Category: Uncategorized

The Woman Who Took Everything Personally: Garden Edition

(Reprinted upon request. I am now two years older and have given up on tomatoes. Other than that, everything is the same.)

People sometimes ask me* how I manage to keep up with gardening. With all my many responsibilities, how do I manage to maintain my flower beds in their customary splendor?

Here’s how you do it. First, you decide to live in a place where the soil is 78% soccer ball-sized rocks with paltry little swaths of dirt in between. Then you crank the climate way down to supidsville, so it may be Memorial Day, but you’re still squinting wrathfully at the sky and thinking, “Yep, that’s definitely a snow cloud.” You consider burning the dog for fuel. Nothing personal; it just really, really hurts to pay for heating oil in May.

This in itself should make gardening miserable enough. But if you really want to reap sorrow and lamentations as you bring forth flowers into the world, then I cannot recommend highly enough the following technique.

Take it personally. All of it!

Above is a little diagram of one of my little flower beds, which also doubles neatly as a functional map of my psyche. Every single thing that grows tells you something about me, and all of it is stupid.

That lilac tree is a sehnsucht-laden bearer of my youthful memories of this other lilac tree we used to have, alas. I wait in agony for the blossoms to open so I can smell them, thinking all the time about how quickly they will fade, alas alas.

The day lilies come up on their own, and spread like crazy, and I have to rip them out to make way for other flowers, because life is like that. Not even flowers will be allowed to flourish where they will. Death will always have his portion, and I will be his agent. Sheesh, Death.

The purple bushy stuff and the white bushy stuff, I bought on clearance, where the heartless Home Depot generation stopped bothering to water it just because it had already bloomed for the season. Can you believe that? A nice, decent flower, with so much growth left in it, just shoved aside before it’s even fully passed. Just because a flower is forty-one years old and maybe has a double chin and big arms and can’t stay awake through movies, they stop watering it, and nobody even cards it at the liquor store anymore, but this is not right! It’s not right! It’s . . . it’s just not right.

The poppies, I bought out of rage. The only thing that would have made me happier is if they had cost five times as much, because that would be just like them. Freaking poppies. I have been trying to grow poppies all my life, because they are so lovely, and I’ve never gotten so much as a single glossy petal or even an inch or two of hairy, snakelike stem. So here I go, freaking buying freaking poppies, and I HOPE THEY ALL DIE. Freaking poppies. *sob*

The daisies, I dug up from another part of the yard and chunked into my garden because the cruel mower was headed for their sweet heads. If that isn’t just like a man, humph. You stick with me, daisies. We’ll start a book club together, you and me, and you can chip in for the rent once your candle business gets off the ground. I understand.

The roses, I picked up last year at Aldi because they were on sale. I don’t even like roses, but what could I do? They were on sale. And wouldn’t you know it, they survived the winter and they’re doing fine. Thanks a lot, Aldi. By the way, your three bean salad stinks. I rate it two beans at best.

The various plants marked “??” are things that I don’t dare to weed because I can never remember if they are anything or not, because I’m an idiot.

And then there’s this beauty:

Oh, yeah, this is going to be great, I can tell already. Huge masses of fragrant, glowing blossoms will definitely ignite the senses in the fall, kindling hope anew in hearts that were beginning to falter. Totally. Yeah, I have super high hopes that we’ll see a real turnaround with this particular item.

And one more thing: did you notice that none of this was grown from seed? That’s because I stink! I stink! I didn’t even smell the lilacs today, because I stink!

In conclusion: at least Google knows what I’m talking about.

*No one has ever asked me

The Good Ole Shepherds Club

I’ve written before about the pitfalls of community — about how finding a group of like-minded people with similar interests can urge us to greater heights of virtue, but it can also affirm us in our vices.

Once you’re comfortably inside the walls that define your group, the group quickly becomes what defines you; and then, if there’s nothing from the outside calling you to account, it’s all too easy to put all your effort into making the walls stronger. No matter what your original reason was for joining that group, your sole work becomes maintaining the walls.

And inside the walls, the oxygen decreases, the temperature rises, and what was once a group of individuals becomes undifferentiated intellectual and spiritual compost that’s not even useful as fertilizer, because it never leaves the heap.

