Quick Takes: Heavy and Light

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I just didn't have the heart to talk about the election the other day.  I had always expected President Obama to be re-elected, or at least for quite some time now.  I had a good talk with a friend the day after about what it all means.

President Obama has declared war on the Catholic Church with his HHS Mandate.  I know that lots and lots of people, and even a majority of Catholics, just don't see this.  We voted for this state of affairs, and the gloves-off attack on religious freedom that's sure to come is entirely the consequence of our lukewarmness.  The President is trying to force division:  Do we choose the unborn and let Catholic service in the public square disappear, or to serve the poor and the sick at the expense of the lives of our smallest brothers and sisters?  It's an impossible choice.  We can't abandon any of our brothers and sisters and still be Christians.  Do we choose to follow the laws of God, or the unjust laws of Caesar?  There is only one choice. 

But it's going to require even more heroic grace than ever.  We are a weak people.  And there will be many souls lost in the battle.  Lord have mercy.

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So new political strategy:  Be a saint.

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While I try to figure out #2, I still have the everyday domestic things to attend to.  (Actually, those are my means to sanctity, as I've talked about a little bit here.)  Oh, yes, happy belated Feast of All Saints!

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The garden is finished for the year, except for five lonely heads of lettuce in the cold frame.  I'm going to miss our little (?) friend, the praying mantis who lived in our green bean plants and kept away all the bad bugs.  I can't count how many times I've thought, "How did I miss that big one?" only to find I was trying to harvest the praying mantis!  Anthony always had to look for him each time we went out to pick some green beans.  He called him his "pet" and would in fact pet him.  Katie Rose thinks he's funny too.

 

 

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We pulled out all of our carrots, even though we're a ways from a hard freeze.  Most of them would have been respectable radishes, but they probably weren't going to get much bigger at this point.  Some of them were getting eaten by clusters of little grey bugs, so I thought it's probably better to take away their food source.  We'd been pulling them up periodically, so this final haul is probably about 1/4 of the total carrot yield.  I'll definitely grow them again next year, but I'll try harder to space them properly to begin with.  Thinning carrots is a sad job, and I mostly left them too close together to really get to be a decent size.

 



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14 pounds of green tomatoes.  Most of them went to make green tomato relish.  That project took up half of the day on Tuesday, so I wasn't just fretting about the election.  It's quite good!  This might not make sense, but it tastes old-fashioned.  Green tomato relish is the embodiment of the old-time idea of never letting anything go to waste. It looks really Christmasy, green with bits of red.  The recipe yielded over a GALLON of relish, so I think some of these jars are destined to be Christmas gifts.

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There's a runaway train of clean but unfolded laundry behind me as I'm typing this.  I should get Anthony down for his nap and deal with that.

 

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7 Quick Takes: Nuptiality, Sexuality, and Pot Roast

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My sister Elizabeth got married on Saturday! Definitely the biggest news around here. It was a simple, intimate wedding, exactly what Jason and Liz wanted. A lifetime of joy to you!

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I adapted this recipe for the slow cooker yesterday.  And changed a bunch of stuff, so I think it counts as being original.

Trim a 2 1/2 lb. chuck roast of all visible fat.  Heat a tbsp of oil in a skillet, sear the meat on all sides.  Put meat aside.  Saute one chopped onion, 3 cloves minced garlic, and a package of sliced mushrooms in the pan.  Put the vegetables in a crock pot, put the meat on top.  Add a bay leaf, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper. Pour a can of beef broth over the whole thing.  Cook on low four hours.

Add 1/2 cup of pearl barley, cook on low another four hours.

Remove meat.  Stir in 1 1/2 cups of frozen peas, turn heat to high.  Peas will be ready in about five minutes.  Empty crock-pot into a colander set over a bowl to catch the gravy.  Yum.

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Note to self:  Do not chop onions while wearing the baby.  She cries too!

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Speaking of baby wearing, I've been wearing Katie Rose pretty much All. The. Time.  With Anthony, I would wear him because I'd read about how beneficial being close to Mother is for babies.  This time it's because I need two hands free when Anthony's around, I don't like moving the baby from one landing zone to another constantly, she doesn't take kindly to being left in the swing or bouncer for more than a few minutes anyway, and I need to protect her from her big brother's affections!  So purely practical, not at all idealistic.  I've read that first borns tend to be idealists, while second borns are pragmatists.  I believe it!

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I'm back to doing French lessons with Rosetta Stone.  I took a hiatus when baby time came, but I actually remembered all of the vocabulary!  Hurray!  Now I'm on to some more about families.  The phrases for hugging and kissing in France are quite difficult to me.  If I go to France I'll just have to maintain my personal space.  I like that the words for "wife" and "woman" are the same.   It is in the nature of the woman to be a wife.  Every vocation is nuptial: We can be married to a man or else be brides of Christ. "Her desire will be for her husband."

