Month: August 2010

Dear Justine

Today’s guest post is written by a fine woman who more or less strong-armed me into being her friend.  Like so many fabled relationships, it all began online.  And, if a restraining order means anything at all anymore, it’ll stay there.

However,  I want it known that this post was published entirely of my own free will, and has nothing to do with blackmail, coercion, or any kind of weird, contagious, free-floating Italian guilt (is that a thing?).  We both like to tease, but deep down are decent people; and so most of our correspondence begins:  “Um, you know that was just a joke, right?  I like your hair!” or “Stay away from my husband, homewrecker!”

 

Again, for the record:  Justine Schmiesing is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life, and that is the reason she’s writing this guest post today.  That and that she’s damn funny, and should probably stop being a blog hog and open up her writing for public consumption again.

One more thing:  if you have a question for Dear Justine, send it to me at simchafisher [at] gmail [dot] com and I will be sure to forward it to her.

Enjoy!

 

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DEAR JUSTINE:  When a Spoonful of Sugar Just Isn’t Enough

Dear Justine,

School’s out for the year, and now my kids are complaining about having to help around the house. I’ve read parenting articles that encourage turning chores into games, but the games are never ones my kids want to play. Any suggestions?

Signed,

Doubting Mary Poppins

Dear DMP,

Ah summer! Those crazy, lazy days when everyone stops eating, using the bathrooms, and wearing clothes.

No wait, that’s heaven.

So unless you LIKE being the only one stuck slaving away inside during the pool party, it’s perfectly reasonable to mobilize your troops and make them pitch in to clean up the mess that they are, very likely, responsible for.

 

My kids hate chores, but they are always up for a game. Of course, MY favorite housecleaning games are based on movies I don’t allow the little tykes to watch (likeAliens and Predator), but here are a few of my kids’ picks that are almost equally fun and effective.

Hot potato

(One player)

Player is handed an object by parent and instructed to put it away where it belongs. Player then pretends the object is too hot to carry all the way and shoves it in the first available hiding spot. Player loses if parent finds the object before they forget who they told to put it away.

Unfreeze Tag

(Single or multiple players)

Game begins with parent assigning a chore (like clearing the table or picking up toys). Players perform assigned duties until parent steps out of the room, then players freeze in place and do not move again until parent returns.

Players win if chore takes three times longer to complete than it should have.

Town Cryer

(Multiplayer)

Players are assigned a task that involves them working at a slight distance from parent, anywhere from the next room over to the backyard. Players take turns shouting at the top of their lungs, “So-and-so, why aren’t you HELPING?” “So-and-so, GET UP and HELP!” Game is won if parent shows up and spanks So-and-so. Game is lost if parent shows up and spanks everyone. (Town Cryer can be played in conjunction with Unfreeze Tag for double the fun.)

Telephone

(Two player)

Game begins with parent giving a message to one player assigning a chore to the second player. First player delivers the message, with the option to add their own embellishments (like, “Ha-Ha”, and “I don’t haaave to”). Second player may choose to obey the messenger, ignore the messenger, or shoot the messenger. If messenger is ignored or shot, they may choose to tattle on the second player or shoot back. Game ends when both players are separated and assigned double chores.

Blind Man’s Bluff

(Single player version)

Player cleans their bedroom in such a manner that parent can’t tell whether or not a blind man did it.

 

The Blame Game

(Two or more players)

Game begins when parent (preferably Mom) questions why an assigned group chore has not been completed. Players take turns blaming each other and saying “Nah-AHH!” while parent tries to sort out the truth through all the confusion. Game is won if Mom starts crying. Game is over if Dad comes home.

Last, but not least, Daddy’s favorite…

Concentration

(As many players as necessary)

Players who are have lost their focus and motivation to do chores properly use paper and pencil to hand copy Pope John Paul II’s encylical Laborem exercens, (On Human Work) until they are found again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So the next time you pull out the vacuum and hear a loud whining sound before it’s even plugged in, just remember that even though Julie Andrews’s charges were only kid actors who cheerfully did what they were told because they got paid a lot of money, she sure got it right when she sang, “Find the fun and SNAP! the job’s a game!”

The Perils of Excessive Modesty

Today I’m over at The Inside Blog, talking about a new take on modesty.  The blogging wife of a protestant minister at Musings of a Young Mom (don’t worry, her writing is much better than the title of her blog) argues that excessive modesty objectifies women (which reminds of me of gluttonous thin people).