This is how we get nasty little social media cliques, and this is also how we get the alt right, how we get violent incels and other militantly misogynist and racist groups openly arguing ideas that normal people would have been aghast to even entertain ten or twenty years ago. There are no meaningful outside checks; it all becomes about maintaining your identity by shoring up the walls of your group.

And God help us, this is how we got Cardinal McCarrick and Co.

Carinal Wuerl (who, I’m just gonna say it, is talking an awful lot like a man trying to get out ahead of something ugly) thinks we can fix the profoundly ingrained systems of institutional predation and corruption in the hierarchy of the Church by forming an oversight committee made up of — you’ll never guess — the hierarchy of the Church.

This is insane. Insane.  This tells us that the group has devoured the individuals. Not in all cases, but in far too many. Maybe once these men became priests and then bishops out of a desire to serve God through serving the Church, but now far too many are putting all their efforts into strengthening the walls between them and their flock.

Just stop and think for a minute. If I, as an individual layman, knew that a powerful man was preying on some innocent person, I would call the police.  That is what I would do. I’m a member of the human race, and it is my obligation to protect the vulnerable if I can.

Why haven’t all bishops done this? Why have they not taken instantaneous, dramatic action to protect the innocent from powerful men in their ranks?

I’ve only found three possible answers.

The first is that some of them truly didn’t know. There is such a thing as a naive bishop, and there is such a thing as a bishop who is not in the loop. I do believe that, whether or not they should have, some of them truly didn’t know.

The second explanation is the threat of tit-for-tat. “You spill the beans about what I did with those seminarians, and I’ll spill the beans about [what you did with that woman] or [what you did with those funds] or [whatever awful things people do when they come into power].”

This may very well explain everything. But the only other explanation I have been able to find is somehow the worst of all, and it goes like this: “Well, after the scandals broke, we decided that we would have VIRTUS training, and that took care of predatory layman and priests, but there haven’t been sufficient channels put in place to report predatory bishops. So if anyone knew that a bishop was doing something wrong, there was simply no way to report it, even if it was a bishop himself who knew.”

What the hell does that mean? Are their phones broken? Does 911 not work when you get anointed bishop?  Can you not call the NYT like any other whistleblower? Do you lose your humanity when you put on a mitre?

This is what happens when you are so deeply entrenched in a group of your peers. You forget that there is an outside world. You forget you’re still free to act like any other human being would act, and so you don’t act. You just keep on frantically daubing at the chinks in the walls, where that awful light keeps getting in.

Bishop Scharfenberger gets it.

Bishop Gainer gets it.

Cardinal O’Malley gets it. He went after the Pope, for crying out loud, even though nobody had put channels in place for that to happen. That’s how you act when you’re a shepherd, not angling for lifetime membership in the Ole Shepherds Club.

Shepherds exist for the sake of the flock. They are supposed to be individual men who serve God by leading and serving the rest of the Church and the rest of the world. If they continue on this inward-spiraling, double-talking, no-response response, it becomes harder and harder to see why the group exists at all.

Even a compost heap is supposed to be shaken up every once in a while. You dig in with your shovels, you turn it over, you let the sun hit what was buried. I thank God for those bishops who are willing to dig in with their shovels, without worrying about how much of their own ground they’re undermining. Are there enough of them?

We laymen are watching, your eminences, and yes, we are praying for you. But right now, the view from outside the wall you’ve built is pretty grim.

 

Image By Jebulon [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons

 

Your Eminence, you’re the archbishop of Shark City.

What’s coming up in August? The World Meeting of Families, of course. I saw an upbeat note about it on Twitter. August also brings Cardinal Wuerl’s latest “pastoral reflection” in which he responds to the latest agony of the Church as more layers of betrayal are uncovered. In the letter he explains the “documents” and “procedures” and “clearly articulated measures” and the “commitment [which] may serve as the nucleus of a more effective mechanism to ensure greater accountability among ourselves.”

You got a pen, your eminence?

Because right now, you’re the archbishop of Shark City, and people think you want the beaches open.

