It’s good and natural for parents to want to keep their kids safe, but it’s healthy for the entire family to acknowledge that our main job as parents is to prepare kids for the rest of their lives. A kid who has never learned to judge for himself when it’s safe to cross the street is a kid who is unsafe.
Author: simchajfisher
Sheenazing, MLK, Satan’s Fanboi, Theology of the Scarves, etc.
1. I’ve been nominated for two categories in the annual Sheenazing Awards! Bonnie Engstrom’s blogger awards are always fun, and I always discover new and interesting blogs to read. Check it out, and vote for your favorites! Thanks to whoever nominated me!
2. Don’t forget to tune in for Mark Shea’s “Connecting the Dots.” I’ll be co-hosting today, from 5-6:00 Eastern. You can stream the show here. Today is a special day, for today is the first time I typed out “Connecting the Dots” first, rather than “Connecting the Dogs” and then having to correct it.
For goodness’ sake, would it kill you to call in? Someone has to break up me and Mark laughing like hyenas over our own jokes. 1-855-949-1380 We will probably be discussing MLK, Jr. and the prolife movement, why the Pope hates babies and is Satan’s greatest fanboi, and other things along those lines.
3. I discovered a new blog today: The Society of Canadian Catholic Bloggers. This one really made me laugh: Theology of the Body Weekend Well Received.
“There are good guys out there,” said [one participant]. “Men who will love you like Christ does His Church, men who will not give into their selfish desires, but who will serve women as they are meant to.”
“Men need to overcome their sexual desires,” chimed in another. “That was the main theme of the weekend.”
“Where are the men like St. Joseph?” asked yet another young woman to the nods of her gathered friends.
“The best thing about a conference like this is getting all the answers up front. Now I know exactly what to tell my future husband.”
Check out the scarves in the photo. So many scarves! And man, it takes guts to write satire that most people do not realize is satire. The list of things that should Never Ever Be Giggled About is really so very small; but somehow, Theology of the Body makes the list pretty often. Because there certainly isn’t anything funny about a bunch of earnestly horny teenagers sitting in a circle in the church basement, getting so worked up over the beauty of chastity that it sets off the smoke alarms, not to mention all the young women who really, truly expect that their someday husbands can be educated into being St. Joseph.
Quotable?
Here’s a kind of odd bleg. A few years ago, someone at a greeting card company contacted me, to get permission to quote something I said in a post. I signed the contract, thinking nothing would come of it; but in fact, it’s been a pretty brisk seller. Here’s the card, also available as a magnet (and mug and so on):
I thought of it as a graduation card, but apparently it sells well around mother’s day.
Since this year’s royalty check came within 24 hours of my husband’s car unexpectedly springing a leak and some especially sad news from the bank, I says to myself, “I wonder if they want any more quotes from me?” Turns out they do, hooray!
So I’ll be going through my archives and looking for anything that seems pithy and encouraging, or uplifting, or inspirational, so I can pitch it to them. I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask if you have any ideas. I realize this makes me sound like I think people are just going around quoting me all the time, but I can live with that! You never know what might stick in a person’s head. Thanks.
How to tell if you’re in the third trimester
If you’re new at being pregnant — if this, for instance, only your sixth or seventh child — you probably know how many weeks along you are. You will be able to recite exactly which fetal neurodendons are likely being formed at this moment, and can calculate to the minute how far away your due date is.
If this is, however, your ninth pregnancy or beyond, you take the longer view: all you can really be sure about is whether or not your water has broken yet. Not yet? Okay, then you gotta make supper again, darn it.
For those of us who have long ago abandoned our manuals and our pregnancy journals, here are some helpful tips for identifying whether you are in the third trimester:
1. Being pregnant is all you can think about. Say, for instance, that you’ve agreed to write three posts a week about Catholic culture, politics, liturgy, spirituality, and other matters of general interest to Catholic readers. The first topic that pops into your head is, “Have you seen my FEET?” Then, rather than thinking, “Wait, that doesn’t really have anything to do with Catholicism,” you go ahead and write about it.
2. You have totally relinquished anything like a sense of personal dignity. In theory, you know that you are one of the grande dames of the domestic church, the very mirror of Our Lady, anchor of civilization and hope of the future. But in practice, your one and only goal in life is finding the next bathroom as quickly as possible. There are only so many times you can walk into an exam room, find out how many elephants you could displace in a pool of water, and then let someone – erm, “take a look” at you in an exceptionally personal way, before it starts to take its toll on your avidity for decorum. “Hey,” you will find yourself barking at the guy in the toll booth, “Let’s speed this up! My cervix isn’t getting any less effaced!” He looks at you in a weird way, and you assume this is because HE has a problem.
3. You do an excellent imitation of efficiency, but are about as effective as a blindfolded duck. You make a doctor’s appointment, dream that you cancelled it, wake up and call a slightly baffled receptionist to reschedule, forget to write down the new date, notice the old date on the calendar at the “last minute,” show up ten minutes “late” in a frantic lather, and discover that you’re in the wrong building anyway. And wonder why the sheaves of “You and Your Colostomy” pamphlets in the waiting room didn’t tip you off. So as not to waste a trip, you stop at the supermarket at the way home, and then drop exhausted onto the couch, where you sleep through your real appointment, leaving four gallons of milk rotting in the sun the back of the car.
4. By 4 p.m., your aphasia is almost complete. You start out the day unable to remember nouns. By noon, verb and adjectives are on their way out. But by the time the kids come home from school, and you’re in charge of making sure they pack nutritious lunches, do their chores and homework, take showers, pick out clothes for tomorrow, and hand over all the important papers you’re responsible for as a caring parent, you’re reduced to standing in the middle of the kitchen pointing at their grinning faces and yelling, “You! That! Now, it! Oh, why can’t you!” Even God thinks this is funny.
5. In the immortal words of Lili Von Shtupp : Let’s face it, everything below the waist is kaput.
***
[This post originally ran in the National Catholic Register in 2011, which was the last time I was in the third trimester — during which, unlike this time, I could still come up with two words to rub together.]
The Fishers’ Shmedifying Guide to Van Maintenance
Drips, smells, rumbles, squeals, groans, blinking lights, shudders, tremors, mice, hiccups, spasms, heat that won’t turn on, heat that won’t turn off, heat that smells like dolphin meat, the unpredictable squirting of fluids, and the occasional refusal to acknowledge who’s in charge here. This is just what it’s like having a car that you aren’t making huge monthly payments on, and if you can’t live this way, then you’re overdue for a fancy pants check, Mr. Fancy Pants.
A baby shower! For me!
Ideally, I’d love to meet all of you in person, offer you some sheet cake covered with pink, Crisco-flavored icing rosebuds, make you play humiliating games involving the sniffing of diapers, and then you give me presents. Doesn’t that sound nice?
But since I am here and you are there, the lovely and intrepid Rebecca Frech is hosting a vitual baby shower for me over at Shoved to Them.
Is it a Texas thing to have alcohol at baby showers? Because she’s got alcohol (or a recipe, anyway).
image by Nonie via Wikimedia Commons
And she’s got a game which doesn’t require you to sniff anything, and which will actually be really helpful to me. Also at the post is the video debut of Little Miss Unborn Fisher 2015. If you have a moment, stop in and sign the guest book!
And, yikes, this is awkward, but free lancers don’t get maternity leave, so if you have a few dollars to spare, a contribution would be most welcome (Rebecca includes a PayPal link, or you could use the one on my right sidebar). Oddly enough, being pregnant with baby #10 when you are forty years old is not as easy as it sounds; and because not even Catholics want to spend good money to watch a walrus-shaped woman standing behind a podium and crying, I made the prudential decision to cancel some speaking engagements that I had been counting on for income in 2015. So a PayPal’d baby gift will go a long way to helping us through while I give birth and recover. My hope is to keep blogging pictures while I’m on maternity leave, so as not to leave this space languishing.
Thanks for considering it! And do check out Rebecca’s blog, even if you can’t or don’t feel like throwing a few bucks my way.
Breasts? Mary? La la la . . .
I’m actually working on a post about whether or not breastfeeding is sexy, but in the meantime, this painting of Mary nursing baby Jesus is cracking me up:
Our Lady of La Leche by Lorenzo Zaragoza [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Found via Jen Fitz, who used it to illustrate the karaoke party that you narrowly avoided by going to my virtual baby shower hosted by Rebecca Frech, rather than a physical one. (She also included a drink recipe, a trend which is quickly making this my favorite baby shower ever.)
This picture made me laugh because look at how Mary’s breast is just sort of silently, decorously filtering its way through the front of her dress!
Wouldn’t that make postpartum clothes shopping easier? I wonder if this was painted by some highly innocent monk, maybe on commission. The whole time he painted, he was thinking, “La la la, not going to think about it . . . ”
It reminds me of the one and only time my grandfather changed his baby’s diaper. He simply tied it around her waist. Completely in denial about the biological reality of what was happening down there. La la la . . .
Obedience Gives Us Jesus
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Why tell us that Jesus is the Son of God as soon as He does the one thing that the Son of God doesn’t really need to do? What does this tell us?
Things You Don’t Want Steam In: A Short List
image via Creative Commons
Things you want steam in:
- Your nasal passages, to clear congestion
- Your bedroom, to add moisture to the air in the winter
- Your bathroom, to get wrinkles out of that delicate silk dress
- Your kitchen, to diffuse pleasant, cozy smells of a homecooked meal
Things you don’t want steam in:
- Your vagina. For any reason.
Yes, there are people who don’t intuitively grasp this. People who don’t realize that “forgotten ancient wisdom” is often forgotten for a reason. People who seriously countenance the idea that crouching over a hot pot of wet oregano is is somehow going to have a healing effect on your ovaries, which, last I checked, are kind of up in there, you know?
But it’s ancient! It’s wisdom! It’s alternative medicine, and is not intended to provide medical advice, so what could possibly go wrong? Assuming you manage to avoid the inevitable, horrible, hard-to-explain-at-the-ER-scalding, I can just imagine the scene. Husband comes home, hangs up his hat, pets the dog, and looks around for his wife. Takes a deep, appreciative sniff coming from the recesses of the house and calls out, “Honey, whatever you’re cooking, it smells great!” And she says . . .
Well, you tell me what she says.
Although, giving the article a second read, they may be on to something. You’re supposed to spend at least a good hour sitting down undisturbed, wrapped up in a warm blanket, and you’re then supposed to go right to bed and nobody is allowed to bother you, because you are anciently healing yourself. Alone. Without getting up. And it’s recommended that you do this three times in the week before your period!
You know, I also have some ancient wisdom. Vaginal steaming has been shown to be most effective when you bring a bottle of Tanqueray with you, and the bedroom door locks. Don’t argue with me! Tanqueray is herbal as all get out. I got yet ancient wisdom right here.
5-6 PM Eastern! Listen live here at Real Life Radio.
Hope you can join us, and maybe call in. 1-855-949-1380
Mark has a different co-host each day, Weekdays at 5PM EST
Saturday at 8AM EST; Sunday at 10PM ESTMark Shea’s “Connecting the Dots” takes a look at everything from pork to pyrotechnics as we explore this delightful, tragic, ordinary, extraordinary, sinful, and redeemed world through eyes of Catholic faith and seek to live as intentional disciples of Jesus Christ in his one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.