And we’re off to the fair!  That’s not an expression – we really are off to the fair, and expect to be half-dead by early afternoon.

 

Seven Quick Takes: “Isn’t It Holy?” Edition

It’s so linky around here today, I can hardly stand it!   I’m doing Seven Quick Takes with Jen from Conversion Diary, and responding to a rare tagging from The Anchoress.

She lists her five favorite Catholic devotions, and she wants to know what mine (and yours) are.

Now, I’m in kind of a spot here.

On one hand, the last six months or so have seen me practicing Catholic devotions in the same way as my three-year-old has been practicing personal hygiene:  whining and screaming and making things so miserable for everyone that, more often than not, we just skip it and walk away disgusted.

On the other hand, whatever Lizzie wants, Lizzie gets.

Just to make things harder on myself, I’m going to list seven, not five, so I can do Seven Quick Takes.  Maybe the extra two will count as doing mortification.  That’s a devotional, right?

Seven Favorite Catholic Devotions

–1–

Novenas

I think of novenas as spritual interventions — not “We pray for divine intervention,” but like:  “Well, do you think it might help if we held an intervention?”  A nine-step program, if you will.  You don’t set these things up for everyday problems.  Nobody enjoys it, and we’d all rather be somewhere else, but if this doesn’t work, then nothing will.  I kind of imagine the Holy Spirit slumping resignedly in a folding chair, drinking tepid coffee and willing at least to hear us out.

–2–

Adoration

It’s been a long, long time.  I’ve made dozens of resolves to sign up again, but I keep putting it off.  But when we were going, my husband and I signed up as a couple, and each went on alternate weeks.  Just two hours a month each, but it Made A Difference.

Sometimes when you go into the chapel, you feel wonderful.  You feel like you’re coming home from a long and miserable trip, when everyone missed you terribly and is so glad to see you.

And sometimes you feel like a bored, itchy hypocrite who has no business taking up space in this weird, demanding religion.  But I heard someone compare Adoration to standing in the sun:  you may not notice it happening, but it will surely change you.

–3–

Scriptural Rosary

This is not so much a favorite devotion as an inescapable one.  It’s kind of like taking your vitamins:  it’s so easy, and it couldn’t hurt, so you might as well just do it every night.  Gulp.

My kids enjoy it (we only do one decade a night) because eventually they will get to lead us in praying The Ascension.  The little rats read “‘Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,’” and then they deliberately pausebefore continuing with “Hail Mary . . .” so they can make one or two inattentive people think we’re up to the Glory Be already.  They also like to trap house guests that way.  Isn’t that nice?  They’re wonderful children.

–4–

The Chaplet of Transition in Labor

When I’m in labor, I offer up the pain for people who suffer infertility.  That sounds a lot more pious than it really is.  Really, the only good thing about delivering babies is that, for once, you have something truly horrible to offer up–but, unlike other sacrifices, such as fasting or doing good works, you can’t get out of it.  So you might as well try and get something out of it (besides the baby, I mean).  Also “For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world” is nice and rhythmic, and helps you breathe steadily.

–5–

ברוך אתה ה’ א‑לוהינו מלך העולם, שהכל נהיה בדברו.‏

Ha ha, got you there!  When I was little, we used to say the Hebrew blessing before meals (later, I found out it was Hebrew with a Brooklyn accent), and then we’d say it in English:  “Blessed art Thou, o Lord our God, King of the universe, by Whose word all things exist.”  It has such a wonderful rhythm of certainty at the end:  “By Whose word All.  Things.  Exist.”  I don’t know how to read Hebrew (although I did once advise someone on whether or not her mezuzah was upside down, so I know that much), but here is a transliteration of the prayer: Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha‑olam, she‑hakol nih’ye bidvaro; and here is  someone saying it.

There are actually several different prayers before meals, depending on what kind of food you will be eating.  This may very well be technically the wrong prayer to use every day, but, you know, there’s a New Covenant and all.  You’re covered.

–6–

Palming it Off On Someone Else

I thought it was hilarious when Mark Shea recently explained that he started posting prayer requests on his blog

largely because I feel inept as an intercessory pray-er, and so had a hope that maybe somebody out there in the audience might have the charism I lack when it comes to having a clue how to pray. I thought I was being very clever fobbing this off on others; but, of course, what I stupidly failed to foresee was that this would inevitably result in lots more prayer requests for everything under the sun. I continue to post them, along with my fumbling two cents in the courts of the Almighty, advising Him on how to proceed. I haven’t the slightest clue whether my prayers do a lick of good for the person making the prayer request. But I figure that if I mix my prayers in with others who are closer to the Throne, then maybe they’ll get lost in the pack and I will look like I know what I’m doing.