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In the same vein, my friend Kate shared a crazy thought with me this week:  Ballroom dancing is really Theology of the Body in a nutshell.  It's actually quite brilliant.  I keep coming up with more ways it fits.  Here are a few:  You can only dance with one person.  It needs to be male-female pairings to really work.  The man has to lead.  If both try to lead, they fight each other, and if neither leads, nothing happens.  If the woman leads, it doesn't really work so well because the woman's role is to be receptive.  She is the one being spun around, dipped, etc. in most dance moves.  They could technically make it work, but it would require much more effort in communication than if they did it the traditional way (e.g. The man only has to turn his hand a certain way for her to spin around.).  It's easy to come up with them.  Share yours in the comments, if you're feeling inspired.

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Kudos to the Boy Scouts for holding fast to their policy of excluding gays from being members or leaders.  And boo to Mitt Romney for trying to appeal to both sides on matter.  Romney's been an all-around disappointment, so this is really no surprise.  Fence sitter since 1994.  At least he's consistent.  Bah.  Anyway, I wanted to talk about the Boy Scouts.  The Supreme Court upheld their right to exclude whomever they wish as they are a private organization, but the pressure has naturally been turned way up of late.  I hope they stay strong.  They're absolutely right to keep gays out.  The great thing, or one of the great things, about the Boy Scouts is that they are unapologetically masculine.  That is a rare, rare thing nowadays.  Even the military is more and more feminized!  Boys need to experience manliness, to test their mettle against nature together with other boys.  Adding a gay kid to the group would completely change the group dynamics, no matter how much sensitivity training occured beforehand.  This shouldn't need to be explained, but it would just be plain awkward to have to share a tent with someone who might be sexually attracted to you.  Boy Scouts ought to be a safe place to test and develop one's manhood.  Adding homosexuals to the mix would automatically hinder that process by making it self-conscious.  It wouldn't be fair to the majority of the boys, and most likely the gay child would have a hard time of it, too.  They would sense that their presence is a problem, even if everyone were outwardly very accepting.  And homosexual leaders are just a bad, bad, bad idea.  Let's not repeat the clergy abuse scandals that arouse from admitting gays to the priesthood.  If people object to this policy, they can start their own organization rather than bully the Boy Scouts into changing it.  The American Heritage Girls were founded as an alternative to the ever more liberal Girl Scouts, and they are thriving.



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Quick Takes!

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My parents and younger sister were here visiting all last week.  It was super super hot, so we did a lot of indoor things and splashed in the big fountain at Sawyer Point.  But we didn't take many pictures.  Or at least Teresa hasn't e-mailed them to me yet. By far the most exciting event of their stay happened on the Fourth of July.  A power line burst and was shooting sparks all over the sidewalk directly in front of our house.  Our guardian angels were taking care of us, and our neighbor's bushes, which miraculously did not go up in flames in the heat and dry weather.  But that wasn't the most exciting part.  The exciting part was that there were fire trucks, police cars, and power company trucks all RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE!!!  Then the line burst again and they all came back!

This photo is after a solid hour of truck watching.  We couldn't tear Anthony away.

Aunt Teresa.  Anthony calls her "Essa."  Now so do I.



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I took Anthony to see even MORE TRUCKS this week.  A nearby township hosted "Touch a Truck."  Kids can climb onto garbage trucks, construction vehicles, a city bus, a Medivac helicopter, a fire truck, etc.  There were probably about 20 vehicles.  And 200 charged up preschool boys.

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2 1/2 months old!

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I've noticed that I'm in much better shape now than I ever was before children, even though I used to conscientiously work out then and never now.  I'll spare you the photographic evidence, but certain areas of flab I thought were just facts of life are gone!  It could have something to do with the daily walks/trots around the neignborhood wearing the baby and either chasing Anthony or pulling him in the wagon.  Or bringing the dirty laundry down two flights, a clean load up two flights, back down one then right back up again because I forgot something, then back down, then up again because the baby's awake.  Or scrubbing the dried-up jelly off the chairs.  I could do a whole post about how motherhood IS exercise.

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Eight cucumbers today! And lots lots more coming very soon.  I need to learn how to make pickles, and fast.

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We had a great summer menu last night:  Grilled porkchops and peaches, corn on the cob, cole slaw, and watermelon salad.  The watermelon salad is a recipe from my mother-in-law.  All it is is watermelon chunks, a handful of chopped parsley, feta cheese, toasted pine nuts, and a splash of lemon juice.  Fabulous.  Tonight will be chilled cucumber soup.

