out stage.
Alicia offers some constructive advice:
I almost made a comment about the hungry 4 year old - if you are accurate in your discernment that it is gluttony and not hunger, then I don't have a problem. And if you truly are budgeting food that tightly, I think that it is important to meet the needs of all your children, not just one. But I think that I would offer a constantly 'hungry' 4 year old something nutritious but not necessarily tasty to eat - a hungry child will eat whatever is offered, where as a greedy or bored one will whine "I don't like that!". As a child, I was sometimes so hungy that I ate the pith from the inside of my orange peels, and cracked open the prune kernels and ate the 'almond' inside. My mom had a weight problem and had very warped ideas about how much a growing child needed - I now have a weight problem and my own issues with food - but only one of my 6 kids has weight or food issues, and I guess that is all I can ask for (all 4 girls in my family have issues).
While I am somewhat concerned about weight for me, I worry a great deal more about proper nutrition for all the children. Since Gorbulas is an asthmatic, I worry that proper nutrition is his best line of defense from illness. The same is true for all my children. For example I have never said "Fastolph, do not eat anymore of that because you will get fat." (To be honest, I really do not worry about my kids and weight. In a few years they will no longer be able to eat some of the few things that kids enjoy that adults cannot lie French Fries, let them enjoy them now.). I have said however, "Fastolph, you may not have anymore of that because your brother and sister have not had any." Or "Fastolph, how about a glass of milk instead because I would like to see you get some more calcium for your bones, and less sugar that are in those apples..." Or today "Fastolph, you did not finish your lunch, so you may not have snacks until dinner." He wanted to play instead of eat, so I warned him.
Ahhh...You are Ken & Barbie as Aragorn and Arwen of
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
Taken in Strider, er stride, your love will
likely last until natural death.
Which Ken & Barbie Couple Do You Belong To?
brought to you by Quizilla
OK, so last week we were what I thought was "snowed in" meaning the driveway was unpassable. The week before we were "snowed in". Last Friday brought "snowed in" to a new level.
My husband has been parking the car at the end of the driveway and walking the driveway in order to get to work. In a desperate attempt to get out, I decided to try it. I did it, but will never do that again. The places in the driveway that are covered are covered by mounds of snow ranging from 3 to 6 feet high. Luckily it what not all soft snow, so in many places we were able to climb over them. But what a workout. Imagine, it is 14 below, but you do not feel cold at all because you are climbing snow mounds with a thirty pound munchkin in the sling. You only notice the cold because you are out of breath, and when you stop to take a breath, you uncover your face, inhale and and there is like no air. And it freezes everything insode when you breath. Never again!
So the next day, the tractor blew out our driveway. Woohoo. Then it snowed again. Then the winds blew again. I cannot get around to the back of my house to the woodshed (because of what else-snow), so we put our wood in the barn. 9 AM Friday morning, I put on my boots, coat and hat to go to the barn and get wood and five feet from my door is a wall of snow up to my waist. I attempted to climb over it only to find it is that loose powdery snow and I sink. So I had to trudge through it only to find a bigger mound in front of the barn. I was seriously starting to wigg out. I called my husband and told him not to come home out of fear I would find him dead from being stuck on the middle of a snow mound in the driveway. He laughed me off (for what it's worth, my opinion of my spouse has gone up dramatically watching him walk that twice a day, getting up in the middle of the night to tend the fire and chop wood etc.). Fortunately we were blown out that evening-which I doubted was possible. I watched those mounds get bigger and bigger each hour.
We got to Church yesterday and stocked up majorly on food because it is supposed to snow again tomorrow. Woo hoo! I think if I had a snow mobile (and it seems we are the only rejects who are not Amish who do not around here), I would think this much more fun.
1. Happy birthday to my dear husband! (who never reads this blog -- I could totally dedicate this post to talking about the hummus puffs and fermented soy birthday cake we're going to enjoy tonight, and he would be none the wiser.)
Possible slow blogging ahead -- today will be dedicated to birthday-related errands. I need to do some serious mending (why did four pairs of trousers up and need mending at once? couldn't they have taken turns?). Also working on getting ready for my parents' visit in two weeks.
