August 2021 – SIMCHA FISHER

What I saw (and of course heard) at the Green River Festival

On our absolute last day of summer vacation this Sunday, Clara and I went to the final day of Green River Festival in Greenfield, MA. The act she most wanted to catch was Bonny Light Horseman; my must-see was Son Little.

I must warn you, I like a lot of what calls itself folk music, but I really despise the folk music scene, so this is a fairly cranky review. I did like a lot of the music. But I had forgotten how many people apparently attend shows like this to put on a show. There was so much “Can you guys even believe how ecstatic and unselfconscious I am right now?” stuff going on.

The main stage show opened with Rachel Baiman, who has a nice enough voice, but delivered unremarkable lefty folk snark that didn’t hold my attention. Her new album is called Cycles (no, not Vagabonds, Martyrs, and Quilts) with a song called “Shame” and it’s all about how you shouldn’t shame women for having bodies. I know that’s what it’s about, because she told us so before she sang it (and she was right, that’s what it was about). Great works of art can always be summarized in a line or two, preferably a line that makes everyone go, “Wooooo!” I hope you’re writing this down so you, too, can be a artist.

Bonny Light Horseman was next, and they are remarkable. They are a supergroup made up of Anaïs Mitchell (here’s my quick review of her astounding show Hadestown), Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats, and Josh Kaufman of various things I haven’t heard of (okay, I also haven’t heard of Fruit Bats). The first thing they did was turn the bass down, which I took as a work of mercy and professionalism. If you can’t reach your audience without blasting them to death, maybe you need to go back and craft your piece a bit more.

Bonny Light Horseman does a lot reworked old English ballads mixed in with whatever other stuff they feel like, as far as I can tell. All of it is interesting, and some of it is stunning — the material, the arrangements, the voices, the performances.

They performed a few new songs they’re still working on, which they described as “hot tub music.” I’m kicking myself for not writing down the lyrics of some of the new songs they performed, but they really got me. Here’s a clip of the actual show that someone posted on YouTube:

They were generous performers, too, and gave the impression that they like each other and liked being on stage. Crazy how many professionals just don’t do that. They put on a really soulful show that kept my attention the whole time.

Anaïs Mitchell then introduced Ani DiFranco, and that’s when I started to wish we had set up our blanket on the other end of the field, upwind of the great wall of weed smoke. Weed has its uses, but it certainly does smell like poo. Yes, you can buy expensive weed, which then smells like expensive poo.

Anyway, Ani DiFranco. She seems completely unchanged from twenty or thirty years ago, when she emerged as this tiny, intense ball of energy and angst and talent and rank immaturity. Whenever I hear her music, I think: “Wow, she’s so good! Why don’t I listen to her more?” and then a few songs in, I’m like, “Okay, that’s enough.” She told the audience that they were her most enduring and reliable long-term relationship, and I know it was a joke, and I know that’s her schtick, but what a thing to say.

And it’s not just that she’s too intense or too personal or something. Goodness knows I’ve made a buck or two off baring my soul to strangers. It’s that she can write very clever, wrenching, heartfelt lyrics . . . and a lot of the time, she doesn’t bother, because she knows she can get away with writing stuff like this, instead:

“You get to run the world
In your special way
You get much more
Much more than your say
Government, religion
It’s all just patriarchy
I must insist you leave
This one thing to me”

That’s just poorly written, and I’m not just saying that because I was sitting on a fleece Our Lady of Guadalupe blanket from Walmart and felt fairly uncomfortable in more ways that one at this point. (If you are wondering at what age one becomes officially too old to sit on the ground all day, it is 46) The song did extract a “WOOOOOO!” from the crowd at all the right moments, so I guess it did its job. Woo, woo, woo everybody. No shame! Tampons! I don’t know why I’m so unhappy but probably I shouldn’t change anything about my life! Wooo!

By the time we got up to “Swan Dive,” there were absolute phalanxes of stoned “this is what a feminist” dudes performatively shaking their potato-fed asses back and forth and jabbing their fingers defiantly in the air, and the sun was beating down through the clouds, and one braless lady in a crinkly broom skirt dragged a shrinking little chicken-winged girl up to the standing section, shoved a pride flag in her hand, and dragooned the child into a long, joyless dance in front of everyone, not that anyone was paying attention, because they were too caught up in their own grinning sweating triumphant vibe. Kid couldn’t have been older than 7 or 8 years old, and the music was frankly terrifying at this point –extremely intense and absolutely deafening, and designed to be emotionally overwhelming.

I wanted to arrest absolutely everyone there, on the grounds that you need to grow up. It was the phoniness that got me. I don’t begrudge anybody to feel what they feel, but I can tell a faker when I see one, and there were a shitload of fakers in that crowd with their patched handkerchief skirts and their boho twine and copper bracelets and their floppy hats and their pedicures and their high priced poo.

Well, then I got up and bought myself a falafel wrap and gobbled it up, and felt a little more cheerful. Chickpea products always cheer me up. I don’t make the rules. I also took a long walk around the field and got the heck away from the amps, which I should have done hours ago.

It was late and we were tired but figured we had stayed that long, we might as well stick it out and wait for the one act I really wanted to see, which was Son Little. While we waited, we caught Sierra Ferrell on a side stage, and boy, was she fun. She has an old timey voice, clear as a bell, chewy as taffy, and she absolutely nails the aesthetic, but her songs sounded like originals. I can’t remember if she performed this one, but here’s a good example of how she sounds:

A real musician, a great performer. There was actual spontaneous dancing breaking out in front of this stage, and it was a pleasure to see. Apparently she and her band had some kind of calamitous time getting to the show, so Clara made a point of standing in line to buy one of her CDs and she said she was very nice in person. Definitely going to track down more of her work. Here’s another one she did:

Then finally, as the sun was setting, we saw Son Little. I used to listen to him constantly, and poor tender-hearted Benny, who was a toddler, used to worry about him so much.

I still worry about him. He’s sort of unreliable. He sang “Loser Blues,” which didn’t sound like much when I heard it recorded, but hearing it live, I just about fell apart.

Anyway, after a long, hot afternoon of tampon music, it did not bother me one little bit to pick up my blanket, go sit in the shade, and listen to a young man sing about how he’s not sure why his girlfriend is mad, but what about if they just do it, huh? That’s what his songs are mostly about, and he has a point.

He tried to get the audience to sing along or at very least clap along, but by that time, we had all been fried by the sun for eight hours and, honestly, we may have just mostly been too white to begin with. I felt bad, but when people try and get me to clap along, I know it’s going to go badly eventually. So I just sat there and stared and then clapped politely at the end. I still think this was better than whatever that girl with the overalls and the hula hoop thought she was doing.

I got myself a little paper cup of pork dumplings and coconut curry, and something that claimed to be Vietnamese ginger limeade and tasted an awful lot like Juicy Juice, but it had ice in it and it was fine. I also got a horrible sunburn, but that’s nobody’s fault but my own.

And that’s my review. It was a well-run show, very orderly. Lots of great food vendors, plenty of bathrooms, everything was well-marked, and there was plenty of room to spread out so I wasn’t worried about covid. I think everyone should smoke a little less weed and maybe give the patriarchy a second chance, like on alternate weekends, and then see if we can’t come up with some better music for the kids. Okay, thanks.

The people you meet when you run

My husband and I go running together several times a week. We’re not fast and we’re not agile, but we do keep going. Over the years, we’ve come to recognize the various people you meet when you run. They’re not always the exact same people, but there are a few familiar types:

Don’t Worry, He’s Harmless

This is an earnest dog lover who has to shout above the sound of her slavering, snarling ragebeast who is expressing his harmlessness by opening his mouth so wide, you can see inside his tail. Don’t worry! Why would we worry! Why should you even consider putting such an animal on a leash, when really it’s the rest of the world that is being silly and mean by worrying! Coincidentally, on days when we meet Don’t Worry He’s Harmless, we always make the best time.

O to be young!

A deeply tanned, deeply wrinkled woman in baggy jeans and a sassy t-shirt who spends her mornings toddling through the dappled sunlight, beaming at trees. When she comes within hailing distance, she stops, throws her head back and her arms out, and croaks, “O to be young!” Then stands there with her mouth open and an expectant smile on her face. I have no idea what to say to this, so I usually say, “Oh ho ho, ha ha!” and keep running. One time she didn’t say it, and I felt so old…

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

What’s for supper? Vol. 262: Tearwater margaritas

Now I officially only write about two things anymore: Weight loss, and things I ate. Oh, and crying.

I have other stuff going on, but it’s all . . . yargh. I shalln’t lie, I have been having Kind Of A Hard Time Lately, as who isn’t, and the doctor wasn’t really able to discern if I am Medication Crazy, Lady Crazy, or Actually Crazy. The truth is that I might just be extremely tired from — you know — [waves hands ]–THE THINGS.

Everyone has their THE THINGS these days. Everyone’s so tired. You start out writing about going to an amusement park with your kids, and 900 words later: Oh look, it’s another excruciating personal meditation on

f e a r

how nice. Already did one of those this week, but let’s have another, waiter.

So Damien took me out for margaritas and I cried at him, because I am fun. Also I got a bundle of papers in the mail, and one of them was a handwriting analysis my mother had done for me. Basically an unexpected letter from my dead mother saying what kind of person she thought I was. And she charged me $7.50! Because she was trying to raise money for a Nigerian seminarian, who, of course, turned out to be a scammer. What I’m trying to say is, there’s been some ups and downs. But probably it’s the medication. (Brophy voice: That was no medication.)

Every spare moment has been taken up with the bathroom renovation that never ends, countless trips to [ptui] Home Depot, and neverending speculations on what might possibly bring the world’s weepiest toilet to finally dry its tears and — okay, now I’m projecting, but we really do have a massive condensation problem in there. But we are actually fairly close to the end of this renovation job. I myself put in three portions of actual wall, and waterproofed it all, and tiled and grouted it, and caulked it and put in trim. Where once there were moldy holes, there are now sound walls and floors, and it feels pretty good. And my parents’ house may actually go on the market in a week. And we managed to get to the beach, and we managed to do this thing and that thing, and we’re shopping for school supplies today, and just about everything is crossed off the list. There was a moment where I was applying grout to the wall and literally had my face right in the hole where the toilet used to be and a child came in and asked what was for dinner, and all I said was,”Please ask Daddy,” so if it seems like I had a lot of margaritas this week, that’s why.

Gawd, I never shut up. Let’s talk about food. Here’s what we ate last last week, because I never got around to writing a food post:

FRIDAY
Shrimp tacos

I think I actually mentioned making this, but posted about it before I took a photo, so here it is:

They were delicious. I peeled, deveined, and dried the shrimp, dusted them with … I think cumin, sea salt, and cayenne pepper, or something like that. Let them rest for a bit and then sautéed them quickly in olive oil and chili oil. Served on flour tortillas with shredded cabbage, cilantro, chunks of avocado, hot sauce, and a squeeze of lime juice.

Perfect summer meal along with some cool watermelon.

SATURDAY
Meatball subs, grapes

Damien made the meatballs. I don’t know what he put in them, but they were tasty. We had them on rolls with sauce from jars.

SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, cucumbers, ice cream pies (?)

I split a bunch of baguettes and heated up some frozen chicken patties that were a special buy at Aldi. The “special” part turned out to be that they were in a box, rather than a bag.

Served with tomatoes, basil, sliced cheese; sliced some cucumbers.

We got home from Mass and I felt the strong urge to make pie. Then I was like, “No, don’t be silly, you’re far too busy for that.” So instead, I made 12 mini pies. Because they’re . . . smaller. I don’t know.

I made a double recipe of this reliable Fannie Farmer pie crust recipe

Basic pie crust

Ingredients

2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/2 sticks butter, FROZEN
1/4 cup water, with an ice cube

Instructions

Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.
Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.
In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.
Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.
If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.
If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!
If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.
You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.

and cut it into 12 pieces, and stretched them over upside-down muffin tins sprayed with cooking spray, and then baked them until they were browned, about 25 minutes.

They turned out great. Well, a few cracked, but that would be easy to avoid in the future with a little patching. Not terribly decorative, but perfectly functional.

The idea was the kids could fill them with ice cream and top them with cherries or whatever they wanted. I don’t know if they actually did this, as I was out drinking a tearwater margarita.

It was a Silver Star Margarita made with Hornitos Plata Tequila, triple sec and elderflower liqueur. When I ordered, the waitress said, “Oh, top drawer!” which made me feel guilty and defensive and angry, which, in retrospect, was probably not her intention. Did I mention how much fun I am? I am twelve miniature empty pie shells worth of fun.

MONDAY
Chicken caesar salad wraps (?)

Roast chicken breast, romaine lettuce, some leftover tomato and cucumber, some of those crunchy parmesan crisps, freshly shredded parmesan, and caesar salad dressing from a bottle, and pita bread. You do what you like. I think most people made wraps.

We used dressing from a bottle, but if you’re feeling ambitious, my renegade homemade dressing has no technique and is pretty snappy.

caesar salad dressing

Ingredients

1 cup vegetable oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
12 anchovy fillets, chopped
1 Tbsp kosher salt
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about two large lemons' worth)
1 Tbsp mustard
4 raw egg yolks, beaten
3/4 cup finely grated parmesan

Instructions

Just mix it all together, you coward.

I ended up tearing up my pita and just having a dinner of bits of things, which is the kind of meal I like the best.

TUESDAY
Pizza

I went on such an insane snacking frenzy, I had no desire to eat dinner, but I made some pizzas that looked nice, anyway. One cheese, one pepperoni, one garlic, olive, anchovy, and ricotta, and one garlic, olive, and feta.

WEDNESDAY
Canobie! Lake! Park!

Last Wednesday was the last day trip on our list for the summer, and it was a pretty great day. Canobie Lake Park is a wonderful place, clean, friendly, beautiful. You can head over to my Facebook page to see a few photos of I posted if you like.

We brought a picnic lunch to eat in the parking lot, and the only park food be bought was Dippin’ Dots, the Ice Cream of the Future. I didn’t have any, so I still am unclear about what constitutes its futurosity. At this point, I’d rather it remain a mystery. We stopped at Wendy’s on the way home, and it was hands down the absolute worst Wendy’s experience of my life. I was openly mocked for hoping they would give us our drinks, and the fries were about 30% full. Still, the Son of a Baconator is a damn fine sandwich.

THURSDAY
I think we had nachos

This was 47 years ago

FRIDAY
I have no idea

Still with me? That was the previous week!

Now here’s what we had this past week:

SATURDAY
Sandwiches

Damien shopped for this meal and put it together.

It looks like . . . a baguette with prosciutto, provolone, spicy salami, tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, and fresh pepper. Gosh, I wish I had some right now. And some nice green grapes. Grapes are coming back in season, so that’s fun! What would we do if there weren’t always some fruit coming into season.

MONDAY
Chicken bakeadillas and guacamole

Feeling like an absolute degenerate, I bought a couple of rotisserie chickens to make into quesadillas, because I knew I wasn’t going to be up for shopping, then cooking chicken, then frying quesadillas. Well, it turns out I also wasn’t up for frying quesadillas, even though Clara shredded cheese for me. So I got the idea of making a giant baked quesadilla in the oven.

You guys, it turned out great. Not quite as tasty as an individually fried quesadillas, but more than serviceable, and so much easier. I sprayed a large pan with cooking spray, then covered it with six large overlapping tortillas, then shredded cheese, then shredded chicken, more cheese, chili lime powder, and another layer of overlapping tortillas. Then I drizzled it with olive oil and spread it around a bit and sprinkled it generously with salt, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper. Baked at 400 about 15 minutes.

We cut it into slabs with a pizza cutter and served it with sour cream and guacamole.

You could easily add all kinds of things to this: Salsa, beans, whatever. You could make several layers of tortillas with different fillings in between layers. You can do whatever you want; you’re the chief of police!

TUESDAY
Vaguely middle eastern chicken

I doused some chicken breast with spices from a jar that said “KAFTA” and broiled it. Sliced it up and served it with raw spinach, carrots, tomatoes, feta, all kinds of olives, and some yogurt sauce. I didn’t have much pita, so I cut it up into triangles and made a nice fan shape, and this created the illusion of plenty.

Or maybe it actually was plenty, and I’m just insane.

I also cut up a watermelon into chunks and served that along with dinner. A fine summer meal, if not quite the shawarma everyone kept asking if it was when they saw me setting all those olives and feta out on the counter.

If you do want to make shawarma, AND YOU DO, here’s my recipe:

Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
4-5 red onions
1.5 cups lemon juice
2 cups olive oil
4 tsp kosher salt
2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp cinnamon
1 entire head garlic, crushed

Instructions

Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 425.
Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). Cook for 45 minutes or more.
Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.
Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

And don’t forget the yogurt sauce:

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
5 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc.

WEDNESDAY
Confused alligator noises

I spent most of the day working on the bathroom and making multiple trips to Home Depot and various other supply stores, and around dinner time, I left the house while hastily voice-to-texting the kids that I had left frozen hot dogs, frozen meatballs, and a leftover rotisserie chicken on the table, and they should heat everything up and eat it while I was out. They opted instead to let the hot dogs and meatballs thaw out, eat the chicken cold, and have some ice cream. This is fine. Damien brought home some sushi for the two of us, and then I stayed up past midnight tiling behind the toilet.

THURSDAY
Pork?

I think the people at home had pork. On Thursday I took a bunch of the kids to the town pond for several hours, and then Lena and I went fabric shopping because the living room curtains are moldy (I mean they have been moldy for years, but it suddenly got to me), and then we went to Margaritas, which we’ve been talking about doing all summer, and here it is the end of August.

To a casual reader, it may seem like I go to Margaritas and drink margaritas and cry constantly, but it’s really only about once a week that I do this. And I only cried a little bit! I would say that, considering how many margaritas I drank, I really barely even cried at all. They were delicious, thanks. We both had the steak chimichangas and told some very funny stories. Or so it seemed at the time. Listen, I’m a good tipper and I didn’t spill anything.

I lost 40 pounds and I’ll tell you how, but you’re not going to like it

It’s counting calories and exercise, plus a little intermittent fasting, that’s how.

Ha! Told you you wouldn’t like it. If you want more details, they are below. The good news is, losing weight isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I just had to be ready.

I am 5’5″ and 46 years old. Here’s my current driver’s license photo, on which I lied through my teeth about being 230 pounds.

I don’t know how much I actually weighed, but it was more than that! My size 20 jeans cut into my waist and I was breathless all the time.

I want to make it clear right now that it’s not evil to be fat. There are so, so many worse things in the world than being fat. Furthermore, I am still fat! But on April 14 of this year, I decided to at least try one more time to lose weight, and I thought you might want to hear about how it’s going.

So, now it’s August, and now I weigh 195 pounds and fit comfortably into a size 16. I’ve lost about 40 pounds and I’m not pushing myself too hard, and I’m still losing about a pound a week. I haven’t really set a goal, but I would like to get down to 145 pounds. 175 would be awesome. Feeling more in control is already very awesome, so that’s really what this post is about. And yes, it’s about looking better. I’ll also share some of my food strategies with you, but it’s nothing you can’t find anywhere else.

So as not to be coy, I’ll start with the food part, and then I’ll tell the part about my brain. Here’s a typical day:

-Coffee with half and half when I get up.
-Go for a run around 11:00
-Lunch at 2:00 (300-400 calories and high in protein)
-A snack or two around 4:00 or 5:00, or sometimes no snack
-A normal person’s dinner at 6:00 or 7:00
-Gin and seltzer with lime around 10:00

Typical lunch: Pita with four slices of turkey, mustard and pickles, and maybe a little cup of Greek yogurt or a piece of fruit; or a big plate of salad with leftover chicken, nuts, cheese, and vinegar; or pita fried with an egg. If I’m out shopping, I often get the Wendy’s strawberry chicken salad or grilled chicken sandwich. Not gonna lie, I eat a lot of turkey and chicken.

Typical dinner: Well, if you read this site, you know how I cook. I’m cooking as I always have, and just eating slightly smaller portions. Maybe I’ll go easy on the part of the meal that looks gooiest. If I’m still hungry after one serving, I’ll go back for a little more of the lowest-calorie element of the meal. If I’m really still hungry after dinner, I’ll have a green apple, and that seems to tell my brain “that’s enough.”

And I drink plain seltzer all day long.

I know I said I was counting calories, but I don’t actually know how many calories I eat per day. When I started trying to lose weight, I put my age, weight, and activity level into a calorie calculator and was surprised how many calories it said I could eat and still have a deficit; so at first, I calculated everything meticulously. Then I got sick of it and just started eyeballing everything besides lunch, and I still kept losing weight, so it seemed good enough. When I get stalled out, and stay the same weight for a week, I buckle down and pay more attention for a while.

There is also a giant asterisk next to all of this that says “WITH SOME EXCEPTIONS.” If I had to name my weight loss plan, it would be the “with some exceptions” plan. More about that in a bit.

The thing is, I was already doing a lot of things that should have helped me lose weight. I can’t have more than one cup of coffee, or it keeps me up at night, and I don’t like sugar in my coffee. Breakfast in general makes me feel blah. I don’t really like cake or pastries. Sugary foods and drinks give me headaches. I truly enjoy fresh fruits and raw vegetables. Chocolate is a migraine trigger. And I run 4-5 times a week to counteract hereditary heart issues and blood pressure issues, and to manage anxiety, migraines, and PMS. I was even intermittent fasting most of the time. But when I was eating, I was eating a lot.

So mostly, I had to get smarter about all the ~e~m~o~t~i~o~n~a~l~ e~a~t~i~n~g~ I was doing all day long. I had about 523 different reasons for eating things, and only one of them was hunger. Not exactly groundbreaking info, but what to doooo?

I know some people have luck by addressing overeating as a sin to be corrected, and I’m not saying it’s not, but this doesn’t help me. It just doesn’t. I find the psychological approach much more useful.

One thing I tell myself pretty often: “Nothing bad is going to happen if you don’t eat that [fistful of Cheezits or whatever].” First I had to acknowledge to myself that some part of me did halfway believe something bad going to happen if I didn’t eat it! That was embarrassing. Who knows where such a fear comes from. Poverty, pregnancy, anxiety, being just plain nuts, whatever. Anyway, I had to firmly tell myself that I was going to be okay, and I could just not eat the thing, and move along. Sometimes I had to tell myself more than once. Sometimes, oops, I didn’t listen, and ate it anyway.

So then the other half of the equation is that I often have to tell myself it’s also going to be okay if I did eat the thing. Because if it’s just food, it’s just food, whether I ate it or not.

A big part of disordered eating is not just the actual overeating; it’s being furious at myself for eating too much, and then punishing myself by eating more, and so on. Boo. Boo!

So what I’m working on is just calming the hell down about food, whether I’m having a good food day or a bad food day. I don’t want to be one of those people who gets skinny but is still crazy, you know? (Although it’s pretty likely I’ll end up both fat and crazy.) Food is important, and it can give real pleasure, and that’s not a bad thing. But it begins and ends in a certain place, and I’m the one in charge of that. That’s what I really want: To be in charge. That’s a big part of why being fat makes me so unhappy: Because I know I’m not in charge. I’m at the mercy of food and of food feelings.

How to stay in charge? I have found through sad experience that trying to exert very rigid control doesn’t work with me. I panic and can’t sustain it, especially when something crazy happens and makes my careful plan feel overwhelming. And something crazy always happens.

What I want is to eat in way that I can live with, no matter what else is going on. I don’t want to have to drag around a food scale or have special powders or say goodbye to entire categories of food forever. If I go to a party and there is baked brie or lobster in drawn butter involved, you bet I would have some — and then I would just cool with calories the next day, or else have a light lunch in preparation. That’s it! Because no single meal or single day is the final word. Even if I gain a few pounds, which definitely has happened, I got time. I can work with this. I can be cool.

Every once in a while, flexibility or no, I get mad anyway, and feel kind of rebellious about having to think about what I eat, and I will stomp around and stuff unauthorized corn chips in my face, and eat a leftover pop tart I don’t even want, and sit around after dinner polishing off everyone’s leftover kielbasa even though I’m full. This goes on for a couple of days, and then I think, okay. You did that. It’s not the end of the world. But is it making you happy? And of course it is not.

That’s what really flipped the switch in the first place. I was gaining and gaining, and I knew I needed to do something, but I hated the idea of counting calories or joining a program, because I didn’t want to be thinking about food all the time. It seemed so dreary and awful and petty, thinking about food all the time.

Then it hit me: I think about being fat all the time. I think about it every day, every hour, sometimes more. I already think about it constantly, and it makes me unhappy every single time I think about it. So I thought OH WHAT THE HELL, I MIGHT AS WELL COUNT CALORIES. I didn’t even expect it to work! I just figured as long as I was going to be miserable, I might as well be miserable while trying, instead of being miserable while not trying.

And then the scale started to budge, what do you know about that.

So I’ve had to start over more than a few times, and it’s okay. Every time I’ve had to start over again, the scale starts to budge again eventually.

I have had so many weird things happen to my brain over the last few months. One minute I feel absolutely vast, like an endless piece of obscenely overstuffed furniture. Then I get on the scale and I weigh ten ounces less than I expect, and I look in the mirror and bam, instantly I look slim and willowy and angular. This is bonkers. Completely bonkers. I have just had to learn to accept how bonkers it is and just stick with the program anyway, because what else am I gonna do?

And what I’ve found is I’m getting this whiplash less and less often. I look the same to myself more and more often. How I look to myself when I look down at my body is more and more similar to what I see in the mirror, and that’s more and more similar to what I see in photographs of myself. This . . . has never happened to me in my whole entire life. I’ve always had half a dozen different conceptions of myself. But I’m starting to feel like just one person. I don’t know how else to explain it. It is some kind of healing and I am grateful for it.

A bit more about flexibility and fasting. If I don’t eat until 2:00, I have the best chance of having a sensible snack and a sensible dinner, for whatever reason. But sometimes I just get ravenous, and I’m not interested in torturing myself to make the numbers come out right; so sometimes I have some nuts in the morning, or sometimes I eat lunch at 1:00, and just try again for 2:00 the next day. On weekends, our schedule is different, and I usually eat a bit more, and earlier. It’s okay, because it’s the weekend and it’s part of the plan for it to be different. I figure if I have a little pie on the weekend, my body won’t get too used to low calories, and it will stay on its toes or something.

For my afternoon snack, I eat pretty much whatever I want — the key being figuring out what I really want. If I’m feeling like hot stuff, I’ll want baby carrots or sugar snap peas and maybe a rice cake with chili lime powder. If I’m feeling like I just wanna eat something, I’ll have some potato chips or peanut butter crackers or whatever. What I always try to do is eat what I want, and then stop and see how I feel. Just give myself a second to make a choice, rather than bullying myself into rushing into the next thing without thinking about it.

And then sometimes I blow it, and just snack my head off, and gobble up everything in the house because I’m just so hungry right before dinner time and I want all the stupid corn syrup and salt in the world. And then guess what? I’m not hungry for dinner. So guess what? I don’t eat it! Because my stomach is full, because I already ate, and do not actually wish to eat more food! It turns out there’s not a rule you have to eat the food you made for dinner, just because it’s dinner time, and my stomach has learned what it feels like to be full. Amazing.

I weigh myself just about every day at the same time of day. There is a three-to-four-pound range that I expect to be in day to day, and what happens is the range, rather than the individual number, gradually shifts down. So if I were graphing my weight loss, I wouldn’t see a straight line down unless I zoomed out. I think daily weigh ins are probably a good idea, because sometimes you have a rogue high number, and if you weigh yourself every day, you’ll recognize it as a blip, and it doesn’t freak you out as much.

Where does exercise fit in? You can’t exercise fat away, but there’s still a link between exercise and weight loss. How it works for me is that I don’t feel hungry for a long time after I work out, and it seems to keep my blood sugar more stable throughout the day; and when I work out regularly, it sets in motion all kinds of good things that lead to eating better. I feel more confident, which makes me feel more capable of taking care of myself. I’m more energetic, so I’m more likely to get stuff done, rather than moping around the kitchen scrounging for snacks. I sleep better, so I’m less likely to go chasing after sugar and caffeine to give me an energy boost the next day. And so on.

I still highly recommend the Couch to 5K program, which has no end of free apps you can download to get you started. If running is no good for whatever reason, I also really like Jenny Ford’s marching workouts. I have also somewhat grimly purchased a digital copy of Jane Fonda’s Complete Workout for those days when it’s too cold to run but I feel the need to suffer somehow.

I was also lifting weights and using a planks app for a long while. I ferkin HATED it, but I had to admit, I liked the results, and I know old bags like me need the bone density work. For a while I was running 3-5 miles a day, up to fifty miles a month. But I’m fundamentally lazy, and it’s gross and muggy and buggy out, so right now I’m just running a mile and a half most days and calling it good enough.

The one thing I haven’t mentioned is my husband. He started this endeavor on his own over a year ago, and has lost an astonishing 70+ pounds, and at one point he was running over 100 miles a month. He’s a private guy and doesn’t like me blabbing about all his stuff, but I’m very proud of him, and he’s very handsome, and he’s got some pretty bitchin cheekbones, too, so there. I truly don’t think I could have done it without his example and companionship. At the same time, he never pushed me or made me feel like I was anything but beautiful to him, 235+ pounds and all.

If you are going to start overhauling your food life, I highly recommend having someone you can do it with, or at least someone you can talk about it with, someone who will reassure and encourage you and maybe occasionally gently tell you when you’re being crazy.

There is a little part of me that is protesting: Why is it that the thing making me so happy is that there’s less of me? But truly, it’s not about diminishment. I’m starting to see my cheekbones again, too, and I feel like I look like myself again. Sometimes shifting calories around is like a little game: I’ll skip having french fries now, and maybe I’ll have a little fancy cheese later. Exercising self control feels like flexing muscles. It’s fun. It’s fun being able to zip my pants without it being a whole production. And you know, I pick up a dress I could barely zip up last time I tried it on, and now it just floats down over my head. It’s the best feeling.And that’s my story.

Happy to answer questions if you have them. As you can see, I have zero training or professional information of any kind. All I have is a few months of some hopeful-looking success after a long string of failures in my past, brought on mainly by emotional immaturity, I suppose. And as I said, I’ve probably doomed myself for making this public, and now I’m going to swell up like a diaper in a kiddie pool, and now this essay will turn up in my Facebook memories every year to haunt and and taunt my fat ass forever, and then we’ll see who’s body positive and who’s just another yogurt-eating bitch. The truth is, I don’t have anything else to write about, so I’m writing about the forty pounds. You didn’t really want another essay about covid anyway, right?

Sublimate your anger, $5 at a time

I won’t say who it is, because I don’t want to embarrass her, but someone recently told me about a new policy she developed for herself during the pandemic. Every time she started to get mad at someone for being selfish and irresponsible, and she wanted to righteously lash out and put them in their place , she would send a few dollars to the food pantry, instead.

At first I thought this was a sweet and good but somewhat random gesture: Instead of doing the bad thing (being mad), she was going to do the good thing (feeding the hungry). But I actually think there was actually something more interesting and meaningful going on: Something called sublimation.

Sublimation is when you take some undesirable urge and redirect the energy of it into something worthwhile and commendable. It is not repression, because you’re not denying that the urge is there, and you’re not pretending it doesn’t affect you. Instead, you’re acknowledging that the urge is powerful and forceful, and that you can’t make it just go away; so instead, you make it work for you.

The person in question felt an understandable rage and frustration when someone would rudely refuse to wear a mask, or would spread lies about vaccines, or would harass other people for complying with safety protocols. (Yes, these are all things that happen regularly.)

I think this anger qualifies as righteous anger, because these actions hurt vulnerable people the most. But she knew that following her heart by cussing them out or smacking them would just make things worse for everybody. So instead, she balled up her anger and used it to help vulnerable people. Thus the donation to the food pantry.

So it wasn’t just “do good instead of bad.” She took anger over someone hurting people, and used it to help people. The food pantry is great for this kind of thing, because there will always be poor people, and poor people will always need food (or even better, money so they can decide what kind of food to buy).

The thing about sublimation is not just that it makes good things come about, and it’s not just that it steers you away from crashing on the rocks of sin. It actually changes you. Here is where I recall one of the first really useful things I learned from my therapist years ago…Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Photo by Intricate Explorer on Unsplash

What’s for supper? Vol. 261: Thornton Wilder can make his own sandwich, how bow dah

What’s for supper? Well, I’ll tell you.

First I must once again beg your pardon for how little I’ve been writing. Last time I said was going to tell you all about our exciting progress on fixing up Damien’s bob house office, and there has been exciting progress, but then he — well, essentially got fired for being too good, and then got a better job literally ten minutes later, and it’s been a whole thing. So that, too, was exciting.

But first the basement flooded repeatedly, and while that was going on, our only toilet absolutely disassembled itself, and we had to tear up the entire bathroom floor and replace it, and it turned out some of the wall was also no good and had to be removed, and that was a whole thing. We do have a working toilet again, but the sink is still in the yard, there are exposed wall joists, and I have set up an impossible situation for myself involving angled tiles and quarter round, and there are several distinct . . . shambles situations . . . .in the bathroom, kitchen, and dining room.

Here’s fateful screenshot I took of my calendar and happily posted on Facebook, rashly tempting the fates. A friend commented, “Just wait.” Hours later, the toilet went kablooey

But I didn’t want our last bit of summer to turn into nothing but stress and renovations, so we really pushed and, in between fixing stuff, went to see a drive-in movie (Jungle Cruise, or more properly, Jungle Crungle, on account of how highly crungly it was), and a concert, and of course everybody had to be driven to work and to their friend’s houses and hwhatnot, and Moe was in Our Town, right in Peterborough which the play is based on; but it got rained out, so then we went back a couple of days later, and then we went to the ocean, and while we were at the ocean, suddenly there came a lot of totally unpredictable work deadlines! No way of predicting this!

And I am supposed to be finalizing plans to have my parents’ house cleaned out and getting the kids to meet with the person who’s going to train them to work on a farm, and also talk to someone about vaccines, and do something about a scholarship situation I don’t really understand, and also teach two kids to drive before school starts. I don’t know when school starts. Not yet, I am guessing.

But other than that, I think I am all caught up! Except for the bathroom floor. And every time I go out, I keep lugging home roses on clearance, and free pallets to build a garbage enclosure and stuff, because there is a big part of me that still believes that, if I paint myself into a corner, I’ll get stuff done. And I’m usually right.

However, every time someone asks me where all the toothbrushes are, I keep saying, “On the treadmill,” and for some reason, I’m fine with that.

Also mostly fine with the hallway stacked up with large sections of bathroom wall plaster with salvageable tile stuck to it. You know, we were going to have a labor day party this year, but maybe not after all.

Consequentemente, I do not have a lot of innovative dinner recipes to share with you this week. When I look through my camera roll, it it showing me . . . other things. Not meals. Here are some things I thought it was worth documenting these last few weeks, instead of my dinner plate:

The dress I wore for a Zoom speech I gave for NFP week. Honest to God, people pay me to talk. I took this photo because I was happy to see I can zip up this dress again. I still have a ways to go, but yay me! This is especially impressive considering how much take-out food we’ve been resorting to these past few weeks. I blame the child tax credit advance thing.

Here’s board game I decided not to purchase at an antique store I browsed with Clara while killing time between confession and Mass.

A very specific bumper sticker that is apparently for sale, which I also did not buy, even though it is true

A rather handsome grasshopper. I guess I needed to step outside for a bit after the toilet went kablooey. I shall call him “Gawain.”

Oh yes, here is my murderboat. The geranium is doing well this year.

Oh look, we did have a yummy meal! Pulled pork, biscuits, and coleslaw. I remember this because the pulled pork was fantastic and I did not write down what went into it.

Good biscuits, too,

and here is the recipe:

moron biscuits

Because I've been trying all my life to make nice biscuits and I was too much of a moron, until I discovered this recipe. It has egg and cream of tartar, which is weird, but they come out great every time. Flaky little crust, lovely, lofty insides, rich, buttery taste.

Ingredients

6 cups flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
8 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cream of tartar
1-1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, chilled
2 eggs
2 cups milk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450.
In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and cream of tartar.
Grate the chilled butter with a box grater into the dry ingredients.
Stir in the milk and egg and mix until just combined. Don't overwork it. It's fine to see little bits of butter.
On a floured surface, knead the dough 10-15 times. If it's very sticky, add a little flour.
With your hands, press the dough out until it's about an inch thick. Cut biscuits. Depending on the size, you can probably get 20 medium-sized biscuits with this recipe.
Grease a pan and bake for 10-15 minutes or until tops are golden brown.

So the rundown of what we actually did in the bathroom is this:

Pulled up the flooring, underlayment, subfloor, and insulation, which was all wet.
Pulled out some wall tiles and drywall.
Removed toilet and vanity cabinet.
Removed some rotten wall studs and replaced them.
Sprayed moldy joists with concrobium and let it dry.
Put in some mysteriously missing heating ducts.
Put in new insulation.
Cut and installed new DryPly subfloor.
Cut but did not install hardieboard for wall.
Gave subfloor two coats of RedGard.
Installed new vinyl flooring.
Installed new, insulated toilet with rubber ring instead of wax.

There was a lot of lying on the floor with your nose in the sewer pipe, gouging away at wet plywood with a crowbar, and there were also various plumbing complications that I did not understand, that Damien dealt with. I’m not sharing photos because honestly it’s just exhausting to even look at.

We have some kind of bizarre plumbing situation because our well water is very cold, which makes the tank sweat, causing excessive condensation. And even though there is a window and a fan in the bathroom, the whole room is just very swampy. And we did have a catastrophic bathtub leak a while back that we were not able to deal with in a reasonable way, and honestly, our only real option is to set the house on fire, but that is a project for another day. Right now, we are aiming for a solid B- repair of the part of the floor that is visible if you don’t think about it too hard, and that is going to have to do.

It took days and days and days, and we absolutely 100% do not know what we are doing. As I mentioned, this is our only toilet, so we worked very strategically, and ended up dropping the kids off downtown with a wad of cash for many hours, instructing them to avail themselves of as many public bathrooms as possible while they could. Then we did the same thing the next day.

Changing pace, here is an actual good meal: Korean BBQ steaks, sautéed pepper and onion, and pineapple.

I used this Damn Delicious marinade and Damien grilled the steaks outside. Absolutely magnificent steak. The marinade has grated pear in it, and I can’t say I could taste it specifically, but that was some very good meat.

At one point, I suddenly couldn’t stand to ignore Corrie’s hair anymore,

and spent an hour and a half Doing Something About It

Phew.

Here’s the dog at the library concert.

He does like John Philip Sousa, as who does not, but what he really likes is dragging his balls across the grass under the impression that he is technically still “down” while still sneaking over to go be with the kids playing in the sand pit.

I will spare you the next 46 pictures of the bathroom progress and Home Depot. I went to Home Depot so many times and I felt so sorry for myself. I also went to Aubuchon and Harbor Freight many times, and at one point straight up yelled at them because they are a hardware store that did not carry either buckets or shims, which is ridiculous.

In situations like this, people always suggest that they actually prefer visiting their local mom and pop hardware store, where the people are actually very friendly and knowledgeable and want to help. This is an excellent idea, and I would someday like to do the same. Our local hardware store is literally called “Mother’s Hardware” and it is literally closed. Like, always. Like there is probably some hour of some day when it is literally open, but I literally do not know when that might be, or how it stays in business. So off to fucking Home Depot I go, and I guess I’m what’s wrong with the world. Oh, the reason I needed a bucket was so we had something to poop in, which probably accounts for my mood. I did get to teach Corrie the womanly art of peeing in a Solo cup, which she thought was hilarious.

Lucy shaved her head, and why the heckamadoodle not

And we had. I knew this was a food blog, deep down. You can see it has sun dried tomatoes, fresh basil, red onion, dry salami, thinly-sliced garlic, and freshly-shredded parmesan, wine vinegar and olive oil, and butterfly pasta.

Oh, and black olives.

Here is Benny’s shopping turn. She made some extra money by cleaning out the car, and spent most of it at the Dollar Tree

Here’s a picture I took of a chipmunk while I was waiting for Damien to finish running.

We went out of for a run together. I got all suited up, and I got my ibuprofen and my special anti-chafing stuff and my water and my special socks and everything, and we stretched, and we warmed up, and we took about two steps and I was like NOPE. So I went for a 1.5-mile walk, and then I went to go sit down and take fuzzy pictures of chipmunks while Damien ran.

Here’s a picture of Freud’s mother, in case you, too, were wondering

Here’s a diagram of the most unreasonable sink countertop in the world.

Those measurements are correct. I have been trying to find something, anything, to fit underneath it, so we can stop brushing our teeth in the kitchen sink. You will say, “Just go to IKEA!” but we do not have an IKEA and they do not ship to us, so shut up. Yes, I have considered just using industrial metal shelving as a stopgap. The toothbrushes are on the treadmill.

Here’s a game of Go Fish with ol’ Poker Face

Here’s the picture of Moe, who built the stage for and had a small part in Our Town with Gordon Clapp, who, if you recall, was Greg Medavoy in NYPD Blue.

I have never read or seen Our Town and honestly, I really hated it. It was very well done, but it made me feel terrible. I’ve been talking it over with Damien and there’s definitely more to it than I first realized (my first reaction was “Hallmark card nihilism”), but it still was not precisely what my spirit craved, what with all the dead people and agnosticism. I think there are probably people out there who need to be reminded that life is fleeting and there is meaning in transitory, ordinary moments, but I am not one of those people. I am all set.

[more Home Depot shots, redacted]

Here are a dozen Italian subs I made for the beach. They were just meat and cheese, but they were still pretty good.

I didn’t get very good pictures because there is something wrong with my phone battery.

We had a really nice time, a wonderful time. At one point, this dude refused to come out of the water when the lifeguard was blowing his whistle, so they had to call in a special lifeguard with a badge, and they threw him and his family off the beach. Never seen such a thing. Probably has a MOLON LABE bumper sticker.

At one point, we lost Corrie, but she immediately found a nice Hispanic grandmother who took her hand and kept her safe. At another point, we didn’t know where the middle girls were, and Benny said they were on the rocks, so we went to the rocks and were surprised and alarmed to find that Benny wasn’t there, so we went back to the blanket, where Benny was. I don’t know. We just don’t sleep anymore, and have become morons. At another point, I went down to the water to look for Corrie and I couldn’t find her, because I was looking for a little girl, and she is not; she is big. Then I felt so bad, I just about died. But it passed eventually.

We bobbed around in the waves, had fried dough and frozen lemonade, toddled around in the tide pools, played skee ball in the arcade, defended our food from the maniac seagulls, and left before anyone really melted down. On the way home, I guess someone hit a utility pole, and it fell across the road and lit on fire, so a two-hour ride was extended by forty minutes, and boyyyyyyy was I tired. When we got home, I cried and cried, and I don’t even know why. I mean, I guess I was tired. Oh, I am so tired. At least the shower was working.

Yeah, I guess that’s my problem with Our Town. You do not have to tell a mom that human love is about stuff like making twelve carefully-wrapped Italian sandwiches that will just get gobbled up and forgotten, and that’s where our immortality lies, because you want your kids to have gone to the ocean. We have already figured out that the ancient pyramids had more going on than the treasure records of kings. Who doesn’t know that? I already know how fleeting it is. I already know my little girl isn’t little. I already know it’s killing me. I’ve already learned how to live with it. I guess the whole “dead people have special knowledge that the living can’t possible comprehend” kind of pissed me off. You know who knows this stuff? Moms. Because we’re up making sandwiches at midnight. And dads know it too, because they’re lying on their ears hacking away at the toilet pipes. But moms are thinking about it. I don’t know. Anyway, I could have done without the play, and maybe if Thornton Wilder had made his own sandwich, he could have figured it out for himself without making everybody sit in the rain.

Here is a chipmunk from yesterday morning.

Yesterday I ran a mile and a half and couldn’t stop thinking about the cold leftover Mexican food I decided to get up and eat at midnight the previous night, and rather than do another lap, I was like, NOPE, and I went to sit down and take blurry photos of chipmunks while Damien finished running.

I didn’t even try to go running today. I haven’t even put a bra on. I’m just sitting here in stretchy clothes wondering who’s going to write the one more essay I have due this week. Who’s gonna fix my bathroom wall. Who’s gonna ride your wild horses. Who’s gonna tell Thornton Wilder to make his own damn sandwich.

And that’s what’s for supper this week. Today we’ll be having fish tacos and shrimp tacos. Yesterday I started reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to the kids, just because there’s only so much “this is not how the summer was supposed to go” I can take. We got up to the part where he just picks up his head and rides away, and, not being made of stone, the kids are interested. So there.

We were all out of ideas, so we tried the rosary

My husband and I agreed: It’s not that it’s magic, or anything. It’s definitely not magic. But it’s unmistakable: Saying a decade of the rosary together every day is changing our lives. Not drastically. Just a little bit. But undeniably.

We are not the kind of couple you’d look at and say, “Oh yeah, they’re big into the rosary.”

I never liked the rosary. I was never sure if I was supposed to be focusing on the mystery, or the prayer, or my intentions, or some combination. It was what you did as a penance, or because your parents made you. I never knew if I was supposed to be coming up with some brilliant new insight into the life of Mary, or finding some kind of spiritual comfort in the familiarity of the *lack* of brilliant new insight, or what. And darn it, I always lose track and end up saying either nine or eleven Hail Marys.

But more and more often, dealing with the problems that naturally come with full lives, we found ourselves saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I just don’t know what to do.” And while there is some relief that comes with realizing your own limitations, sometimes we really did have to do something, and we were just at sea. We do both know how to work our way through a set of beads, though, so at very least it seemed like a rosary couldn’t hurt.

We already go running together most days, so we decided to make a decade of the rosary part of the routine. Since we’ve made it a daily practice, literally come rain or shine . . . well, things have been better.

Surely, part of the improvement is attributable to human psychology: When you decide to commit to doing something to make your life better, that in itself helps. By making an effort, you’re signaling to yourself that you’re worthy of effort and worth taking care of; and this is a thought that, repeated often enough, is very likely to improve your outlook on life. It’s a self-fulfilling self-help routine.

But that doesn’t explain everything.Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Image via Maxpixel (Creative Commons)

Frog and Toad at Cana

Not long before he died, I was complaining to my father I couldn’t persuade any of my kids to go to a Catholic college. I said I knew they were getting decent educations at the places they chose, but still, I was sure my plan was better than theirs. Half jokingly, half dead serious, I groaned, “How will they ever find a nice Catholic to marry?”

My father said, “Well, I found one at Brooklyn Public College!” He was half joking, half serious, too: the joke being that, when he met my mother, they were both about as far from Catholic as anyone could be.

They had both been raised as non-practicing Jews, met at college when they were both cutting class, got married in secret in a hurry, had a second public ceremony to appease the parents, dabbled in Buddhism, moved to a kibbutz in Israel, came home, briefly joined a cult, found the Lord, and then eventually became Catholic — my mother and older sister first, and my father and the rest of us a year later, when they had already been married for about 20 years. They ended up as a happy old married Catholic couple, but they certainly didn’t start that way.

I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage and God’s will and who belongs together and how and why marriages work… Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Image by Darkmoon_Art from Pixabay