God have mercy.  As if what we need is yet another wretched document, another craven press release. The “effective mechanism” was described two thousand years ago, and it involves a millstone and a neck. You can’t just tell us you feel bad, and you can’t just demote the doddering old pervert McCarrick, wave vaguely in the direction of the sexual revolution, and consider your job done. Not while the sea is still full of sharks and you’re still hoping to cash in on August.

You can’t do this to us anymore. I want to hear the bishops acknowledging that we are their children, and they betrayed us. Priests are their children, and they betrayed them. Seminarians are their children, and they betrayed them. All in the name of saving August, in the name of money and prestige, in the name of acting in the Church’s best interest, so many of our bishops have betrayed us, and so many of them still won’t listen. They’re still trying to save face, still planning to keep the farce going.

I want to see bishops — many bishops — writing a pastoral letter that says, “Yes, I knew what McCarrick was doing. Yes, I knew what the seminaries were like. Yes, I got letters from whistleblowers. I didn’t do anything. I helped keep it quiet. I persuaded myself it was in the Church’s best interest to pretend these horrors weren’t happening, even though it was my job to protect and defend my flock. Please pray for me, because I betrayed Christ, I betrayed my office, and I betrayed you all, and so I resign.”

There is no document that will be just as good. There is no one you can hire to take care of this problem, no check you can sign to make this problem go away. Go ahead and have the World Meeting of Families. Go ahead and keep the food pantries and the schools and the hospitals going. Go ahead and draft more reforms and form more committees. For God’s sake, go ahead and keep giving us the sacraments. But rend your garments. Rend your garments. If this was the work of your hands, then you must step down. If you betrayed us, you must step down.

Summer is over. To every bishop, I say: Your eminence, your kids were on that beach, too.

 

pdf version of this post

By Ewen Roberts from California (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Jesus knew about Uncle Ted

There is a permanent lump in my throat as I read the news about our Church, about who knew what, and who decided nothing should be done.

I read the news, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t see my way to withholding our paltry weekly contribution to the parishes we attend. Our money helps support the diocese, and also the soup kitchen, and the little parish school with paper flowers in the windows. Heating fuel in the winter, some modest vestments for Father. The AIDS outreach ministry. The salaries of kind, hardworking christians. And the diocese. I work for the diocese myself. Is our diocese rotten too? I have no idea. I’m told it’s naive to believe anyone and anything isn’t rotten in the Church anymore.

Last Sunday, I watched my son carry the heavy, brass cross up the center aisle. He loves being an altar boy, is downcast on the weeks when he’s not called to serve.  I’d been allowing myself to daydream of the moment when he might tell me he wants to be a priest. And now I must also think of the moment I’ll tell him how to protect himself in seminary, how to ward off attack from the depraved, how to keep himself innocent as he learns how to bring Christ into the world.

I don’t know what to do. Write to the bishop, I suppose. Demand more oversight by laypeople. Demand that they stop lobbying against extensions of the statute of limitations. Demand more transparency. I will do some penance. I will pray. I will listen to people who rage against the Church, and I will offer no defense, because all of it is true.

The answer I keep coming to: Jesus already knew. He carried the sin of Cardinal McCarrick in his butchered heart. He groaned the groan of a tortured seminarian as His back was laid open. His scalp split with the pressure of the thorny mass of lies, evasions, excuses, and accommodations as the decades passed and everybody knew, everybody knew what went on, everybody knew about Uncle Ted. And Christ knew about Uncle Ted. And He wept, and bled, and died, knowing.

You think you want to run away from the Church. You think you will find a place where there is not so much hypocrisy, so much entrenched evil, a place that isn’t built from layer upon layer of guilt and shame and depravity. You may find such a place, I don’t know. But you will not find in it a God who weeps and bleeds and dies, who has taken sin into His bosom, swallowed it whole, let it burn in His belly until it finally burns out. You will only find this God in the Holy Roman Rotten Catholic Church, where the depraved teach young men how to confect God.

It is a rotten church. But it is not rotten to the heart, because Jesus is the heart. There is more bloodshed there than I expected to see.  But Jesus is there. He knew about Uncle Ted, and He knew about everything else we’re about to find out. That is why He came. Remember this, whatever else we do.

