Any normal person, when faced with a heap of excrement like this, would go get the shovel and clean it up. Maybe they wouldn’t be happy about it, but they would clean it up, because it is a pile of dog poop in the middle of the yard. Instead, I started listing all the things I had already gotten done that day, all the things I was still going to do, and I said, “No! It’s not my job! I had enough things that are my job. Not gonna do it. Not. My. Job.”
In a craven attempt to grab some page views on a day when I’m too busy to blog, I interviewed my three-year-old about her views on Star Wars. Here’s what I got:
And it went on like that. Then I tried to take a picture of her holding a Star Wars cup, and she declined, explaining, “Uh-uh. I’m eating my nunch.”
That’s what I get for trying to cash in on my toddler’s cuteness. Hey, you should share this all over the internet to shame me for my exploitative parenting!
Happy feast of St. Joseph the Worker! I was a little confused (NOT THAT I’VE BEEN A CATHOLIC ALL MY LIFE OR ANYTHING) about the day. Didn’t St. Joseph just have a day back in March?
Yep, St. Joseph’s feast day is March 19. St. Joseph the Worker is a separate feast day instituted by Pius XII in 1955, “apparently” (according to American Catholic) “in response to the ‘May Day’ celebrations for workers sponsored by Communists.”
I came across this enormously encouraging thought on Facebook, via St. Zita Catholic Worker Community of Green Country:
Barely making it, for a family, is quite an accomplishment.” –A resident at St. Francis House in Chicago.
If you’re not where you want to be, relax! Keep working because God is in the work.
Somehow, that is a tremendous relief to hear. Relax into the work. Even if you’re not there yet, you’re there, because God is there in the work. This dovetails nicely with a quote from Catherine of Siena, whose feast day was yesterday:
“All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, “I am the way.”
To be clear, it may not feel like heaven, but that’s because the world is like a damp spot, and original sin is like a mold that keeps growing over our front window over and over again. It’s hard work to keep clearing it off so we can see, but we do want to see clearly, don’t we? St. Joseph the Worker, intercede for us, so we have the energy to keep cleaning.
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You’ll also find regular exercise gives you more energy to do something that is absolutely essential: putting in some one-on-one time with your other kids. It’s all too easy for them to feel displaced and neglected when the new baby comes, so it is essential to carve out some special time to connect with them, consistently and intentionally, academically, emotionally, spiritually, and just for some plain old silly old mommy-and-me fun, or else they will grow up to be crack whores.
Read the rest at the Register.
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Oh lord, there he goes again!
You know this teacher. He’s the one who can turn any topic, no matter how thrilling or challenging, into something tiresome and predictable. Over years of repetition, he’s succumbed to his own droning voice, and no matter where he begins, he will eventually, inevitably work his way around to that same old, tired old pet theory or phrase.
You can lay bets on who can be the first to make him drag in Sartre, nativism, or Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe. If you’re really unscrupulous, you know you can get a solid B just by making even the most dubious mention of that key phrase, whether it’s “the sacred feminine” or “hermeneutic of continuity” or “fallacy of relative privation” or whatever impressed your teacher when he was in college. He has fallen prey to that most deadly intellectual predator: the hobby horse.
Hobby horses are toys, for children to play with. And yet so many adults ride them every day. And there is nothing more dreary than having a conversation that you think is actually going somewhere, only to spy the other person trotting out that ratty old hobby horse once again. It’s not welcome. It’s not relevant. But it’s so familiar, so reliable, so docile and easy to steer, how can we resist? Giddyup!
We all repeat ourselves sometimes. And some ideas are worth repeating! But a good idea becomes a hobby horse when it not only turns up all the time, but it becomes the answer to all questions. It’s not just that your favorite issue keeps coming up; it’s that it seems to you like nobody is really saying anything at all until that issue has been raised. Is something bad happening? It’s all due to [bad thing that you hate]. Is something good happening? Oh, just wait until it all gets ruined by [same bad thing that you hate]. Cloppity, cloppity, clop.
A few examples of popular hobby horses:
and so on. And guess what? If you read this list and thought, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe she put such-and-such incredibly important topic on the list with all those other trivial issues!” . . . then, my friend, you are the proud and devoted owner of a bona fide hobby horse. These are all important issues. They are, however, not the only issues. They are not always relevant.
So, listen up, everybody — and I’m including myself. If you spend a lot of time yacking online, ask yourself this: could I reasonably be known as “That [something] Guy” or “That [something] Lady”? Do I often find myself saying, “If you’d just open your eyes, you’d see that everything always stems from . . . “? Have you noticed that people can finish your sentences for you, and they don’t seem especially happy about it?
Try this: stop it. Just for 48 hours, conduct all conversations without hauling out your threadbare little pet. If it’s difficult to refrain for even that long, then you have a problem.
The truth is, there are a few occasions when one answer suffices for every question. “Why are bad things bad?” — “Original sin.” “Why are good things good?” — “God.” Everything that is bad is due to a turning away from God; everything that is good is due to God’s goodness. True, true, true.
But if you are interested in better understanding people you disagree with — or if you are interested in solving a problem, rather than being right about how awful the problem it is — then you are going to have to admit that your hobby horse is not actually going to take you anywhere. You might be able to work up a fine sweat charging around on it, but it’s only your own leg power that’s making you go. And that means that you can only go so far.
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I was grousing to myself about spending yet another evening and afternoon driving back and forth to town, but at least I had the radio on — and I discovered a new (to me) singer! Samantha Crain. Oh, what a voice. Here is “We Are the Same”
Plus she looks a tiny bit like Katrina Fernandez, which predisposes me to like her. Love her face, love the aching clarity of her voice, the way she carries herself, and how many stories she has. Here’s “Santa Fe”:
And here’s the one I heard this evening: “Elk City”:
Hooray, I love discovering new music! Her voice makes me think of a clear brook that runs in and out of the shade. She’s wonderful.
That’s the problem: it’s complicated. Maybe too complicated for any administrative fiat or change in policy to change. As the clergy said to the press in Baltimore, “There’s been a state of emergency way before tonight . . . it’s been a long time coming.” How can we fix this? Not by shouting, “You’re a thug!” “Well, you’re a racist!” over and over again.
Read the rest at the Register.
Today, I hope to get caught up on emails. I’m sorry to say I pretty much gave up responding to anyone sometime in the third trimester, and Corrie is now 9 weeks old, so that’s . . . a lot of emails. So if you wrote to me, thanks for being patient!
Who’s a patient email correspondent?
You are! Oh yes, you are!
We’re right in the middle of “something every weekend” season — confirmation, baptism, birthday parties galore, graduations, concerts, and a bunch of things I’m forgetting.
and other important pursuits
Thank goodness we have no athletic ability in this family. We did a few months of T-ball one year, and now we’re all fine, thanks.
We told everyone the baptism was after the 11:15 Mass, so our families left early and rushed around to get there in time (some are several hours away). So 12:15 comes and goes, the church empties out, and I’m sitting there with the baby in her gown, thinking, “If I got the day wrong, I’m going to sink into the ground.” My sister-in-law already took an extra day off a few weeks ago because we told her the wrong date, and the week after that, we told my mother-in-law the wrong location for our daughter’s confirmation!
So I grab the pastor, and he doesn’t know, but he says he thinks there’s first communion practice, but baptisms are usually at 1:00. He texts the deacon, then leaves on an emergency call. The kids go out to the the playground, the first communion class wanders in, I get even more nervous, not least because there is about forty pounds of lasagna slowly drying out at home, and who will eat it if there’s no baptism? Then the deacon rushes up and I grab him, and he says yes, there is are four baptisms, today, but who are all these other people? I tell him about the first communion class. He works out an arrangement with the DRE, and I marvel that they are able to coordinate everything.
He says darkly, “Sometimes, it doesn’t get coordinated.” So the upshot is, pray for our deacons and priests and catechists! Even if they had an easy job spiritually, which they don’t, the sheer logistics of getting everybody sacramented up is going to kill them.
Here are a few pics of the baptism and one of Uncle Joey and the cousin jubilee on the trampoline afterward. Sorry they’re stuck together! I’m gonna leave them like this, rather than fight with the computer for another forty minutes. Happy rebirth day, dear baby!
Congrats to Elizabeth Breslin, Joseph Nelson, Laura Colon, Candice Combs, and Stephanie Schmitz. I’ve sent emails to whichever address is associated with your Rafflecopter registration. If you are a winner and didn’t get an email, just send me your physical mailing address, and I’ll get your magnet right out to you.
Thanks for playing, everybody!
Time for a little giveaway! My dear husband cleaned off the top of the refrigerator, and found five magnets like this:
These sell pretty well around graduation time, so I thought I’d share my stock. To enter, use the Rafflecopter entry form below. The contest will be open until midnight on Saturday, or possibly Sunday. Well, just enter ASAP, I guess. Good luck! And call your mother!