2. Pride and Prejudice Group Read -- The Question Box for Chapters 1-6 is going to fall off the front page tomorrow, but I've linked to it in the new P&P Group Read section in our sidebar (it's box #7 there on the left) so it will be easy to find. I hope to add to it this week as I prepare our discussion for Friday.
3. Only three days left to cast your votes in Cybercatholic's 2004 St Blog's awards! Link via Secret Agent Man. I share his disappointment that there is no category for Best Fisking. On an unrelated topic, the official name of this blog is Two Sleepy Mommies, not Moss-Place, A Duet of Sleep-Deprived Maternal Units, Pansy and Peony's Kitchen, etc.
4. Super Bowl. Attention NFL -- precisely how are our country's astronauts and uniformed officers honored by a skinny mook wearing a poncho cut out of a U.S. Flag while he "performs?" And quit with that coy "unplanned" stuff. Justin and Janet were just following the script.
I liked the Staples ad and the ad with the Clydesdales and the donkey (I just like donkeys, I think they're cute.) Oh yes, the game was okay too, particularly at the end.
Terry muses on the sin of gluttony.
Gluttony (an ugly name for an ugly sin) seems to be a stealthy sin, like sloth. It's easy to ignore it, to rationalize it away, especially by focusing not on gluttony itself but on being fat. And, as we all know, there are only two deadly sins in this culture: smoking and being fat. (Well, maybe three if you include failing to recycle.)
But gluttony is everywhere in our society. The Catholic Encyclopedia quotes St Thomas as giving five species of gluttony: wanting to eat too soon, too expensively, too much, too eagerly, or too daintily.
Omnipresent vending machines and snack shops offer us plenty of opportunities to eat "too soon." Food is cheap and plentiful in our society; it's easy to eat "too much." Rushed meals and the neglect of the family dinner hour tempt us to eat "too eagerly," wolfing down food while we do something else. Screwtape gives us a famous example of another way gluttony is expressed in our society, in delicacy:
While working your hardest, quite rightly, on other fronts, you must not neglect a little quiet infiltration in respect of gluttony.... They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are 'properly' cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence — it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes — 'puts him out,' for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy. Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy. Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Chapter 17
Is it possible to be overly delicate with regard to the healthiness of food? I'm thinking of a birthday party I attended recently, where one of the children's mothers made a huge production of declining the punch because it had artificial coloring. Now, I know that there are some kids who are honestly sensitive to artificial colors, and if her kid has that senstivity of course she should decline. (A phone call to the hostess ahead of time, or a thermos in her own purse, might have also been a good idea.) But if he didn't, was it really necessary to make such a huge deal about it?
Is there a place for wanting to prepare food well, and with delicious, wholesome ingredients, without falling into delicacy? Perhaps this is where detachment comes in, to be able to eat with a smile whatever is set before you, whether it be handmade pasta with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Velveeta and elbow macaroni.
This is also where fasting comes in. Our society wants to feast constantly without fasting. If you fast for the sake of your arteries or waistline, that's okay. But if you fast for the sake of your soul, there's something wrong with you.
A constant feast becomes boring. The palate becomes dull, and more and more exotic and tasty treats are required. If you have a latte every morning, then it becomes no big deal, and only the triple mocha will be a real treat.
From an English Dominican site:
To someone who eats primarily food prepared commercially, the taste of ‘plain or home cooked’ food is bland, dull, unexciting. Where’s the pizzazz? Look at the cereal aisle in the store, everything, except wheatabix and cornflakes, are improved, flavour-enhanced, jazzed up. Oatmeal, surely that’s a wholesome, natural food, right? Now there are oatmeal bars in London and New York... the standard order is for Oatmeal with raisins, maple syrup and other added flavours. A far cry from the plain bowl of salted porridge.
Fasting sharpens our appreciation of the good things God gives us -- we're easier to please -- and helps us break our attachment to them.
Finally, Screwtape is certainly not the first writer to note the link between gluttony and impurity. Our society equates gluttony with being fat -- if you don't get fat, then gluttony isn't a problem -- in fact, you're considered lucky to be able to eat whatever you want and not gain weight. It's kind of like a culinary contraceptive mentality -- the desire to have sex whenever you want without any consequences; to eat all you want and not get fat.
Pansy and Peony: The Two Sleepy Mommies