 

Image: Jesus with Crown of Thorns by Follower of Aelbrecht Bouts [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Contest winners + I’m on The Catholic Podcast with Joe Heschmeyer

Sorry for the delay in the list of winners! Everyone on this list has been notified using the email they provided to enter the contest.

Monday
Christine Dumouchel
Julie Von Rotz

Tuesday
Victoria Treboschi
Theresa Hardy

Wednesday
Lori Magelky
Stacia Demeulenaere

Thursday
Jamie Piper
Jake Casey
Jessica Marsh

Friday
Rachel Nesbitt
Debbie McGeehan
Catherine Burnham

If you entered and see your name here and haven’t seen an email from me, please check your junk folder, or make sure that you didn’t provide an obsolete email to Rafflecopter. (If you entered using Facebook, Rafflecopter showed me the email address that is associated with Facebook.)

Congratulations! And thank you so much, one more time, to all the generous sponsors. You are wonderful.

Next order of business: I had a wonderful (well, that’s how I remember it) conversation about NFP, Humanae Vitae, chastity, and Jell-o with Joe Heschmeyer of The Catholic Podcast (unfortunately Chloe Langr, the regular co-host, couldn’t be there). You can hear the podcast here, and check out tons of other resources we mentioned in the conversation.

 

Friday: 3 monitors, 2 boxes of test strips, and a Marquette class!

It’s the final countdown! Or whatever. Today is the last day of my week of raffles. My lovely sponsors have donated no fewer than eight fertility monitors so far. Amazing! Pee on them in good health, my friends!

Today, there are three final prizes:

One monitor, donated by my friend Beth Brenner Wallace (prize for US winner)

One monitor and box of test strips, donated by Smart Loving (prize for winner in any country)

One monitor, box of test strips, and online introductory class with optional breastfeeding instruction and one year of follow-up, donated and taught by Lauren Vitale (prize for US winner)!

A little bit about Smart Loving:

SmartLoving has a range of programs for marriage enrichment and marriage preparation that aim to integrate Theology of the Body insights and modern psychology to give couples practical tools and spiritual nourishment to live the Catholic vision for marriage. We are currently investing in taking our programs into online learning to give affordable access to Couples all over the world to quality marriage enrichment and preparation.

Part of this mission is includes introducing couples to the actual Catholic teaching and vision for a couple’s fertility and promoting Fertility Awareness Methods of all kinds as an alternative to the ‘standard fare’.

See SmartLoving for more information!

***

A bit about Lauren Vitale:

Lauren Vitale, who worked for many years as a pediatric nurse, says:

I first learned about the Marquette Method after my youngest child was born. Natural Family Planning while breastfeeding has specific challenges, and I found the objectivity of the Marquette Method gave me greater confidence. I was so encouraged that it motivated me to become an instructor in the Marquette Method and put my nursing knowledge to good use: helping women and couples know their fertility and be empowered to make decisions with confidence.

I have been teaching the Marquette Method since May of 2017 after being trained as an instructor through the Marquette University School of Nursing Institute for Natural Family Planning. I received my full certification in May of 2018 after completing the continued practicum through Marquette University. My training has given me the opportunity to truly appreciate the value of a research-based and scientific approach to Natural Family Planning by working with the researchers and developers of the Marquette Method. I have loved meeting so many amazing women and couples from all over the world, and I enjoy helping them learn and apply the Marquette Method to meet their family planning goals.

Read more about the Marquette method and Lauren’s practice here.

***

How do I enter? Use the Rafflecopter form below. Please be sure to use the right one for your country. It gives you several ways to enter. If the form doesn’t show up, click on the link that says “a Rafflecopter giveaway” at the bottom of the post. Only one prize per household.

How often can I enter? You may enter once per day, using as many ways of entering as you like (see form below for details). Two winners will be chosen M-W, three on Thursday and three on Friday. Each day is a separate raffle. Each raffle runs from midnight to midnight, eastern time.

