Bouncing off Jen Fitz’s advice for Christian parents of transgendered children, I have a few things to say about children in general:
When a child begins to exhibit some behavior that is worrisome, it’s easy to panic, to jump to conclusions, to apply adult-style significance to juvenile behavior, or to assume that we can make a diagnosis based on a single symptom or habit.
Here’s the basic idea, whether we’re talking about a child who is actually fine, and just going through a phase, or a child who actually needs professional help: remember that we’re talking about a person, not a problem.
I hope so! This year’s Summer Soiree and fundraiser for Mary’s Shelter promises to be a wonderful time. I will be this year’s keynote speaker for this organization that really gets what it means to be pro-life. Click here to RSVP. Free to attend!
It’s not just a matter of scooping up the cold-weather clothes out of their drawers and replacing them with hot-weather clothes, or even a matter of making a million little emotional decisions, like, “Do I throw away this ratty but beloved shirt while no one’s looking?” or “Do I pack away this baby sweater in case there is ever another baby?”
It’s a matter of going up into the little girls’ room, which is unaffectionately known as “Tinkle Town,” and facing the horrors that have been allowed to propagate over the last few, dark months. And it’s not just a matter of clean laundry not put away, or dirty laundry on the floor, or people who have guilted me into buying them pants because they don’t own any pants except those awful itchy gray ones, but it turns out that they have pants — LOTS of pants — but which they have been dropping on the floor, mashing elderly Easter eggs into, and then packing into old gift bags — GIFT BAGS! — and stuffing into the closet. That’s all true, and dreadful enough.
But there’s more. Let’s just say that what sounded like wild, coke-fueled parties after bedtime was actually wild, Coke-fueled parties after bedtime. 36 cans of Coke. Also a bowl of sugar. Bad children! Bad! So bad!!!
Anyway, with a job as big as this, there is no such thing as a system. The only system is to dive in head first and resign myself to sheer misery and a marathon workout for the washing machine and dryer for the next 72 hours. Pray for me. And the first person to say “First World Problems” is gonna get a gift bag from me.
Translated into more than seventeen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world’s most widely used drawing instruction book. Whether you are drawing as a professional artist, as an artist in training, or as a hobby, this book will give you greater confidence in your ability and deepen your artistic perception, as well as foster a new appreciation of the world around you.
It’s not a comprehensive drawing course, but an entertaining and user-friendly introduction for people who want to learn how to see better, and to translate that skill into realistic drawings.
Anybody want to join us? If enough people are interested, I’ll have a blog link-up once a week, where people can display their work and check out everyone else’s. I know summer is busy, and there’s a chance we will start and then fizzle out, but you never know!
Michael J. Lichens contributes a guest post to The Catholic Gentleman: Black Dog Days: How to Deal With Depression. It’s sympathetic but not squishy, practical, realistic, and humble. Great read for anyone who is suffering through depression. An excerpt:
Prayer is very hard when you are depressed. I, for one, have nagging doubts when I go through my black dog days. God seems silent and I wonder where He is and what He’s doing. All the same, I do pray, and peace eventually comes. In one case, it took me two years of praying, but peace did come. Mother Teresa’s dark night of the soul lasted several years, but she endured. You can find strength in the same faith.
If you are praying and meditating and the words do not come, then sit in silence. Find an icon or an adoration chapel and utter the words, “You are God, I am not. Please help.” If nothing else, your mind will slow down and will shift its focus to God, who sustains all life and is the source of our strength.
I know this is hard, and sometimes you will want to give up. If you can do nothing else, try to take comfort in knowing that Christ didn’t die and rise again just to leave you alone. Find the saints who did suffer from grief and depression and ask them for help. They, more than any other, are eager to come to your aid.
No reason, just curious! We really wanted “I Walk the Line,” but with a music budget of zero, and in those dark pre-internet days, I couldn’t find a copy of it in time. It would have been a good pick, though.
My husband told his friends that we were planning to dance to “Under My Thumb” (and it’s possible that it even made it into the local newspaper’s wedding page this way. It also said that we honeymooned at the Hotel California. Ah, yoot).
Ho ho, very funny, ha ha, it is to laugh. (How did I miss that in my Looney Tunes post?)
Anyway, in real life we went with “In My Life” by the Beatles, which still gets me every time
because this guy still gets me every time.
How about you? What did you dance to? If you’ve been married for a few years, would you choose a different song for the theme of your married life thus far? Tell!
When we are tempted to fall into chronic worry, free-falling anxiety, brooding, endless guilt, and despair, we are falling for a lie. We are turning our hearts over to a false lover, an abuser who wants to control us and make us whimper, make us pay.
There are things to worry about. There are reasons to fear, reasons to dread. These things are true, and there’s no point in telling myself, “There is nothing to be upset about.” There is plenty to be upset about, and there always will be, as long as the earth keeps rolling its tired way around the tired old sun.
But it is not the only truth. It is not the final truth. The final truth is that, after the tired old sun sets for the final time, there will be darkness for a time, and then there will be a sun that rises and never sets, never stops warming us, never stops bringing us light, and light, and more and more light. There is a lover who sees everything that we are and wants to hold us forever in His arms, never wounding, never chiding, never turning us away to spend our nights in agony and alone.
I’ve seen this picture here and there online, and I like it. I like it a lot.
Of course, this would only work with kids who can read. Or, let’s face it, this would only work with kids who are not actively campaigning to drive you out of your gourd. But it should work. It’s a good idea in theory, and some days, that is the best you can get.
However, it needs expanding. For instance, here is a version for my two-year-old (who, admittedly, has never been bored in her life):
The Bishop reminded the confirmandi that it wasn’t that long ago that they received a cross of ashes on their foreheads, signifying to them that this day is fleeting, this life is fleeting. We will all someday die. Then he reminded them to take note of the new cross that was on their foreheads as he spoke. This was cross made of sweet, spicy chrism, a shining cross which has something new to say: You were not made for death.
Oh, I had forgotten! Just because that is where we are headed, that doesn’t mean it was the original plan. And it doesn’t mean it’s the final word. Being confirmed means you are part of an army that intends to fight, an army that is ready to die if necessary — but you are part an army that intends to win.
I can’t resist adding a picture of my lovely daughter with Bishop Libasci and my mother-in-law, who looks a lot more like my daughter’s mother than I do!
It would be hard to overstate how much Looney Tunes means to me. When that WB logo blossoms out of the void, it’s like a flower of joy blooming in my heart. That’s what it’s like, okay?
We all have our favorite scenes from Looney Tunes, and the kids can recite long swaths of dialogue by heart. But some phrases have actually worked their way into our everyday speech, to the point where we don’t even realize we’re quoting, say, a puma. Here are a few Looney Tunes phrases that have become Fisherized:
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Oh, t’ree or fou-er.
Source: Rabbit’s Kin
Typical use: “What time do you think you’ll get out of that meeting?” – “Ohhh, t’ree or fou-er.”
It’s a sticky one, but I’m not happy about it. When Bugs Bunny is being sadistic to Daffy Duck (who would kill him if he could) or Elmer Fudd (ditto), it’s not so bad, because they were definitely asking for it. Even that poor fat opera singer somehow doesn’t gain our sympathy. But Pete Puma — okay, he is an unpleasant character, and he did want to eat Bugs Bunny, but this is a creature who should be gently led by the hand to learn basket weaving. He shouldn’t have his head lumps hammered back into his skull with a special little sadism hammer Gosh. Bugs Bunny goes too far in this one. Anyway, “Oh, t’ree or fou-er” does pass my lips pretty often. I just can’t help it.
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An innnnn-teresting monster
Source: Water, Water Everyhare
Typical use: “Is Irene dressed yet?”
“I guess so. She is wearing pajamas, a vampire cape, and a bucket on her head.”
“Well, she is an interesting monster.”
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Ah’m a-splurgin!
This is the only YouTube clip I could find, and they’ve messed with the sound; not sure why. But the pertinent phrase in intact. (You can see the same clip here, but I can’t embed it.)
Source: High Diving Hare
Typical use: I’m in the supermarket with my daughter, looking at hot sauce. I decide to go for the big bottle, and turn around to shout at my daughter, “Ahhhh’m a-splurgin!” Of course it turns out to be not my daughter, but some nervous-looking stranger who scoots out of there pretty quick.
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“Shoot him now! Shoot him now!” ” Pronoun trouble” “Yays?” and ” . . . not again! . . . ” “You’re despicable.” and “Still lurking about.”
Also “Out of sheer honesty!”
Source: All from that masterpiece, Rabbit Seasoning
Typical Use: My kids can recite this entire cartoon. I think it’s pretty easy to imagine how the phrases “Yays?” “Not again!” “You’re despicable” and “Still lurking about!” and even “Shoot him now! Shoot him now!” would get used. “Pronoun trouble” is a little more arcane, but when your household is full of people who are just learning how to talk. So when someone is trying to tell you, “MAMA, he said hit me back because I told him she took my spoon but she hit him first and you said he was supposed to give it to meeeeeeeeee,” you can imagine how there is often, in fact, pronoun trouble.
“Out of sheer honesty!” is for when you are a terrible human being and you’re not going to deny it, and yet even you are unable to believe what the other guy is trying to get away with. Useful for conversations about Joe Biden, or Robert Sungenis, or when you are checking over the kitchen after the kids cleaned it, and you discover that, rather than wash a pot, they have hidden it inside the toaster oven.
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No one will ever know!
Source: “The Dover Boys at Pimento University”
Typical use: “I’ll just slip this tooth fairy money under the pillow of the twelve-year-old, who is wide awake. NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW”
Kind of a weird and forgettable cartoon. I have no idea why this phrase stuck. Probably because, around the time we first saw it, my son was about three and could be found running circles around his three older sisters, shrieking, “SNEAKIN’ AROUND!” My kids are subtle that way.
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What for you bury me in the cold, cold ground?
I can’t find a clip and I’ve been working on this post, off an on, for six days. If you haven’t seen it and/or can’t call it to mind, I’m just sorry for you.
Source: “Devil May Hare”
Typical Use: You have just given the toddler everything she asked for: an apple, a banana, a banana that is peeled right, instead of one that is peeled wrong; a cracker, a cup of water, a cup of water in the right kind of cup, instead of the wrong kind of cup; the right kind of cup with MILK in it, not WATER. You offer to read her a favorite book, and she freaks out, flails around, gives you a bloodly lip with her flailing head, and then settles down on your lap, and pees on you.
“What for you bury me in the cold, cold ground?” is one of the few things the Tasmanian Devil ever actually says. To me, this speaks of the desperate genius of classic Looney Tunes. You just know that the writers were half in the bag at all times, and probably battling against the manic despair that most creative people feel when they do the thing that ends up making them money. Did they have dreams of rubbing elbows with Checkov? Did they imagine themselves writing dialogue for rabbits and ducks? Anyway, rarely has heart spoken to heart more poignantly than when this cri de coeur slips past the Tasmanian Devil’s spittle flecked lips. I weep for the Taz and the Daffy Duck, and of course the Wile E. Coyote, in all of us. I am despicable, and I know it.
