Peony Moss: June 2003 Archives

Just wanted to buzz in and say hi. I'm writing from my parents' house in North Dakota! For real!

My sister's wedding on Saturday was great: beautiful bridesmaids (who got hungry during the pre-wedding picture session and sent my husband out for pizza, which led to trouble when we were called for family pictures), magnificent bride, relaxed groom.... Hambet SLEPT through the whole wedding (thank you Guardian Angel!) so dh and I got to see the whole thing instead of strolling around in the parking lot. The reception was a lot of fun, too.

Yesterday was also a big family day (the groom is the youngest of six, I think, and they are all married with kids.) My mom had about 30 people for brunch. Now everyone is on the way home. We will be staying through the week. Nothing exciting planned. We might go out to my grandmother's farm this afternoon to pick some rhubarb, and later this week we might go to a lake in Minnesota.

Oh, avoid that interstate that runs between Rockford, IL and Beloit, WI. Just north of Beloit we got stuck in a horrendous, chew-your-leg-off-to-escape traffic jam. We were making sensational time until we got stuck there on Thursday.

Just wanted to post quickly before I said au revoir. My Things To Do list for today is running off the page.

Our basement is doing a little bit better, but when he was investigating the source of the leak, my husband found a lot of old, hidden water damage. So this is going to turn into quite a project. In a way, this may turn out to be Providential -- I was thinking about turning the basement into a hobby room this winter, so better to find the problem now than later. Everything we had stored was up on shelves, so the only damage we had was to my hoard of shipping boxes and to a scrap of carpet.

I have been told that we should rejoice when contradictions come our way, that they mean we're on the right track. So perhaps something good will be waiting on the other side of this.

Oh, I tried making that mint gelato. At first I was disappointed because I screwed up the custard (step 3) -- instead of being a nice, thick, smooth mixture, it resembled scrambled eggs suspended in water. But I mixed in the cream and put it in the fridge, and froze it in the ice cream maker the next morning. It came out all right! Very tasty. The mint flavor is a bit of a surprise, it's different than commercial mint ice cream -- more complex. So at least I have that little success to report.

Today I have to drive over to Virginia to give a house key to our friend Iris. She is going to come check on our basement a couple of times while we are away. I have to be back at two to meet the estimator. In between all this, I need to finish the laundry, pack the clothes, and wrap the wedding presents.

We will be leaving first thing in the morning and will be back around the second week in July (unless Iris calls us with bad news about the basement.) I will try to pop in from time to time, but otherwise we'll just be hanging out with the family. Hambet hasn't seen Grandma since this time next year, so it will be fun for them to see each other again.

Harry Potter

I liked Mr Riddle's comment on Envoy Encore.

So, how's the weather?

A gentleman died and found himself at the end of a long line. He saw at the head of the line some entering the pearly gates while others were being cast into a fiery hell by Satan. He observed both for a while and noticed that Satan would place a few individuals into a seperate pile. Curious, he dropped out of line and walked over. "Excuse me, Mr. Prince of Darkness, but why are some being set aside?" The evil one gave him a snide look and replied, "Oh, those?? They're from Maryland. Still too wet to burn."

Thanks to Rachel Watkins of HMS Blog for this joke.

Take the Quiz here!

Thanks to Elinor for this quiz.

Happy Birthday....

to Davey's mommy!

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So yesterday I gathered up the lavender and tied up six or seven bunches with string.
Husband: What are you doing?
Peony: I'm drying my lavender!
Husband: Drying lavender? What are you, some kind of warlock?

So I turned my husband into a frog and took the lavender bunches down to the basement to hang them up to dry.I flipped on the light, started down the stairs, looked ahead....

and saw about half an inch of water on the basement floor.

So last night we were slogging water into the drain and made a lot of progress. This morning dh went downstairs and all our progress is gone -- more water seeped in. I don't even know what this could mean, except that I won't like it. I'll have to call a basement guy tomorrow.

I am dismayed that this problem bubbled up right when we're planning to leave on Wednesday for my sister's wedding.

It's UNDER WATER, pure and simple! We've had at least four inches of rain this week. All my big plans are in a puddle.

No, I take that back, the lettuce continues to thrive. I'll cut some this afternoon. Three tomatoes cling to life, but they're not growing very much; no sign of fruit anytime soon. I'll have to check on the garlic, I hope it hasn't rotted in the ground.

Today I worked on my little perennial bed in the front. The lavender plant I planted last year is doing great -- I actually had to cut it back. I took a whole plastic grocery bag full of lavender and there's still plenty on the plant. So I am having fun putting it in vases and getting some ready to dry.

I also harvested my first mint this afternoon. I am crazy about mint ice cream (even though I have no business eating it!) and am eager to try this recipe for mint chocolate gelato.

I have two little planters by the front door. We did the dwarf-Alberta-spruce-in-the-pot thing this year, and then I filled in some of the space with cheap annuals (vinca vine, dusty miller, impatients, and that pink polka-dot plant) from the Home Depot. Those little planter gardens are doing great (and are making the dwarf spruces look rather..well, dwarfed....) So at least something's not drowning. I trimmed back some of the dusty miller and the vinca and brought it back with the lavender.

I am so proud -- for the first time in my life I am arranging little vases with flowers I grew myself!

A quick recap

Elinor posted a nice little greeting to us over at Mommentary, in which she wondered how we came to choose Pansy and Peony as our noms de blog.

Pansy and Peony Moss (of Lake-by-Downs) are our hobbit names. We are not related in real life, so we were tickled when we found out that we must be hobbit-kin.

Of course, we have hobbit families as well. Pansy's husband is Polo, and their lovely children are Rosey-Posey, Posco (who makes his First Communion this weekend), Fastolph, and baby Gorbulas.

My husband is also named Posco, and our two-year-old is Hambet (who is, at present, marauding in the kitchen.)

PS to Elinor -- please check your email! thanks!

Friday Five

1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short? Straight, with a bit of a wave. Shoulder length.

2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime? When I was younger I had a few reddish highlights. Now I have a few grayish highlights.

3. How do your normally wear your hair? Ponytail.

4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like? I'd lose the grey; maybe have some nice curls.

5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened? I've had some short haircuts that didn't come out the way I had hoped. So I just waited until they grew out....

Speaking of sacking and looting....

Over at Literarium, Lee Ann is driving a weeping horde of the practitioners of Poetry, Inc before her. Do check out her Poetry Mega-Post (several posts, dated June 19.)

Welcome to the blogroll!

Cacciaguida

Disputations

ibidem

Simplicity, modesty, and beauty

for the Catholic lady of style: Liturgical Dressing, or, The Seven-Dress Wardrobe

Things to do:

1. Order that Gregorian Hymns CD
2. Pick up some gift wrap
3. Cancel plans to sack and loot cities.

Do I have time to sack and loot one more city? Perhaps after I put the City of Fairfax to the torch and drive its inhabitants before me, I can let them come back on the condition that they do something about the traffic. But then I would have to sack and loot Centreville and Manassas first, so that the Fairfax refugees would have someplace to go. But then how would that impact the Northern Virginia bloggers?

Maybe I'll sack and loot Frederick, Maryland, instead. They should be accustomed to being sacked and looted from their Civil War days, and if I make them do something about the traffic before they return -- why, that would help everybody! My husband and I are leaving on a cross-country trip next week, and we were considering leaving on Tuesday afternoon to make some more headway. But unless we can leave at two in the afternoon, we might as well scrap it. Any time we gain will be lost sitting in that traffic on I-270 just south of Frederick.

a First Communicant picture....

Cacciaguida has posted a picture of Cacciadelia (wearing the lovely Fluffy White Dress her mother made.) (Scroll down to June 13 if the link at Cacciaguida's doesn't work.)

Barbarians Anonymous

One of the neat things about St Blogs is the creativity of its parishioners: not just blogging and tweaking of templates, but music, poetry, cooking, animation, cigars, books of all kinds....

As for me, I've thought about it, and I've finally come to the realization that I am a barbarian. I wish I weren't. But I am.

Part of it is due to my suburban upbringing. My family moved around a lot when I was growing up, and always from newish suburb to newish suburb. So I never got to know any place well, and the places I did live kind of looked like all the others. Even the food was pretty much the same; I'll have to take Kathy and Davey's parents' word for it that we had gen-you-wine New York pizza for lunch yesterday. I never knew "New York style pizza" was anything more than some kind of marketing thing. I have no region to call home, no city or town whose special little quirks are part of my own quirky history.

Even in my own faith I am a barbarian. I have come into nothing in the way of Traditions handed down from the Old Country, so I don't know how to do anything cool and authentically Catholic like making beautiful Easter eggs or sumptuous Christmas Eve feasts. I don't know many old Catholic hymns -- start Adoro Te Devote, Veni Sancte Spiritus, or even On This Day O Beautiful Mother and watch me just sit there (unless you were kind enough to bring a hymnal for me.)

I can get a meal on the table, but as far as being schooled in a cuisine with a history, like Pansy and Erik -- forget it. I think I was twenty-five before I knew that Parmesan cheese doesn't necessarily come from a green can.

I can barely sew. I'm terrible at choosing clothes, and I have no sense of style. I don't know much about embroidery, knitting, or any other traditional crafts. I can't speak a foreign language. I can't play a sport with any degree of skill.

Music? I can pick out a tune on the piano, but that's about it. I know almost nothing about music history or theory (mention the word mode if you want to see my brain instantly shut down.) Drawing? I can sketch a little, but lack the talent or skill to do anything advanced with it. Reading? A mile wide, an inch deep; there's no topic or author I think I could call myself knowledgeable about. Writing? I can't even compose a limerick. In high school I swooned over poetry and tried my hand at writing a couple of poems and stories, but even then I was afraid I could never Be a Writer because I had nothing to write about. I kept a journal into my twenties, but gave it up and destroyed the old journals. They were so trite they made me sick.

Basically I feel like I've been dropped on this Earth with a birth certificate, a Baptismal certificate, and a bit of a knack for doing well on standardized tests like the GRE. Again, part of this is my own unsettled, rootless upbringing this. Another part of this is not being encouraged to develop skills or interests (or discouraged from doing so, as the case may have been), and part of this is my own darn laziness.

Bobos attempt to get an identity by buying it. I know that won't work. But is there a remedy for barbarianism?

Various

not much to blog about. Gee, I miss Pansy, but I hope she's having a great time with the kids. Three little boys (four if you count her husband) in a tent? Bravery!

If I remember the date correctly, her son Posco will be receiving his First Holy Communion tomorrow. (If I'm wrong, perhaps it will be on Sunday.)

Meanwhile, I have a couple of ideas for things I want to blog on but they are not really jelling. I am kind of annoyed with myself because I have frittered most of the afternoon away on a small decision (staying with our present ISP versus switching.) I ended up making lots of phone calls and even attempting to load another ISP's trial software (which froze up my computer) before I finally just gave up and renewed our account. I could have done so much else with that time.

This morning Hambet found a chopstick that is painted black with a red tip. He started waving it around and chanting "peeyut bu'er sanwidges!" I was so tickled! I think this is the first time I've seen him consciously imitating someone (that someone being The Amazing Mumford.)

Note to self part two:

If caught sitting in traffic in the City of Fairfax, do not feed the coyotes.

Note to self:

Never, ever, ever travel through the City of Fairfax without allowing at least forty to forty-five minutes for sitting in traffic.

Housekeeping

Looks like Pansy made it camping (hope her bathing suit came out well and that she gets some pictures -- can't wait to see that leopard print!)

So I'm running the store, but I may be hanging the "back soon" sign out on the door pretty frequently. I'm trying to catch up on a lot of household stuff in preparation for our family trip. We're leaving next week for Fargo (seriously!) for my sister's wedding! Woo hoo!

This morning I'm headed over to Virginia to the Pfaltzgraff store to pick out a wedding present. I'm thinking about the rectangular baker and a set of napkins. I am at a complete loss -- lately I have been helpless at choosing presents. Part of it's just because I haven't been too creative in thinking up ideas, part of it is that I generally dislike shopping, and part of it is that shopping is more painful than ever with a impatient toddler in tow. Hambet is a slender little thing, as flexible and agile as a monkey, and he can slip out of the snuggest safety belts on carts and strollers.

After my trip to Pfaltzgraff I'm looking forward to a nice lunch. On the way back home I need to pick up some groceries.

Around this same time last year, I cut a blouse to sew and I never finished it. I wonder if I could get it done before we leave next Wednesday?

Picture puzzles

I would like to find a nice picture of the Sacred Heart to put on the blog, but I am having trouble finding a nice picture that I'm 100% sure is in the public domain.

I would so appreciate it if some of our more graphically gifted (or legally minded) friends could give us some pointers on when it's okay and not okay to use pictures (especially those in the news, or those of uncertain provenance snagged from the net.) We'd like a good-looking blog, but not at the price of having an inbox filled with threats of legal action.

Something good to read

We had a nice weekend. Saturday was our anniversary, so between that and Father's Day, my husband Posco and I were thinking a lot about how blessed we were to find each other and be given the gift of our little boy.

Posco's Father's Day gift was The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice by Philip Jenkins. He had liked Jenkin's previous book (The Next Christendom) so he was really been looking forward to this one (and had been dropping some pretty big hints....)