Can I win if I live outside the US? Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are open only to US residents. On Thursday, there will be one prize for a US resident and two for UK residents; and on Friday, there will be two prizes for a US resident and one for a resident of any country. Please be sure only to enter the raffle for your country!

When will winners be announced? I’ll choose winners for each raffle every day on Monday through Friday. I’ll announce all the winners on Friday, or possibly on Saturday if I am a terrible person.
If you are a winner, I will notify you using the address you provided to Rafflecopter.

Do I have to provide my actual email address, even though I worry that you will use it to steal my soul and then go on a shopping spree at Forever 21? Yes, please use an actual email address. I don’t even want your soul. Your valid email is the only way I have of getting in touch with you if you win, so please make sure that when you sign up for Rafflecopter, you use an active address! If I can’t get in touch with you, I’ll pick a different winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thurbsday giveaway: 2 UK prizes, one US prize

Day four of the Clearblue monitor giveaway, and it’s finally UK day! Also US day still! Also, several people have asked about Canada, and I’m happy to announce that, tomorrow, I’ll have a prize open to a resident of any country.

I want to make sure it’s clear: You can enter each day’s raffle, as long as it’s for your country. If you aren’t notified that you’ve won, feel free to keep trying the next day.

As a final note: I am aware that the graphic says “day 1.” I made it last night and I was tired and do not know what is going on. Just roll with it.

Today, we have two monitors, each with a box of test strips, to give away for UK residents, and one monitor for a US resident. There are two separate raffles. Please be sure to enter the right one for your country. 

Gina Terrana has donated the monitor for a US winner, and hopes the Marquette method will help couples who want to conceive. The UK donor would like to remain anonymous. Thank you to both donors!

The raffle details:

How do I enter? Use the Rafflecopter form below. Please be sure to use the right one for your country. It gives you several ways to enter. If the form doesn’t show up, click on the link that says “a Rafflecopter giveaway” at the bottom of the post. Only one prize per household.

How often can I enter? You may enter once per day, using as many ways of entering as you like (see form below for details). Two winners will be chosen per day. Each day is a separate raffle. Each raffle runs from midnight to midnight, eastern time.

Can I win if I live outside the US? Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are open only to US residents. On Thursday, there will be one prize for a US resident and two for UK residents; and on Friday, there will be two prizes for a US resident and one for a resident of any country.

When will winners be announced? I’ll choose two winners each day on Monday through Friday. I’ll announce all the winners on Friday, or possibly on Saturday if I am a terrible person.
If you are a winner, I will notify you using the address you provided to Rafflecopter.

Do I have to provide my actual email address, even though I worry that you will use it to steal my soul and then go on a shopping spree at Forever 21? Yes, please use an actual email address. I don’t even want your soul. Your valid email is the only way I have of getting in touch with you if you win, so please make sure that when you sign up for Rafflecopter, you use an active address! If I can’t get in touch with you, I’ll pick a different winner.

Good luck!

If the Rafflecopter forms don’t show up below, please use this link for the UK raffle

and use this link for the US raffle.

.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Wednesday giveaway: Monitors #5 and #6

Day three of the Clearblue monitor giveaway! Winners of yesterdays monitors and boxes of test strips will be notified by email very shortly.

Today, we have two monitors to give away. The first is sponsored by Laura and Keith Phillips. Thank you very much!

The second is sponsored by Frances Jue, who has written a short introduction to Endow, for which she facilitates a chapter.

 

Frances says:

The feminine genius.

Five years ago this phrase was unknown to me. Five years ago, I was cradling a newborn baby girl in my arms, delighting in all of her charms. There’s just something special when a woman has a little girl. We know what to expect, in a certain sense, as she makes her way from girlhood to womanhood.

 

We know the joys and potential crosses that lay before her. As I gazed on her perfect, innocent face, my own clouded with vague worries that finally formed themselves into a clear question – what does it mean to be a woman? Having been raised in a Christian home, I was equipped with enough information to reject the world’s presentation of femininity. I knew there was more to me than physical attraction, maintaining sex appeal, attaining power, or proving myself to be just as good as the men. I knew I was lovingly made by my Creator, and that He had dreams and plans for me. But that knowledge didn’t concretely tell me what being a woman truly meant. What did authentic femininity look like, and, what most pressed on my heart, how could I pass that on to my daughter?

 

Several years later I was in a local Catholic bookstore. Since my conversion to the Catholic Church in 2007 I had become increasingly familiar with the brilliance of John Paul II. I was curious about this phrase I kept running across – the feminine genius – and decided to get a copy the encyclical Mulieris Dignitatem, where this term had originated. As I made my purchase that day, the lovely lady that rang me up spoke enthusiastically of the encyclical and asked if I had ever heard of a ministry called Endow. She explained that their name was an acronym for Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women, and that they provided studies that focused on the feminine genius. Her enthusiasm for the document and the ministry culminated her saying “you should start a chapter in your parish”.

With absolutely no intention of doing so, I smiled, said “sure” and walked out the door. Mulieris Dignitatem was life changing for me. In it, John Paul II elaborates on the unique attributes that are essential to all women – just as there are physical characteristics that all women possess that make them female, so too our nature (the reality by which we are what we are (Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity) has definitive markings. Our vocation steers us toward who we are called to serve in love. Our masculinity or femininity points us toward how we are called to love. A woman’s feminine genius expresses itself in a unique capacity to both physically and spiritually nurture new life, in her natural inclination to personalize, empathize, and to enter into the sufferings of another. A woman’s body expresses what she intuits in her heart – that she is made to love and be loved, truly imaging that “man only finds himself through a gift of self”.

 

Five years ago I had so many questions. God heard my mother’s heart, so aching to give my little girl truth and goodness, and He answered with excessive generosity. This understanding of myself as a woman breathed new life into me. Far deeper and richer than mere superficial trappings this helped me understand who I am at my core, and how I am called to image Christ to the world around me. This was the beautiful truth of what it meant to be created female, in the image and likeness of God.

 

Endow has done an amazing job of presenting the Church’s treasure trove of wisdom for all women. I’ve been facilitating studies for two years now, and I really can’t overstate the impact these study groups have had on me and the women in my church. Drawing from the writings of John Paul II, Edith Stein, Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas (and more!) each study presents women with fresh, beautiful insights on their feminine genius. This really is the heart of the new evangelization. Authentic beauty is never a mere product for consumption, but invites us to respond – as women, it is in our power to invite the world to respond to God’s love through the beauty of our feminine genius.

 

If you’d like to (and trust me, you do!) learn more about Endow, you can go to their website:

 

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to all the women at Endow, who responded to God’s call to nurture the hearts and souls of your sisters in Christ, so hungry for the beauty and goodness of truth.

 ***

Thank you to both donors!

Today’s raffle is open only to US residents. Tomorrow, there will be one monitor and box of test strips for US residents and two monitors and two boxes of test strips for UK residents.

The raffle details:

How do I enter? Use the Rafflecopter form below. It gives you several ways to enter. If the form doesn’t show up, click on the link that says “a Rafflecopter giveaway” at the bottom of the post. Only one prize per household.

How often can I enter? You may enter once per day, using as many ways of entering as you like (see form below for details). Two winners will be chosen per day. Each day is a separate raffle. Each raffle runs from midnight to midnight, eastern time.

Can I win if I live outside the US? Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are open only to US residents. On Thursday, there will be one prize for a US resident and one for a UK resident; and on Friday, there will be one prize for a US resident and one for an Australia resident.

When will winners be announced? I’ll choose two winners each day on Monday through Friday. I’ll announce all the winners on Friday, or possibly on Saturday if I am a terrible person.
If you are a winner, I will notify you using the address you provided to Rafflecopter.

Do I have to provide my actual email address, even though I worry that you will use it to steal my soul and then go on a shopping spree at Forever 21? Yes, please use an actual email address. I don’t even want your soul. Your valid email is the only way I have of getting in touch with you if you win, so please make sure that when you sign up for Rafflecopter, you use an active address! If I can’t get in touch with you, I’ll pick a different winner.

Good luck!

If the Rafflecopter form doesn’t show up below, follow this link.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tuesday Clearblue Fertility Monitor Giveaway #3 and #4

Day two of the Clearblue monitor giveaway! Winners of yesterdays monitors and boxes of test strips will be notified by email very shortly.

Today, we have two sponsors. An anonymous donor who uses and likes Marquette is sponsoring a monitor, and Kathy Aabram is sponsoring a monitor and box of test strips. Kathy requests prayers for a mom, A., in a difficult and unstable situation, for her baby, and for the potential adoptive couple she’s working with.

Thank you to both donors!

I hope you enjoy today’s graphic. I put a lot into it, as always.

Today’s raffle is open only to US residents. There will be one prize for UK residents and one for Australia residents in the coming days.

The raffle details:

How do I enter? Use the Rafflecopter form below. It gives you several ways to enter. If the form doesn’t show up, click on the link that says “a Rafflecopter giveaway” at the bottom of the post. Only one prize per household.

How often can I enter? You may enter once per day, using as many ways of entering as you like (see form below for details). Two winners will be chosen per day. Each day is a separate raffle. Each raffle runs from midnight to midnight, eastern time.

Can I win if I live outside the US? Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are open only to US residents. On Thursday, there will be one prize for a US resident and one for a UK resident; and on Friday, there will be one prize for a US resident and one for an Australia resident.

When will winners be announced? I’ll choose two winners each day on Monday through Friday. I’ll announce all the winners on Friday, or possibly on Saturday if I am a terrible person.
If you are a winner, I will notify you using the address you provided to Rafflecopter.

Do I have to provide my actual email address, even though I worry that you will use it to steal my soul and then go on a shopping spree at Forever 21? Yes, please use an actual email address. I don’t even want your soul. Your valid email is the only way I have of getting in touch with you if you win, so please make sure that when you sign up for Rafflecopter, you use an active address! If I can’t get in touch with you, I’ll pick a different winner.

Good luck!

If the Rafflecopter form doesn’t show up below, follow this link.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NFP Awareness Week: Clearblue Fertility Monitor Giveaway #1 and #2

Here we are again! NFP Awareness Week. Here’s the deal: We love the Marquette method of NFP. It’s made NFP so much easier and has given us so much more confidence. And, like, Corrie is almost three-and-a-half and she is still the youngest, so.

But the monitor costs more than $100, and you have to buy a box of test strips every few months, too. For many years, we just couldn’t afford it, and I know plenty of people are in the same boat.

Happily, I have many generous friends, and ten of them have offered to sponsor a total of eleven monitors to give away, plus several boxes of test strips, plus instruction with one or possibly two instructors!

 

Today, we have two sponsors, each sponsoring a monitor and box of test strips to give away. One is my friend Tanya Cleary, and the other is an anonymous donor. Thanks so very much to them!

For my part, I will try to post a new, terrible graphic each day this week. It’s not easy, but I’m willing.

Today’s raffle is open only to US residents. There will be one prize for UK residents and one for Australia residents in the coming days.

The raffle details:

How do I enter? Use the Rafflecopter form below. It gives you several ways to enter. If the form doesn’t show up, click on the link that says “a Rafflecopter giveaway” at the bottom of the post. Only one prize per household.

How often can I enter? You may enter once per day, using as many ways of entering as you like (see form below for details). Two winners will be chosen per day. Each day is a separate raffle. Each raffle runs from midnight to midnight, eastern time.

Can I win if I live outside the US? Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are open only to US residents. On Thursday, there will be one prize for a US resident and one for a UK resident; and on Friday, there will be one prize for a US resident and one for an Australia resident.

When will winners be announced? I’ll choose two winners each day on Monday through Friday. I’ll announce all the winners on Friday, or possibly on Saturday if I am a terrible person.
If you are a winner, I will notify you using the address you provided to Rafflecopter.

Do I have to provide my actual email address, even though I worry that you will use it to steal my soul and then go on a shopping spree at Forever 21? Yes, please use an actual email address. I don’t even want your soul. Your valid email is the only way I have of getting in touch with you if you win, so please make sure that when you sign up for Rafflecopter, you use an active address! If I can’t get in touch with you, I’ll pick a different winner.

 

If the Rafflecopter form doesn’t show up below, here’s the link to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway