10 spiteful reasons to be this drinking bird today

As we all know, drinking yourself stupid is no way to honor St. Patrick. Also, it’s offensive to actual Irish people when Americans perpetuate the stereotype of heavy drinking as characteristic of this noble people who happen to be heavy drinkers.

And green beer is for losers. Do not drink green beer. Beer is not green, begorrah. Beer is not green.

Isn’t it time that we, as a sensitive and responsive people, find some way to recalibrate our alcohol consumption so that nobody’s widdle feelings get hurt? Begorrah?

Here’s what I propose: don’t drink because it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Drink despite St. Patrick’s day.  What, you don’t have any other reason to get a medium-sized load on, assuming you can find a glass that your lousy kids haven’t filled with sand and glue and left in the driveway?

1. Drink because it’s almost spring. Hooray, spring! Have a drink. What other reasons? Let’s see . . .

2. Your teeth are like that because of heredity, and you’re doomed to carry flossers around in your purse, to become intimately familiar with that faded oil painting of irises on the oral surgeon’s wall, and to occasionally experience the disquieting sensation of tiny shards of bone working their way through the wall of your gum. Yes, that would be pieces of your skull coming out of your mouth. That seems fine. Have a drink.  It’s a kind of oral care.

3. You keep finding what looks like a really perfect college for your kids, and then it keeps turning out they’re yet another one of those “please let us know if your roommate isn’t following the underwear folding guidelines. You know, for her soul” colleges. Bottoms up.

4. 41 years old; still don’t know how to use eyeliner. Glug glug.

5. They’re going to clone a T-rex, I guess. Honest to goodness, I feel like death by imprudently reconstituted savage dinosaur is the best kind of future we can hope for right now. Cheers!

6. I guess we’re still talking about thigh gap, still? (I unlinked the link because of bad effing language, but really, all you need to know is that they’re still talking about thigh gap, still.)

7. There’s this:

At first I was like, “Oh, they’re just not listening very carefully, and the sidewalk is pretty noisy.” But no. They heard. O dinosaurs, do not delay.

8. Begorrah, I got up at 4 a.m. because my head was killing me, and then right before it was time to bring the kids to school, I threw up for no reason. No, I’m not pregnant.  I just thought about what kind of day it was going to be, and throwing up felt right. And now I need to start boiling the traditional repulsive slab of red fat strings, in honor of St. Patrick. First person to play Clancy Brothers at me is going to get a wedge of hot cabbage served up in the worst way.

9. You know what, the Clancy Brothers deserve their own number. Those sweaters. Gevalt.

10. I don’t mean to be a hideous racist or whatever, but it occurs to me that doing something just to spite someone else, whether it’s drinking or not drinking or taking a breath, is probably the most Irish thing you can possibly do, unless maybe it’s doing something you do enjoy doing, but pretending you don’t enjoy it and that you’re doing it just to spite someone else, because that’s not crazy at all, you crazy Irish person. So I’ll leave you to sort that one out. I’ll be over by the bar, by which I mean the driveway, digging glue out of my glass. These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Shantih, shantih, shantih and have I mentioned, begorrah.

 

The dusty boxes

Some time ago, a reader whose life sounds a lot like mine sent me a message:

Just came across your blog. Looks interesting.. I’m copying it to my “Look Into” heap of links– which, sadly, is a bit like the giant warehouse at the end of the Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but at least it’s there.

Oh, yes.  Saving for later.  I spend so much time making sure the right things get saved.  There was a pile of papers on the kitchen island, and I finally bit the bullet and sorted through them.  Along with paid bills, cancelled checks, and warranties for products long since broken and thrown out,  there were reams and reams (yes, I realize a ream is 500 pages.  That’s what I meant) of drawings of birds, ballerinas, flowers, and clouds stuck together with stubby little rainbows.  I smiled at each one, and then, feeling like Satan incarnate, threw them away.

Sometimes when I sort, I save a few representative samples; sometimes I am ruthless. But of course saving everything is not an option.  Even if I had the space to somehow neatly and un-hoardishly preserve all the hilarious and charming pictures my kids draw, when would I have the time to enjoy them?  I have some fantasies about old age, but even the most unrealistically golden ones don’t include spending years of my life looking at thousands of pictures of rainbows rendered in blue pen.

And yet it cuts so deep to throw them away.  Same for sorting through baby clothes.  It’s not that the little purple onesie is so precious and unique in itself; and it’s not as if I actually want my child never to grow out of size 3-6 months.  It’s just the act of leaving things behind that hurts.  I get better at making it happen, but I don’t get better at not letting it hurt.