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Here's another quote from Abandonment to Divine Providence.  This one hit me hard yesterday:

"Faith is the mother of sweetness, confidence, and joy.  It cannot help feeling tenderness and compassion for its enemies by whose means it is so immeasurably enriched.  The greater the harshness and severity of the creature, the greater by the operation of God, is the advantage to the soul.  While the human instrument strives to do harm, the divine Workman in whose hands it is, makes use of its very malice to remove from the soul all that might be prejudicial to it."

Jean-Pierre De Caussade is a genius.  The first line is a good litmus test to see if I am really trusting in God:  Where am I on the "sweetness, confidence, and joy" scale?



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7 Quick Takes

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I am so excited to introduce my godson, Vincent Alexander Marie!  I have not met him yet, but he's going to be baptized on Sunday after Mass.  Isn't he adorable?  There are a few more pictures over at his mama's blog, My Song of Joy.  Congratulations, Emily!

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If you would be so kind, please take a prayer request:  My Aunt Marge, my godmother and great-aunt, died rather suddenly.  She collapsed vomiting in her driveway after clearing snow off of her car.  Thankfully it had snowed, otherwise this may have happened while she was driving!  A neighbor saw it happen and called 911.  They soon found that she was suffering from a massive brain tumor and kidney cancer.  She died a few days later.  My Aunt Marge was a good woman.  I think she was at peace with the manner of her death.  For many years she loving cared for her mentally ill sister, for her mother who lived well into her 90's, and up until now for her husband who has had various health problems.  She would have never called any of them a burden, but she didn't pretend it was easy, either.  Knowing her, she would have been glad her family had been spared the suffering of seeing her suffer a long time.  And I know she was very thankful to have enjoyed good health for 80 years so she could care for her family.

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I mentioned briefly in my last post that naptime hasn't been happening of late.  All of a sudden about a week ago Anthony has been refusing to go to sleep until he's just so tired he can't stay awake anymore.  It was pretty miserable.  Zero to meltdown in 5 seconds flat. Well, it's naptime now, for the third day in a row!  I was beginning to think we weren't going to have naptime ever again.  I've started laying down with Anthony on my bed for stories and snuggles, as recommended by Auntie Leila, after lunch.  Before I had been unwittingly making it into a battle of wills. I was trying to discipline him into staying in bed because I said to.  He still fights going to bed at night.  I tried taking him to bed with me last night, too and that was better than the waiting in the hall and putting back to bed every two minutes method we had been using.  I still am not sure what caused the sudden change, probably just being almost two.  But I definitely think he's not physically ready to give up the nap yet.  I do like the special quiet time together, and I think that will be especially good for him once the new baby is born.

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Here is our lettuce two weeks after sprouting:

It's looking kind of leggy.  I think I need to thin it but I hate doing that.  I did give it fertilizer, so I don't think that's the problem.  It didn't need thinning when it was outdoors.  Anyone do indoor lettuce before?

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French lessons with Rosetta Stone are progressing.  I'm finishing Unit 1, and Ryan is a little ahead.  Ryan is definitely better at it than I am, but it's really fun that we're learning it together.  Last night we were making up songs with our present limited vocabulary:  "Le soleil est jaune et le ciel est bleu.  L'herbe est vert et les fleurs sont rouges.  J'ai un sandwich. La vie est belle."  ("The sun is yellow and the sky is blue.  The grass is green and the flowers are red.  I have a sandwich.  Life is good.")

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Christine wrote an awesome post about skirt-wearing.  I agree with everything she has to say about the feminity and the increased formality perceived when a woman wears a skirt.  I also appreciate her charitable attitude towards us pantsers.  However, after much internal guilt-tripping about how I agree with the ideal of the beskirted woman, I have decided that finding new clothes yet again is just not how I should be spending my limited energy at the moment.  I will be looking out for cute and practical fuller skirts on future thrifting trips, however!  Seems like it's tough to find not-a-denim-sack ones in my size.  I have been skirts-only before for almost two years, and it became this big overblown horrible thing, partly for reasons I could not control, and partly because I'm stubborn and prideful.  Then I went back to mostly pants and then kind of forgot about the whole affair.  I don't think it would be a problem now, necessarily, but organic change is probably preferable, and certainly more affordable.  Changing sizes constantly is also a concern.  Now that I've overshared,  go read Christine's piece.

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While we're on the subject of clothes,  I'm excited that I've received a huge binful of maternity clothes from a friend of a friend.  They all fit, and are all in great shape!  I've been wanting skinny jeans to wear with long tops/short dresses and boots, (an indecisive "dress or pants?" outfit haha) and there were THREE pairs in there!  Good things come to she who puts off spending money?

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