Apparently the book did not disappoint -- he's already done with it (216 pages), has assigned me to read it, and is telling me to recommend it to my friends. He spoke especially highly of the chapters on The Situation. (Alas, he declined to write a Special Guest Blog on the book -- "who do I look like, Amy Welborn or something?")

Here is a link to the WaPo's review of the book, written by Paul Baumann, the editor of Commonweal. When I first read the review, something about it didn't seem to sit quite right (especially the last three paragraphs.) After reading the book, my husband suggested that the reviewer "probably started sweating around page 12".

Happy Father's Day

Lord God, loving father of us all, guide and instruct my husband in your ways that he may be a good earthly father to our children.

Help him to be wise and prudent in carrying out your designs for him as a father, and aid him that in all his ways his inspiration and example will direct our children's thoughts to You.

Grant him patience in carrying out the difficult and burdensome taks of being a good father.

Teach him a strength and firmness that is tempered with gentleness and is never harsh or forbidding.

Teach him to be kind without being yielding or indulgent.

Give him the understanding that a father should have -- an understanding that will invite the confidence of his children.

Give him the cheerful strength that is so often needed in times of trial; and may his love for our children, and my love for him, sustain him in these times of stress.

Give him a childlike trust in you, and may that trust in you be rewarded by a mirroring of your fatherhood in him. And so may his children know an increase of joy and love as they are brought closer to You through him. Amen.

from Mothers' Manual by A. Francis Coomes, S. J.

Cool.

You are Beast!

You are brilliant and extremely clever. You can
handle almost any problem swiftly and
efficiently. You are devoted to philosophy and
are always up for a good discussion.
Sometimes, though, your anger gets the best of
you and you upset those whom you care about.


Which X-Men character are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks to Dave Pawlak for this quiz.

What Common Breed of Dog Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks to Kathy for the link.

Love Is Everyone's Vocation: An Interview with Catholic Actress Lindsay Younce

Bobbi has posted her interview with the star of the upcoming Therese movie.

From Steamy to Sporadic: Can You Get the Sizzle Back Into a S**x-Starved Marriage?

First, the *** are to make us a little less visible to creepy Google users.

Second, five jobs? "hard to find time and energy to be intimate"? Duh!

Something to go with those bathing suits

thanks to RC at Catholic Light.

By the way, what is that TrackBack thingie and how does it work?

A trip to Iraq

Think you're having a bad day? Here's a good way to get a little perspective: Alicia shares a letter from a colleague who spent two weeks doing humanitarian work in Iraq.

Dear Alicia,

I sent you an email ("random Peony stuff".) I hope it arrived okay.

From today's Washington Post:

Pitting Gospel Against 12-Gauge In Hyattsville:

To my dear husband (in the unlikely event that he might read our blog sometime:)

a great big Peony thank you for being nice about it when I called you at work today to reporove you for sneaking muffins for a midnight snack, when we had actually eaten the muffins last night for dessert

I'm just writing this entire week off.

I blogged earlier this week about how Hambet seemed to be soothed by watching "Farmer Joe" over and over again.

Unfortunately, the robot's calming effect was less and less effective. Hambet developed a low-grade fever and a stuffy nose that made it hard for him to sleep, so by early this afternoon the fatigue and the irritation were driving him wild. I called the pediatrician hoping for a little advice; when the office nurse came on the phone, Hambet was screaming his head off because I wasn't allowing him to stuff an entire stick of string cheese into my mouth while I was on the phone. ("No sweetheart, Mommy needs to talk, and then she needs to chew before she can swallow.")

So I was trying to explain that things sounded worse than they were because he was tired and furious, and she said, "I can't hear a thing you're saying. Can you get here in twenty minutes?"

Well, as it turns out, Hambet not only had a stuffy nose and scratchy throat, but an ear infection in one ear. I felt like such a Bad Mother for not recognizing it, but he's only had one other ear infection in his life, one that didn't require treatment.

So we're starting the amoxicillin, and I'll be plying him with apple juice and fruit bars. I would also like to thank Victor for producing another Lamtoon (Hambet calls this one "hippo and baby") and Pixar for giving us "Toy Story 2". I don't know why Hambet likes this movie so much, but he always asks for "Buzz and Goody", and anything that takes his mind off his nose for 15 minutes at a time is okay with me.

Garden Report

We have had a grand total of nine sunny days for the entire month of May, and we had a doozy of a rainstorm last night. I need to go out and check the damage, but from the window it looks like I've lost all my tomato plants. The "Taxi" tomato drowned last week, and it looks like the others are gone too.

It's June, and that means it's time for....

anniversaries! Happy anniversary to Sparki and her husband, who celebrated their ninth anniversary yesterday....

Daughters of Mary Gives Girls Active Role in Service to Parish and Spiritual Life

Delores Nelson, the Director of Religious Education at Saint Andrew the Apostle Parish in Arlington[sic], Virginia, organized the group two years ago in order to offer an opportunity for young women to serve the Church in a way that would not copy or interfere with the traditional role of altar boys....

KTC has authored a quiz....

You are JEEVES!

You are to be treasured and rewarded. You are the
Renaissance Man: knowledgeable, effectual, and
smooooth! May you shimmer forever.


Which Wooster and Jeeves Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I have only read a few of the Jeeves and Wooster stories, so I'm not as up on the Wodehouse canon as Kathy and other St Bloggers. But how I love them! When three-day-old Hambet was readmitted to the hospital, I kind of forgot to pack clothes for myself but I did remember my copy of the Complete Jeeves and Wooster. It was the perfect read.

When Mass is girl stuff

Thanks to Victor again for the heads up for this article: Where Are the Men? (in a nutshell, they're turned off by all the "girlie stuff" at Mass.)

Some years back, my grandmother (of happy memory) popped into a church on a drizzly March afternoon and came upon a youngish priest teaching two altar boys how to assist at a Mass of Christian Burial. It was kind of a Mark Twain scenario -- one of the boys was very serious and attentive, and the other boy...well, wasn't. We had a chance to chat with Father after he dismissed the boys, and we asked him what he thought of the idea of having girls serving at the altar.

"I think it's a terrible idea," he said. "Being an altar boy is one of the main ways they participate more deeply in church, and it's a big step for some of these boys in discerning vocations to the priesthood. If the girls get involved, then it will become a girl thing, and boys won't want to do it."

For myself, I like the practice that some parishes have of having older boys -- middle school and up -- serving at the altar, sometimes serving with one of the men of the parish.

My house has been taken over by a robot with a rake

I made the mistake of showing Victor's new animated short to little Hambet. Now, every time he sees me sit down at the computer, he comes running up asking, "Fahmuh Joe? Please? Fahmuh Joe?" And since Hambet is two, one viewing is not enough. No, we must have an endless loop of Farmer Joe. It's especially bad today since Hambet is a little under the weather -- he's too irritable to sleep, too irritable to play. About all he can manage is sitting on my lap watching Farmer Joe.

A hair-raising story

Crisis magazine's story on the Wizard Clip incident.

Another account.

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston's account.

Catholic Light has moved....

and has a snazzy new look, which seems to include joining the elite ranks of Moveable Type users. We've updated our blogroll. Do check out Sal's coverage of the Lord's contribution to a parish renovation.

Things out of this world and random creepy things

Mark Shea has an interesting piece up on the paranormal.

Stories like this really interest me. I am not one to run around discerning the spirits binding or unbinding every article in the house, but at the same time the invisible is every bit as real (perhaps even more real, philosophically speaking) than the visible.

I have never "seen a ghost," but I know people who claim that they might have. I know someone whose intuition is just uncanny -- I've witnessed her saying, "Oh, the phone's for you, it's so-and-so" -- in the instant before the phone rang. (It wasn't a set up.) TIme and again her "hunches" have been proven correct.

What about places, and the supernatural influence that can linger on? My husband and I used to pass by a house, in a neighborhood near ours, that just looked creepy. It was one of those sixties houses with small windows, so already it looked like it was keeping a secret, but in this house all the windows were boarded up and lower ones were partially hidden by the overgrown hedges. The rest of the neighborhood is pretty well kept-up, so it really stood out. There were no notices or sale signs for the house. We were wondering what the story was until my husband remarked, "I know what the story is on that house. That's the murderer's house."

Months went by, and then the boards came off the windows. The hedges were removed. The house has new windows, and it's looking much better. Obviously the house was sold and the new owners are fixing it up. We passed by it this weekend and my husband remarked, "I bet the new owners got that place for a song."

I asked, "Would you have bought it?"

"No way. ...Would you?"

"No. ...I can't tell you why. My rational mind would say it would be illogical, but all the rest of me would be saying no way are you buying that house!"

Would you have bought the murderer's house? How about a house where you knew something violent had happened? Why or why not?