People are always saying, “Store it in the cloud!” Give it to the cloud rather than cluttering up my poor overworked hard drive:  my pictures, my music, all the words words words that I churn out.  It’s only the price of ink and the shoddiness of my printer that keeps me from printing out everything — every cute kid story that goes on Facebook, every draft of every half-baked idea that never makes it all the way home, every well-turned phrase of love or encouragement I send to my husband at work.  I want to save it all, and never let it go.

It’s not that I hope for fame that outlives me:  “look on my works, ye mighty, and despair” and so on.   It’s just that I want it all to last — somewhere, somewhere, all the things I love and have poured my life into.

It’s a terrible anxiety, the fear of losing things that are precious — terrible because it hurts so much, and terrible because of what it means about me and my disordered loves. When the fear of loss is bad, it drains the joy out of my treasures even as I’m holding them.  My little baby smiles at me with such a direct, melting simplicity:  two perfect teeth, tiny and fresh like little bits of shell, her mouth pops open, and she lunges like a jack-n-the-box, so unthinkingly in love with the world that she wants to eat it all.  On a bad day, her happiness gives me pain, because all I can think of is how it passes, how she passes, how I am passing away.

I feel better temporarily, less existentially bereft, if I take a video, to capture the tricks and charms which are uniquely, adorably hers, which will never be repeated by any other baby, which must be remembered, must be saved — mustn’t they?  But saved for how long?  Technology is outmoded.  Today’s cutting edge video capture will be tomorrow’s wax cylinders.  Today’s acid-free photo paper will last only in the same way as “worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.”

So much has been lost, irretrievably. Does it matter? My kids want to know what their first words were. I remember a few. Some I wrote down, but lost the book. Moved away, left it behind to be discarded by some overworked landlord or U-Haul maintenance man. Does it matter? I still love them now; I listen to what they are saying now. Does that mean that what I’ve lost doesn’t matter?

Remember how poor Ivan Karamazov saw all the pain in the world — the brutality against children, most of all, was what he could not abide.  He did not want to be able to abide it.  He understood that, in the light of the Resurrection, all would be made new — that Christ would return and reconcile all things to Himself, and the pain of innocents would be subsumed into a peace and justice that passeth understanding.

Ivan did not want this to happen.  He could not bear for it to happen.  He did not want outrageous injustices to be all right:  He wanted them not to happen in the first place. This is how I feel.  I don’t want it to be okay that they are lost.

Still, I know that if I try to save, save, save, then in most cases, what I’m really doing is burying them.  I’m not doing anything useful, not respecting their value by agonizing over preservation, any more than the workers in that final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark were doing a good deed by packing away that precious crate among tens of thousands of nameless, dusty crates in a warehouse that stretches on for dreary, nameless acres.

So I try.  I do a little saving, just enough to make me feel human, and then I inwardly send the rest up “into the cloud,” hand it over to Jesus, who has infinite capacity to keep every drooly smile, every first word — if that’s what He wants to do.  I don’t really, in my heart, want Heaven to be a retirement village where all the saints have endless hours to pour over memories of the good old days back on earth!  Ugh.  So I uproot and uproot these things from my heart.  But this disease of affection, this pathology that makes me love the world, and ache as I love — what is it?  And am I sure I want to be healed of it?

That’s the problem, right there. Lose it all or save it all: either way, it’s wasted. Either way, it’s lost. That’s what we mean by the Fall: loss. Everywhere. Everything. Our very mode of being is defined by loss.

Well, it’s Lent. And I am not Ivan, because I have tasted God’s love. I am not a government flunky, senselessly sealing up treasures, because I’m the one giving orders here. I’m not a dragon sitting on my stinking hoard, flying out in a jealous frenzy when some trinket goes missing.

I am fallen, but I have been saved, am being saved, and I will be saved. Nothing is lost, not even me. I know it. I wish to God I could feel it.

***

photo By Axisadman (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

The only mistake you can make

Conversion of heart is a long process, not a moment, and the effects of original sin come creeping back constantly, and have to be scrubbed away constantly, over and over again. But as Father Barron says, the real goal is disorienting ourselves from our self-imposed prison of self-regard, and re-orienting ourselves correctly: positioning ourselves in the proper relation to God.

And God isn’t fussy! The smallest effort will be received by Him with joy. If the best we can do is tell God, “I know I’m not praying right. Please help,” then that’s a sincere prayer, too. The only real mistake you can make is to do nothing. Nothing is the one thing the devil is hoping for. Nothing is his stock in trade. Nothing is his dearest wish for you, forever.