I’m lazy enough to pass along a prayer request before actually praying about it myself, but scrupulous enough to feel bad about it; so generally, the act of making it public is enough to help me to remember to say at least a quickie prayer myself.  Whereas if I only realize I should be praying for something, I’m all too prone to mistaking “I should pray about this” for actually praying.  Maybe God, in his generosity, accepts even good intentions as prayer, but I’m not counting on it.

–7–

Act of Contrition

I love the Church so much.  She knows that we’re so lame, so stupid, so weak and lazy that not only do we have to be required to go to confession once a year, but we  need help figuring out how to say “I’m sorry.”  Isn’t it great to have those words?  They say it all — everything you’re thinking, and everything you ought to be thinking — and it feels so good to say them.

O my god, I am truly sorry for having offended Thee.  I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.  I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.

Whew. I mean, Amen.

Oh, wait!  Here’s a bonus one.

–8–

A Strange Child’s Prayer

When my oldest daughter was about four, she wrote a prayer of her own.   She understood the gerneral lingo, if nothing else.  I wish I could find the baby book for this General Act of Praying, but the ended with:  “Holy, holy, holy.  Isn’t it holy?”

———————————–

Okay, so now I’m tagging Hallie from Betty Beguiles, Megan from  Sorta Crunchy, Lisa from Sweet Family Times, Kristen from St. Monica’s Bridge, and Becca from The Hollow.

And don’t forget to check out Conversion Diary for other Seven Quick Takes, and link up if you’re doing your own!

Thursday Throwback: COEXIST

No one asked for it, but today I’m reprinting something from my old blog.  It has special meaning for me, because it marks the day that an entire branch of my extended family stopped speaking to me.

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In the “I’m Too Late For a Dentist Appointment To Key Your Car Right Now, But I’ll Get You Later” department, we have this bumper sticker:

which has been cropping up all over our area.

I live near a college town, which makes me, by definition, fatter, slower, less hip, and more endarkened than 60% of the population. Bumper stickers abound: mostly of the “I heart peace/let’s behead Bush” variety.

The cars so intelligently adorned seem to congregate outside a store called “The Hemporium.” I always enjoy passing by this place, because it has a huge banner over the door, proclaiming: “Come in and educate yourself!” irresistibly bringing to mind the Lilo and Stitch alien Pleakley,

 

an Earth enthusiast who devotes himself to the preservation of the mosquito food chain.

Anyway, as a claustrophobic, misanthropic, misogynistic, pediphobic, clutter-hating mother of twenty-seven who lives in a self-storage unit, I’m all for coexisting. I’ve even been known to . . . are you ready for this? . . . tolerate people who aren’t exactly like me. Mainly because everyone I know has managed, through twelve step programs and extensive plastic surgery, to avoid being exactly like me.

If by “coexist” you mean “don’t kill people who don’t agree with you,” I am all for that (although I’m not sure who worries that this message is going unheard in rural Southern New Hampshire). Or if there are people who do need to hear this message . . . you really think a bumper sticker will change their minds? Do me a favor and go nag yourselves, if you know what I mean.

I guess it wouldn’t be so grating if it just spelled out its little one-word sermon in regular letters, although I realize the message would lost some of its putative punch that way. I see what they’re trying to do by using symbols as letters: they’re trying to say that all of these ideas–Christianity, Judaism, Peace (which is separate from Christianity, dontcha know), Yin Yangitude, etc.– all fit together into one large, overarching shelter called “coexistence.”

It’s terribly fashionable to take important, very specific ideas and paste them into a collage demonstrating Everythingness. They’re trying to say, “Can’t we all just get along?” without sounding like a punchline.

Well, this is worse than using a picture of child’s face as a mouse pad, which is unseemly. This is worse than using the American flag as boxer shorts or dish towels, which is disrespectful. By using meaningful symbols as mere letters in a word, this bumper sticker subsumes the significant and specific into a suffocating mass of indiscriminate acceptance.

Don’t use the cross as a T, okay? And don’t use the star of David as an X. They’re not, like, logos for “Jesus Brand” and “Judaism, Inc.” Don’t tell me “it’s just a design” or “we were going for the visual impact — don’t read too much into it.” You should be glad someone’s paying attention to your message.

I don’t think it’s blasphemous; I just think it’s dangerously careless. Are you sure you want to just swallow down that soup without checking out the ingredients first? A few of those symbols look awfully prickly.

And fish that cross out for me! I need it.

 

“I’m not a homosexual. I’m a man.”

Come on over and see me at Faith and Family today (for real this time!), where I have a short interview with a young, gay, faithful Catholic man.  You’ll like him — he’s so clean and articulate!  But something tells me Joe Biden would not be impressed.

And hello and welcome to Faith and Family and Creative Minority Report readers.  Stick around for tomorrow, when we will  . . . okay, I have no idea what we will be doing tomorrow.  The Jerk, who usually reviews movies on Thursdays, is taking a few days off.  I think he found himself singing along with Pat Benetar during the big climax in The Legend of Billy Jean,

and is going on a retreat to reassess his life goals.   But he will be back!

Vaya con Dios, The Jerk.

My Two Sons

I was shopping with my eight-year-old son, and the checkout lane was the usual gauntlet of trashy magazines.  I was about say my usual warning line, which is, “Do yourself a favor and don’t look at that garbage,” when I heard him GASP.

“Look!”  he said, “–Kittens!”

Sure enough, it was a picture of kittens:

I love that kid.

I also love my other, 6-year-old son, of course, but he would not have focused on the kittens.  He’s more this kind of guy:

Anyone have a nice six-year-old daughter who goes for the handsy type?  I’d like to arrange a marriage now.

My favorite joke

Today, I’m really glad to have a Monday joke lined up, because I’m going to do something kind of awful first, and I don’t want you to be mad at me.

Here is this video.  I guess it’s a local TV station that gives political candidates a minute or so to make their case directly to the voter.  So here’s what one guy came up with:

Now, being a kind and generous person, I thought to myself, “Wellllllll . . . maybe he just has super duper stage fright.  Maybe he actually does have something to say, but he is just extra, extra, unbelievably bad at conveying ideas.

So what if he forgot to brush his hair?  So what if he sounds like a combination of Sylvester the Cat and Homestar Runner?   Who cares that he introduces himself in a somewhat less-than-gubernatorial fashion by saying, “Hi, I’m Basil Marceaux Dot Com”? It is still possible that he has a good idea in there somewhere.

That is what motherhood does to your power of  discernment.  If mothers weren’t able to say “shush” to what reason is screaming in our ears, then our six-year-old sons would be in big, big trouble.

So, half in charity and half in morbid curiosity, I checked out his website.

Okay, so it turns out that . . . well, whatever conclusion you jumped to when you saw his video, you were right.

My favorite part is that there is the homepage, and then there is a link to page four.  Pages two and three?  What are you, some kind of elitist?

This, my friends, is disorderly thinking on a heroic scale.  Other information that Ithink I gathered from reading the least informative prose ever (and I once saw a book report that went:  “The Littel Airplane.  It is about a littel airplane”):

  • He definitely got arrested at some point.
  • He doesn’t like the flag?  Or it’s the wrong flag, or something.  I believe he is saying there is a goldfish on one flag, but he wants the one with three stripes to come back.  In the service of this goal, he was hit many times with a stun gun.
  • He seems to be proposing that, in order to save money in gassing up public vehicles, we should plant corn in the medians of highways, and convert the harvest into biofuel.

Sorry, folks.  Basil Marceaux is, of course, a child of God like the rest of us, and it’s not nice to make fun.  But I died laughing just the same.

Well, anyway, here’s the much more seemly joke I promised–no victim, no crime!  I got this one from my sister, again, who should have her own blog, or at least get royalties from mine.

Oh, and despite my flagrant nepotism, I’m still collecting jokes! Send your best joke to simchafisher at gmail dot com.  (Hi, I’m Simcha Fisher Dot Com.)

The philosophy department is having a meeting, and an angel appears and offers the department head one blessing: he may choose wisdom, beauty, or ten million dollars. He hesitates for just a moment and then chooses wisdom.

There’s a sound of trumpets and the guy becomes too bright to look at for a few seconds. Then silence. He is staring down at the table, and all the other professors say to him, “Say something!!”

He looks up at them and says, “I should have picked the money.”

That tingling means it’s working!

I got all writey today, and posted something about tattoo removal on Inside Catholic.  It’s silly – don’t even bother going over there.  I already commented on my own post, so I won’t be too lonely if you don’t.