Read the rest at the Register.

***

Image via Pixabay, public domain

 

The holiness of Mr. Rogers

Did we appreciate Mr. Rogers when he was on TV? No, we did not. My sister and I didn’t, anyway. We thought he was unbearably gooney (and it didn’t help that I was secretly terrified of Lady Elaine). When his show came on, we would elaborately die of boredom, rolling our eyes so hard, we could see the inside of our snarky little skulls.

Also, I couldn’t deal with his face. I just didn’t want to look at it.

He had that smile of extreme simplicity that you see in people who have gone through tremendous sorrows, or in the mentally impaired at Mass. It’s a radical openness, a lantern that burns too bright.

Mr. Rogers was remembered by François Clemmons on StoryCorps last week. (The very short StoryCorps features on National Public Radio are almost always worth a listen — sort of the audio equivalent of Humans of New York.) In this edition, Clemmons tells how Fred Rogers invited him to come play a policeman on his show.

Clemmons, who is black, says that the idea didn’t appeal to him. 

“I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers. Policemen were siccing police dogs and water hoses on people,” he says. “And I really had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excited about being Officer Clemmons at all.”

But he agreed; and one show in particular stands out in his mind. It was 1969.

Rogers had been resting his feet in a plastic pool on a hot day.

“He invited me to come over and to rest my feet in the water with him,” Clemmons recalls. “The icon Fred Rogers not only was showing my brown skin in the tub with his white skin as two friends, but as I was getting out of that tub, he was helping me dry my feet.”

Something to think about as Holy Thursday approaches. Fred Rogers clearly saw his career as an opportunity to invite, to serve, and to model charity. He was goony, yes, but that is who he was. He did what we are all supposed to to, in our own way.

It strikes me, too, that Rogers didn’t hide behind the TV screen and consider that he had discharged his duty by broadcasting his message to the millions of people who watched his show. Bloggers, take heed! Talking to a crowd was not a substitute for talking to the man in front of him. There is no substitute for the personal.

[Clemmons] says he’ll never forget the day Rogers wrapped up the program, as he always did, by hanging up his sweater and saying, “You make every day a special day just by being you, and I like you just the way you are.” This time in particular, Rogers had been looking right at Clemmons, and after they wrapped, he walked over.

Clemmons asked him, “Fred, were you talking to me?”

“Yes, I have been talking to you for years,” Rogers said, as Clemmons recalls. “But you heard me today.”

Okay, so, that sounds familiar. Doesn’t it? Who talks that way? You know who. That’s why I find it hard to look Fred Rogers in the face. He was a holy man.

***

Photo: By Dr. François S. Clemmons (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A (Mostly) Handmade Gift Guide for Easter and First Holy Communion

Last night, my friend Elisa posted a picture of something amazing she made: a fold-out, fabric icon book in a leather cover.

[img attachment=”94876″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”icon book” /]

I’ve never seen anything like it. (More pictures here.) Very kid-friendly, ideal for Mass, but not cutesy or sentimental, like so many religious goods for kids — and it would make a beautiful devotional display for adults, too.

I wanted to spread the word about her gorgeous icon book — and then it occurred to me that there are lots of other Catholic crafters and artisans out there who have lovely goods for sale. So I put out a quick request, and the result is this little feature.

First, check out Elisa’s shop, Door Number 9, where she sells a wide variety of quirky, geekish handmade items, along with little oratories and contemporary styled religious jewelry, at her Etsy shop, Door Number 9. We have a few of her products and love them. Elisa graciously used my name, SIMCHA, as a coupon code for my readers, for 15% off a $25 purchase or more.  It expires Easter Sunday, March 27.

If you have handmade religious goods for sale, feel free to add a link to your shop in the comments!

PLEASE NOTE: Many, but not all, of these sellers can ship before Easter. PLEASE check the delivery details on the individual pages, especially if you are ordering a custom-made item.

 ***

Annie Tillberg makes the items for sale at Annery’s Handmade: Take a look at this sweet Roses Gift Set, meant for little hands that fidget or older hands that can’t grasp small rosary beads anymore:

[img attachment=”94882″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”rosary roses annery” /]

Also for sale: Communion veils and knit and sewn infinity scarves.

***

Bumblebee Bonnets: ADORABLE. Handmade bonnets for babies age newborn to 36 months.

[img attachment=”94883″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”bumblebee bonnets 2″ /]

Bumblebee Bonnets can deliver by Easter. Check out the selection of fabrics available now, and see the most lovely bonnet model in the world.

***

You’ve probably seen the cheeky ads for Catholic Beard Balm, featuring a quote from St. Augustine, “Catholic Saint and Beard Enthusiast.” Beard Balm which is made in small batches and comes in a variety of “Catholic aromas” like chrism and incense — and you can buy combination packs like “Crusader” or “Zealot” (tee hee). A portion of proceeds goes to go to support the ministry work of ProjectYM.

[img attachment=”94905″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”little flower lip balm” /]

The Catholic Balm Company also makes Little Flower Lip Balm, in rose, mint, and citrus scents.

***

An item I can vouch for myself: a nice little Papal flag decal for your car, locker, etc.

[img attachment=”94906″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”papal flag sticker” /]

These aren’t actually handmade, but what the heck, who wouldn’t want a Papal flag for a buck? (That’s a special price – limit one $1 decal per household). Peter’s Mark also offers Catholic T-shirts and other clothing, infinity scarf veils, handmade rosaries, and more. Every purchase from Peters Mark benefits a Catholic ministry.

 

***

Custom Catholic dolls! You can send an image of any saint, and The Little Rose Shop will make a 19″ doll to order.

[img attachment=”94907″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”saint dolls” /]

***

 How about some sweet little bunny bags for your little wabbits? Faith and Fabric will embroider your child’s name on these cute, reusable bags:

[img attachment=”94908″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”bunny bags” /]

***

I hope you’re already familiar with the hilariously honest Mama Knows, Honeychild. Heather Scheider has recently opened a shop called Honeychild Forest, where you can find a variety of banners, ornaments, and decorations for your home. Here’s an awesome decal for your car:

[img attachment=”94912″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”small mighty decal” /]

Also available: Yes, they are all ours. Heather has more items for sale, beyond what you can find on her shop, on Instagram under the name honeychildforest .

***

I was delighted to meet Paula and Charles Rohrbacher in Philadelphia this summer. Charles is an immensely talented iconographer, and Paula makes his works into little shrines.

[img attachment=”94914″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”icon shrine” /]

They don’t currently have a website, but their the New Jerusalem Workshop Facebook page is here, and you can contact them at ikon@alaska.net. They currently have the following icon shrines available:
Mother of God, St Agatha (Patroness of Women With Breast Cancer), The Visitation, The Annunciation, Christ The Teacher, The Holy Family, and Mary Magdalene With The Risen Christ.
They also offer notecards featuring Charles’ splendid icons. 
***

I featured a bit of the joyful work of Matthew Alderman just after Christmas. All of Alderman’s work is fresh and striking! I love this image of St. Agnes:

[img attachment=”94917″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”st agnes notecard” /]

 

Alderman’s studio has much more information about his work and how to purchase or commission an original piece. You can also find other prints, notecards, and other items for sale here.

***

 Another Catholic artist has a smaller selection at present, because she just had a baby! But do check out the original paintings of Laura Chaptman at her new shop, Sweet Oak Gallery:

[img attachment=”94918″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”sweet oak” /]

I also like the “The Lord walks among the pots and pans” watercolor.

***

Anyone who follows my blog knows that I’m hopelessly devoted to the lovingly handmade cold process soap by my dear friend Robin. Robin is on hiatus for the moment, but her store still has plenty of gorgeous, fragrant soaps for sale in many varieties. Here’s my family’s favorite: just plain goatmilk

[img attachment=”94919″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”goatmilk” /]

Wonderful for dry skin, very gentle and dense. Robin also has some sweet flower-shaped soaps for sale, along with a variety of beautiful and aromatic hand-cut bars. 

***

Another option for handmade soap: Clean River Products. Christine Lyons says: “Our specialty is Chrism Scented Soap.”

[img attachment=”94920″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”chrism soap” /]

“This is a perfect gift for the newly Confirmed, Ordained, or for anyone who would love to be reminded daily of the outpouring of Grace received from the Sacraments. We use only the highest quality essential oils to scent our soaps.”

***

AND NOW FOR THE ROSARIES!

***

Every well-appointed Catholic home has a large collection of broken rosary bits. If you’re ready for something that will hold together forever, check out my friend Kyra’s awesome new chainmail-and-hematite rosary.

[img attachment=”94891″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”chainmail rosary” /]

While I was writing this post, her rosaries sold out, but she is making more!

These rosaries would make excellent First Holy Communion gifts, and more will be listed soon. In the meantime, check out Kyra’s strikingly beautiful and amazingly strong handmade chainmail jewelry at Iron Lace Design.

***

More custom-made, one-of-a-kind rosaries and chaplets from Allison Kinyon of  Rosaries by Allison. There is a huge selection in a wide price range. Here’s one that caught my eye, because I am a sucker for sea glass:

[img attachment=”94893″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”sea glass rosary” /]

Many lovely and unusual rosaries for sale. Several rosaries are ready to ship in time for Easter.

***

Another personal favorite: wrap-around rosary bracelets and other goods from Apple and Azalea, handmade and designed by my dear friend Theresa Barger, who lives in Webster, NH. It was hard to choose one to feature, but this swirled red brecciated jasper rosary with jet black glass Our Father beads is especially striking.

[img attachment=”94894″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”jasper rosary bracelet” /]

I have one of Theresa’s rosary bracelets, and it is lovely and sturdy. I wear it as everyday jewelry, and it means I can always find an untangled rosary when I need it!

***

Athey Rosaries aims to provide “high quality, beautiful rosaries that will inspire closeness with Jesus through Our Lady.” Here’s a beauty: The San Damiano lapis and sterling silver rosary

[img attachment=”94922″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”san damiano rosary” /]

***
Ruth Tucker makes the beautiful rosaries at Loreto Rosaries, including this striking one:

[img attachment=”94924″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”loreto rosaries” /]

Each rosary is strung on 49 strands of stainless steel, nylon-coated flexible wire, which holds up to 24 pounds of tensile strength. Each rosary is double crimped at each connection with brass or Sterling Silver crimps for extra security. I also crimp the bead caps to the Pater beads on all 8mm rosaries.

This homeschooling mom of seven offers a wide variety of rosaries, chaplets, jewelry, and rosary bracelets, many customizable.

***

Pam Acker of Chaplets-‘n’-Such says:
I make all kinds of rosaries & chaplets, but my most popular item by far is the Little Crown of the Blessed Virgin Mary — people order them from all over the world!

[img attachment=”94895″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”little crown” /]

 The chaplet is an older devotion promulgated by St. Louis de Montfort as part of his method of Total Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  He encouraged his spiritual children to recite it every day if possible.
Also available: sturdy knotted cord rosaries.
***
Here’s a newer shop: Snowshoe Rosaries by Katie Flaherty. All handmade rosaries and one-decade rosary bracelets are ready to ship by Easter in the US. Here’s a lovely, delicate one that would thrill any First Communion girl:

[img attachment=”94896″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”snowshoe rosary” /]

Snowshoe Rosaries is based in snowy Marquette, Michigan, the former home of Venerable Frederic Baraga, Marquette’s first bishop and current candidate for beatification. Baraga would traverse the vast diocese in winter on foot, and the shop name comes from his nickname, “the Snowshoe Priest.”

 ***

Kelli Johnson of Prayer and Sparkle is offering 15% of orders placed before Easter! Use coupon code LENT16 when you order. Here’s a neat-looking Divine Mercy chaplet with a southwestern flair:

[img attachment=”94897″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”mercy chaplet agate” /]

Kelly says: My rosaries are made with a variety of genuine gemstones, from the inexpensive to the rare, and are strung on flexwire.
***

Et Corde is offering heirloom-quality rosaries and jewelry in many different styles. Here’s a wire-wrapped St. Patrick chaplet made of bronze and aventurine:

[img attachment=”94898″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”st patrick chaplet” /]
Another beautiful choice: The St. Therese of Liseiux Rose Rosary, handcrafted with pink rhodonite and bronze roses.

***

Shannon Wendt of Oganic Mama’s Shop says: “Everything in my shop ordered before Palm Sunday, can be shipped in time and delivered by Easter!”

I like this chunky rosewood rosary bracelet — a great less-frilly choice for a First Communion gift. Shannon also makes soft, food-grade silicone “Chews Life” rosaries in all colors

[img attachment=”94902″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”chews life rosary green” /]

because it may look like a rosary to you, but to your baby, it’s an ideal teether. Cute!

***
Thanks to all the artisans who contributed to this post! If you have handmade religious items for sale, please feel free to leave a link in the comments.

What’s for supper? Vol. 27: Chicken Pie, You Great Lummox

SATURDAY
Hot dogs, baked beans, cheesy weezies

WYSIWYG.

SUNDAY
BLTs, Pringles, Banana splits

Birthday at the Fishers’ house! Cake at some later point. Jeff Miller used to do this “test your detachment” thing on Fridays in Lent. Here’s my contribution, with five pounds of bacon:

[img attachment=”94611″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”bacon” /]

Imagine your suffering if I had a better camera, you backsliding reprobate.

We also had banana splits. Corrie’s was served pre-deconstructed, which pleased her majesty:

[img attachment=”94612″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”corrie banana split” /]
MONDAY
Chicken pies

I last made chicken pies maybe eight years ago, and nobody liked them. I thought it was time to try again, so I went with the most bourgeois version I could think of. No leeks or fennel or white wine involved to challenge anyone’s palate. I also made a lot of Mr. Tweedy jokes, just to prime the pump and make everyone feel jolly about the meal to come.

In chicken broth, I cooked chicken breast, carrots, potatoes, peas, mushrooms, celery, and onions. The sauce was a plain white sauce (flour, butter and milk) seasoned with two envelopes of onion soup mix. And I made it in store-bought pie shells. Here’s what they looked like before I put the top crust on. VERY NORMAL, right?

[img attachment=”94619″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”chicken pies” /]

The family deemed them . . . okay.

I thought they were delicious. They tasted exactly like they ought to taste. Now my only problem is, where am I going to find a new family? HA.

TUESDAY
French toast casserole, Sausages

Everybody was ridiculously happy about this meal in the aftermath of the immense suffering of homemade chicken pies yesterday. Here is my lovely bread-tearing assistant, hard at work:

[img attachment=”94628″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”benny bread for french toast” /]

I also served one of the leftover chicken pies, because I am mean.

WEDNESDAY
Ziti, salad

They were also really excited about this meal, not sure why. Ziti from a box, sauce from a jar, limited cheese requiring the oversight of the teenage cheese police.

Oh, so I have this colander problem. Our old colander is a standard size, which means that whenever I made enough pasta for our family, I have to do it in batches, or else some of it ends up slithering out into the sink, which is always gross, because Fly Lady can go suck an egg. (Actually, Fly Lady seems so quaint and reasonable now, doesn’t she? All the cleaning experts currently in vogue are all, “Do you really need a front door? Does it spark joy? Consider achieving inner peace by dispensing with your floorboards, and just skipping lightly from joist to joist. Japanese mothers have been doing this for years, and they glow!”)

So I tried for a while, but I discovered that it’s hard to find out exactly what sizes colanders come in; so I bought what seemed like a reasonable step up: 16 quarts.

[img attachment=”94630″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”colander” /]

Thanks a lot, common core. The thing is, of course, big enough to bathe a calf in — or I guess strain a calf, anyway. It doesn’t fit in my sink. I’m an idiot. Now I just have to pack it back up and return it and buy a smaller one, which I will definitely do right away.

You know what, how about one of you cleaning experts come over here and do it for me, with all your free time and serenity.

THURSDAY
Pork carnitas, Avocados 

I made carnitas once before, and they weren’t great, so a bunch of people suggested yummier, more authentic recipes. I ignored all of these and went to allrecipes.com. It actually turned out pretty great — although I doubled the meat and quadrupled all the seasoning. The flavor was mild but pleasant.

[img attachment=”94629″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”carnitas 2″ /]

One quibble: Preheat oven to 400, simmer the meat on the stove top for 2.5 hours, then put the meat in the oven? Something ain’t right there. I’ll get back to you when I put my finger on it. I’m not feeling great. Why is it so hot in here? Ugh, I must be getting a fever.

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, Tomato soup, spinach salad, tortilla chips

Pretty good for a Friday!

What’s slithering around in the sink at your house? Anything good?

A letter to my young, sad (skinny) self

Dear Young and Very Sad Me,

First, I know you won’t believe me, but I gotta say it: You’re not fat.

Honest.

Don’t be crazy. You do crunches obsessively and eat nothing but salad and ice, so do me a favor: ditch the baggy sweatshirts and saggy jeans, and find out what it’s like to wear fitted clothes in small sizes, before it’s too late! OK, thanks.

Now I want to tell you the things you will need to know in order to become happy, a good wife and mother, closer to God, and a more productive member of society.

I really want to, I say. But even now, I’m not sure what to say. I could warn you against some horrible mistakes you’re going to make: wasting time, getting into debt, treating other people badly, looking for love in all the wrong places, and so on.

But the fact is, you’ll know when you’re doing them that they’re bad ideas, and you’re going to go ahead and do them anyway. What can I say? There are plenty of people looking out for your happiness, eager to help, and you don’t want to be helped. You don’t want to be happy.

I know why. It’s because you don’t think you deserve to be happy. You think that everyone hates you. You hate yourself and you can’t imagine a future where you don’t hate yourself, because you think that who you are now is who you will always be. And at the same time, you’re furious at everybody for not being your friend, even though you are not exactly pleasant to be around.

I know you won’t hear me when I tell you to be patient with yourself. But maybe you will be able to hear this: Be patient with God. He has His reasons for letting you go through these dark and ugly times. He is softening your heart, making it tender. Ever seen a meat tenderizer?

[img attachment=”94571″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”MeatPounder2″ /]

Yeah. But it won’t go on like this forever.

I want to tell you that every misery and humiliation that you’re going through now is for something, if you will sit still and let God work on you. Some of it will make you more compassionate; some of it will make you more resilient. Some of it will make you appreciate the joys and pleasures of life a thousand times more, when they come, because you won’t take them for granted. And some of it is going to make you a genuine pain in the pants, and you are just going to have to get over yourself and realize that everybody had a crummy childhood or a crummy teenager-hood or a crummy something.

All right?

But nothing has to be wasted.

The boyfriends you think you deserve? Let them go – you and they deserve better. The guy who makes you want to change into a better person? Hold on tight. And when he says he loves you, believe him! You both have to learn what love really means, but wanting to be good is a great place to start.

Some day you will wake up every morning in a small, sunny house crammed with people you love: a strong and tender husband and a whole bunch of strange and wonderful kids (more than you expected – see paragraph one: enjoy being skinny) who know you very, very well and who love you because they know you, not in spite of it. They need your specific talents, your specific strengths and enthusiasms, your specific capacity for work and creativity. They will need your help to get through struggles of their own. They need you – the you that is being formed right now. It’s not for nothing. I want you to have hope.

So go to confession, make a morning offering every day – even a little one, even a half-hearted one. Pray before you go to sleep. These things will help. They will, in fact, save you.

God wants to save you. Let Him!

Love,

Older, Fatter, Happy Me

***

(This essay originally ran in Catholic Match in 2012.)

“Suck It Up” vs. “Offer It Up”

Suffering is a strange thing. When we suck it up, it’s like burying a seed, but refusing to water it. It probably won’t do any harm that way, but it won’t do any good, either. But if we bury that seed and then offer it up, it’s like telling the Holy Spirit, “Psst, over here! This one needs some water.” And we know what happens next: the thing cracks open and starts to grow. Amazing!

Read the rest at the Register.

***

Image:

Oke-mah Wah Cumig Oke planting seed potatoes By Unknown or not provided (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

My love is like a broken rib

So my husband says to me, he says, “Next year, I’ll be the one shooting at the roof. Then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

Let me back up. We were at Señor Tadpole’s, celebrating the benignity of my nodules. If you say that fast enough, it sounds like something fried they serve to gullible tourists in the French Quarter, but it is not. I had been waiting since last week to hear from the lab whether I had cancer or not. Thyroid cancer is kind of the Switzerland of cancers, from what I hear. You have to work really, really hard to get it to make a fuss.

Even the surgery isn’t too bad, if you have to have it. I’ve already had the other half of my thyroid taken out, and that was good for a lot of sympathetic door-holding, let me tell you. People see you coming down the hall with a bunch of little kids and your neck stitched shut, and they hold the door.

But this week, I had been holding my own doors, and my husband wanted to make sure I knew he had been worried and concerned and praying, even if he didn’t wear it on his sleeve. I knew this, because I know him. When I got the heebie jeebies, I would tell him so, and he would hold me, and there was no use thinking hard about what might happen should one of us turn out to be mortal.

Around the same time as I went in for my biopsy, he fell on his bottomus on the ice. His forearm bruised and swelled up impressively, and his jaundiced eye got a few shades yellower, but we thought that was the end of it. But no. It now looks like he may have fractured a rib or two — just enough to make most movements uncomfortable, not enough to, I don’t know, GO TO THE DOCTOR OR ANYTHING.

I can’t tell him anything. I did ask, “Do you want to, I don’t know, GO TO THE DOCTOR OR ANYTHING, YOU RIDICULOUS  MAN?” Which is my way of saying, “I love you”; but he didn’t.  He did tell the kids that it was partially my fault, because his rib is where I came from. This seems fair.

So there we were, sharing a plateful of what the menu called — I’m not making this up — “Nachos Cowabunga.” To the waitress, my husband said, “We’ll have these nachos. The ones with beef.” When she nodded and left, he looked at me and said, “I’m an adult.” Cowabunga-free since 2004, at least.

We got to talking about how decrepit we were, and I expressed astonishment that it was on this mild winter that he had fallen and broken his ridiculous ribs, and not last winter, which was the winter where I spent most of the time sleeping like a fat, fat, fat bear because I was pregnant, and he spent most of the time up on the roof, trying to chip through the aptly-named ice dams that were causing our house to slowly fill up with light brown water, one ceiling drip at a time. (That winter, we established that, as homeowners, our least favorite sound was trickling.)

Last winter would have been the time to fracture something. This winter has been mild. Next winter, he says, he has a plan, in case all that effing snow comes back. Next winter,  he says, he is going to fill his shotgun with salt and he is going to kill the ice. And then no one’s house will fill up with water, and no one’s roof will cave in, and we will all be safe.

Which is his way of saying, “I love you,” and I know it.

***

Adam and Eve depicted in a mural in Abreha wa Atsbeha Church, Ethiopia. photo By Bernard Gagnon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,

Jesus in shrink wrap

It won’t shock you to hear that sometimes, Catholic bloggers have nothing to say. It won’t surprise you to hear that inspiration doesn’t routinely and spontaneously descend from the heavens and whisper insight into our ears, leaving us only with the problem of rushing over to the keyboard fast enough to copy it all down before it flutters off in search of a writer who can type faster.

Sometimes, we have nothing to write about, but we still have to write something. So we look around, and we think, “Well, that thing that happened to me is kind of a lesson. About Jesus. Because I’m Catholic, and this is what I do.”

Let’s see. Well, my dog goes berserk and barks like crazy when the UPS man comes by, because my dog, being a dope, doesn’t realize that we wanted that package. And that’s like when the Holy Spirit tries to give us grace, and we, um, bark at Him.

Or, the baby spends all her time trying to throw herself off chairs and eat glue, and then she gets mad at me when I rescue her. That’s kind of how we are with God, thinking the commandments are God being mean and wrecking our fun, but really He’s trying to keep us safe.

Or, my four-year-old asked, in a worried voice, if people are made out of meat. It turned out that she was trying to figure out the motivation of the Werewolf of Gubbio. Took a while to untangle that one, and to figure out what her real worries were (namely, that St. Francis is real, but so are werewolves). It was only because I know her, and I know what books she reads, what games she plays, and how she thinks, that I was able to understand what was in her heart, even while she herself didn’t have the words to express what she was thinking. Just like me and Jesus, me all inarticulate, Him all knowing, etc. etc. etc.

In other words, it’s very easy — almost a game, or a chore — to browse the shelves of our daily lives and find little shrink-wrapped lessons about our relationship with God. I could do it all day. Sometimes I do it all week. It’s not a terrible thing to do, and often enough, people tell me, “That was exactly what I needed to hear today. ”

But after a certain point, it feels grotesquely cynical. Oh, look, Jesus is on sale this week! I’m going to buy a nice hunk, and I have the perfect recipe in mind. I’ll just chop Him up into nice, bite-sized pieces . . .

It won’t shock you to hear that this is what I do. We all do it, in one way or another.

As I pushed past the hysterical dog, lugging my package (which was a colander I ordered in a fit of despond, and hadn’t been sent by Holy Spirit at all, at all), I fretted over how late it was and how I still hadn’t come up with anything to write about. And I thought with a little groan, “Okay, Jesus, get in the box.”

It was the best possible prayer I could have prayed.

Why?

Not because of what I said, but because I was praying. I was talking to Him, rather than about Him.

Yesterday on the radio, Mark Shea recalled how a priest once said, “Don’t ask yourself, ‘Do I really trust Jesus?’ Because that’s a question you could go on asking yourself forever, wondering, fretting, challenging yourself, never being sure that you really, truly trust God as much as you should.

“Instead,” said the priest, “Ask yourself, ‘Is Jesus trustworthy?'”

And the answer to that is always, “Yes.” Full stop. That’s all there is to it. It puts an end to the navel gazing and refocuses our gaze on the only gazeworthy thing in the world, which is Jesus. He really is the answer to all of our questions. Not because He gives us something to talk about! Because He is the answer, full stop. There’s no way to make that bite-sized.

Talking about Him is good. It’s great. We’re commanded to do it. But let’s remember what it’s all for. Through Him, with Him, in Him. It’s Him. It’s about being with Him. No story or lesson or parable or metaphor is a substitute for that. Whether you’re a Catholic writer, or a teacher, or a catechist, or a parent, or a combox warrior, or a politician, or a rosary-maker, or someone who, for reasons unknown, shares those gifs of sparkly flowers fluttering around the Sacred Heart . . . stop.

Stop and pray. Stop and be with Him.  He doesn’t want you to put Him in a box. He doesn’t want you to put Him in shrink wrap, or a recipe, or a lesson, or a meme. He doesn’t want you to set up a tent for him. He just wants you to stop, stop, stop, and be with Him.

***

image By Bill Branson (Photographer) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons