Catholic converts, talk to me!

A bleg today! I’m working on a longer piece for Our Sunday Visitor, designed for newcomers to the Church (and welcome, by the way! I’m SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE!). I want to explain some of the things that cradle Catholics take for granted, but which might be baffling for newbies.

I’m thinking less about doctrinal issues and more about the “little stuff” — holy water etiquette, when to genuflect and when to go down on both knees, what prayers to say after Communion, whether or not to drop a fiver in the paten, whether or not to bring your hunting hounds along to your skinny little baby’s baptism . . .

If you’re a new convert, what would you like to know more about? Or if you remember being new, what made you scratch your head? Or if you’re a priest or a RCIA instructor, what “little things” do your new flocks wonder about?

In the mean time, here’s a piece I wrote for the Register back in 2013. It’s also for converts — specifically, for those facing their first Lent as a Catholic. Might be helpful for us old-timers, too, as we solidify our plans for how to observe Lent.

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Lenten Rookie Mistakes

I feel like I can’t walk ten feet without bumping into an enthusiastic new convert, which is delightful, and so encouraging!  Welcome, everybody!  We papists have a little saying:  Venite intus; horribilis est!

Heh.  Anyway, you may be looking forward to your first Lent with enthusiasm but some trepidation.  If so, you’re ahead of the game:  it should be something to get excited about.  Lent can be a wonderful source of grace.  But as such, it can be a real mine field of screw-ups, especially for rookies.  Here are some typical rookie mistakes during Lent:

Giving Up All The Things!!!  Don’t forget:  even though it’s Lent, you still have to live the rest of your life.  So it’s probably not wise to take on such a complicated set of obligations and observances that you will need to hire a monk to follow you around, reminding you that you have exactly four minutes to make supper or earn a living before you’re due for your next spiritual reading, or  to pray anther five decades of the rosary, volunteer another half hour at the soup kitchen, say a blessing before, during, and after sneezing, and put a fresh set of dried peas in your shoes, all on four hours of sleep without a pillow and after a breakfast consisting of half a prune.  Just pick one or two things that you can reasonably stick with, or you will burn out and/or drop dead.

Giving up the thing that makes you bearable  Lent is about you doing sacrifices, not making everybody else suffer while they endure your enduring your sacrifice.  If your family sits you down 48 hours into Lent and presents you with a court order demanding that you start smoking or drinking coffee again, then have mercy and listen to them.

Leaving Loopholes As I’m prone to explain shoutily to my lazy, rotten kids, “That’s not cleaning, that’s just moving the mess around!”  You’re not allowed to tidy up your bed by shoving all your junk under the bed.  In the same way, it doesn’t really benefit you much to give up Facebook if you’re suddenly going to become a champion-level Twitterer.  Or if you gave up chocolate, you get no points for diving head first into a vat of caramel.  Substituting toothpicks for cigarettes, or water for beer, is a real penance; substituting YouTube for Netflix, not so much.

Waiting until the last minute for confession  You may think you’re getting the most out of your Lenten Experience by doing one final purge during Holy Week.  This is a horrible mistake.  Unless you want to be on line forever and ever, or unless your priest shows signs that he would like some extra penance by being in that box morning, noon, and night, do try to get to confession before the last minute!  Ideally, you should get to confession more than once during Lent, anyway.  And of course, if you haven’t gotten around to it, later is better than never.  But be aware that many priests do not hear confessions on Good Friday or Holy Saturday.  There’s some dispute over whether or not they’re permitted to hear confessions on those days; but for many overworked priests, there’s simply no time, with all the preparations they must make for the Triduum.

Getting cute about it  The standard observations are standard for a reason.  I know it’s fun to be creative, but it’s kind of obnoxious to give up — I don’t know, adjectives, or clothes that match, or foods with the letter “r” in them.  It might actually work out to be a difficult penance, but come on.   No need to reinvent the wheel.  If you’re a naturally creative person, consider it your penance to bow to the ordinary, and do what everyone else is doing for once.

Getting overly somber about it Yes, it’s a penitential season, when we focus, like no other time of year, on the ugliness of sin, and on the suffering and sorrows Our Lord took on for our sake.  It makes perfect sense to curtail parties and frivolities until after Lent (it’s only 40 days!), and to make our daily lives take on a penitential tone which is unmistakably different from the rest of the year.  But that doesn’t mean you need to quit smiling, or that we can’t enjoy being with friends and family, or listening to the first robin sing.  We’re not Calvinists or Jansenists or any other “ist” that makes us quit being human.

Not getting back on that horse  If you fail, that doesn’t mean you’ve picked the wrong penance, or that you’re incapable of doing penance.  It means you’re a human being.  Duh.  That’s why we need Lent.  Yes, you can back away from penances that turn out to be really disastrous; but don’t quit just because you fail.  God likes it when we try to become holier, but He loves it when we mess up, repent, and try again.  As Jen Fulwiler has pointed out, Lent really starts about halfway through, when the novelty has worn off and you still have to keep on sticking with your dumb old, boring old, purifying old penance.

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After reading this list of don’ts and more don’ts, do you feel a little taken aback — a little less confident about your powers to turn yourself into a better person?  Are you starting to think that there’s really no way you can make up for your sins on your own, and that you’re going to need ten boatloads of grace from the Holy Spirit to even get through the day, much less forty days straight?

Ah!  Now we’re getting somewhere.

What’s for supper? Vol. 22: Meat hero

Well! I acquitted myself very well this week. I tried three new recipes, and two of them were great. I definitely could have stepped up the side dishes, but otherwise, gold star for the week. It definitely didn’t hurt that lots of meat was on sale because of the Superbowl.

Let me tell you all about it.

SATURDAY
SPAGHETTI and MEATBALLS; GARLIC BREAD; SALAD; BIRTHDAY CAKE and ICE CREAM

Birthday party! The kid wanted a luau sleepover, so we went thoroughly authentic and served spaghetti and meatballs. There were six little skinny ten-year-old girls for guests, and they fell upon the food like wolves in time of famine. Amazing.

‘Scuse me while I Pinterest at you for a minute. We had a volcano cake with sparklers and peel-and-pull Twizzlers

[img attachment=”90388″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”volcano cake” /]

Bake the cake in a metal bowl, and it makes a serviceable volcano. If you wait until the last minute so the cake is still warm while you’re frosting it, the lava gets all melty and looks even better. I actually offered to go all out with the lava — I make some excellent sugar candy lava, if I do say so myself — but frosting lava is what she wanted.

We were planning to make fruit kabobs, using cookie cutters to cut the fruit into cute shapes (we’ve done this before, and it looks very impressive), but the fruit at Aldi looked terrible, so we just stuck a bunch of grapes on skewers and jammed them into oranges in a cupcake holder.

[img attachment=”90389″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”party table” /]

But check it out: oyster and pearl cookies!

[img attachment=”90390″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”oyster cookies” /]

We found almond cookies at the dollar store, put pink-tinted frosting in between two cookies, and put one of those pearly Sixlets inside each one. We were running way, way, way late, so they are kind of gloppy, but you get the general idea – I’m sure you can do better with a pastry bag or something. The eyes were white frosting with raisins, since no one ate the chocolate chips I was saving, and they just disappeared on their own for no reason. I’m going to make these again for Valentine’s Day, but use those chalky conversation hearts instead of pearls.

Oh, and I made those palm tree decorations like you see on the internet? And they looked just like on the internet!

[img attachment=”90396″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”palm tree” /]

We only have nine more birthday parties to get through this year, and then we’re done.

SUNDAY
PORK RIBS, CHIPS, SALAD

So I’m at the store, and pork ribs were SO CHEAP. I just kept putting them into the cart.

[img attachment=”90385″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”pork ribs in oven” /]

Such an easy main course: turn on the oven broiler, salt and pepper the ribs on both sides, throw them on a pan with some drainage, and turn them once. A little BBQ sauce for dipping, and you are a meat hero.

If I had planned ahead, I would have made some cole slaw and mashed potatoes, instead of just chips; and yet no one complained when I put twelve sizzling pounds of meat on the table.

MONDAY
CHEATER KOREAN BEEF BOWL; ROASTED BROCCOLI

Thanks a million to whichever reader suggested this recipe! So spicy and savory and easy easy easy. I made it in the morning and heated it up for dinner.

I was skeptical that it could really be a good Asian meal with ground beef, but it was fantastic. We served it with rice, but will probably make some kind of noodles next time. I really like this sauce! Using fresh ginger, garlic, and scallions made it wonderful. I also used actual sesame oil for the first time (I usually substitute whatever I have on hand), and it was totally worth the extra buck or two.

The broccoli, I tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put it in a shallow pan under the broiler until the edges were browned and crispy. Very nice.

TUESDAY
BEEF STEW; ROLLS of MISERY

The beef stew turned out fine. I used steak because it was cheaper than stew meat. I also chopped the garlic, rather than crushing it, and the flavor is much brighter.

Those rolls, though, can go straight back to hell where they came from. I don’t know where I found the recipe, but this is it:

Momma’s Easy No Yeast Dinner Rolls:

1 Cup Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp of salt
1/2 Cup milk
2 Tablespoons Mayo

Combine all ingredients, spoon in to a greased muffin pan, makes aprox. (5) rolls. cook in a preheated 180˚ oven for 15 minutes or till done and golden brown.

Well, Momma.

You know and I know that there is no such thing as a quick, no-yeast, few-ingredient bread that is going to be as good as real dinner rolls. I know this. And yet I feel that I was too harshly punished for what was, after all, just an excess of trust.

My first clue should have been that the recipe makes five rolls. Five. That’s a red flag there, that says, “Special Situation Recipe. Not for Normal People.” So I quadrupled it, and then saw that it called for a 180-degree oven. That’s, like, as hot as it gets if you rub your hands together really fast and then hold the pan.

Also, Momma wrote “in to” and “aprox.” and “(5)” and has no respect for capitalization. At this point, I knew where we were heading. But I was in too deep, so I forged ahead.

I ended up baking them for three times as long as it said, and they just sat there in their muffin tins looking stupid. So I cranked the oven up to 350 and yelled at them to bake for another ten minutes, at which point we really had to get dinner on the table because our lives were passing us by.

The texture was actually not bad — kind of pillowy, almost like angel food cake. They were mayonnaise-colored. The taste? Imagine that someone took a bag of hot salt and hit you in the mouth. But quadrupled!

Recommended for Lent, if you have a lot of reparations to make, you animal.

WEDNESDAY
WAFFLES; SAUSAGES; EGGS

Burned the waffles, oh well.

THURSDAY
OVEN BBQ CHICKEN; CHIPS

Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I used Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce and apricot preserves, because I couldn’t find peach. I again minced the garlic, rather than crushing it, and added some hearty glugs of hot sauce. Wings and drumsticks were on sale, so that’s what I used.

I’ll let the picture speak for itself:

[img attachment=”90387″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”bbq chicken” /]

Eh? Eh? Eh? I shall make this forever from now on.

FRIDAY
TUNA NOODLE CASSEROLE; RAW VEGGIES

It’s a snow day today, so I’m going to make the tuna noodle-loving kid make the tuna noodle.

What’s for supper over your way? And who can give me some ideas for side dishes? I’m in a rut, and fall back on rice, baked potatoes, oven roasted potaoes, and salad over and over again.

Trust women, not the CDC

In one of those rare, slightly alarming confluences of sisterly outrage, women of every political stripe are coming together and flipping a huge bird to the CDC, who yesterday proclaimed that women of childbearing age shouldn’t drink at all unless they’re using contraception. 

When women drink excessively while pregnant, the CDC explains, their babies are sometimes born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which is a dreadful, irreversible, pervasive disorder with a host of physical, developmental, intellectual, and behavioral problems. Since we don’t perform experiments on unborn babies, we can’t say exactly how much alcohol is too much; so the CDC has decided that no amount of drinking can be considered safe.

They are saying that if you have a glass of wine on Friday night so you can sleep for once, that puts you in the same category as the sorority girl blacking out in a pool of Jägermeister and someone else’s vomit because she’s too dumb to notice that, after hosting the entire rugby team one night, she hasn’t gotten her period in six months.

It’s hard to even list the problems with thinking this way. But I’ll try!

#1. It tells us that women are too dumb to make reasonable decisions about how they behave. Yes, some women are stupid and irresponsible and awful. These women need to be told, in the simplest terms, that they need to shape up or horrible things will happen (and they may or may not listen). But there are a lot more women who are capable of assessing the risk of a particular situation and making a choice that makes sense.

Everything we do as human beings with free will, while we’re pregnant or not, is a risk/benefit assessment. Sometimes, the health benefits of an occasional drink are greater than the risk, and we need to trust women to make these decisions sensibly. Saying, “No level of drinking is safe” is a way of saying, “We don’t trust you to figure out what’s safe.”

#2. It tells us that women are too dumb to know if they’re likely to be pregnant or not. Yes, surprises happen. Yes, accidents happen. But, dammit, they happen to us. That makes us the ones who should be in charge of knowing whether or not we’re likely to be pregnant. If there are great swaths of women who have no idea how their bodies work, then maybe the CDC should be making statements like, “The educational system in our country has been a colossal failure; let’s all head over to the nearest NaPro doctor or Marquette instructor and learn the basic facts about reproduction.”

#3. It taps into our lingering Puritan neurosis about alcohol being the debbil. Where’s the recommendation that potentially fertile women avoid taking ibuprofen, or smoking, or travelling to countries with iffy water, or eating deli meat? These are all things that can cause mild, moderate, or severe birth defects. Heck, where’s the recommendation that women get all contracepted up before they even consider skiing or skydiving? Or driving in a car? These are dangerous activities, and if you do them while you’re pregnant, you could hurt your baby. Happens all the time. Where’s the outrage?

#4. It treats women as if they’re just walking potential pregnancies. This is the one that really brings women together from the left and the right. It doesn’t matter how cognizant I am of the holiness and the privilege of being the bearer of life. I don’t want some government agency telling me that I have to think like an incubator from puberty until I’m safely dried up.

#5. It tells society that pregnancy is a horrible, scary, emergency situation that can descend on you at any time without warning for no reason, and you need to completely turn your life upside down on the slim chance that you might even be at risk of falling prey to this catastrophic situation.

#6 It’s just the updated version of “autism is caused by cold mothers.” It feeds into the belief that perfect, healthy baby specimens can be had if these selfish, lazy women would just do everything right. It puts unbearable pressure on women to follow constantly-shifting, incredibly demanding guidelines for “best odds” outcome, and that if baby isn’t perfect, mama must have done something wrong. And it further cements the idea that imperfect babies are not to be tolerated.

#7. It’s so extreme, it will backfire. We all know that our mothers and grandmothers drank through pregnancy, and we may have done so ourselves. But we may easily not know anyone with FAS. This doesn’t prove anything; but it’s hard to resist the conclusion that someone is probably exaggerating . . .and can probably be disregarded. When someone keeps shrieking in my ear that a rock is about to fall on my head, and a rock never, ever falls on my head, I will assume that the shrieker is some kind of idiot — and I’ll be less careful even when there are actual rocks in actual danger of falling.

These are just a few objections that spring to mind. I’m sure you can supply more.

So . . .  why would the CDC say what it said? What could possibly be the point of making a statement that doesn’t make good medical sense, is guaranteed to alienate tons of women, and is very unlikely to be followed — and will, in fact, likely backfire and not reduce the number of babies born with FAS?

I’m about to sound paranoid.

I’m okay with that.

It’s part of a larger campaign to get as many women as possible on IUDs, and it has to do with money and control. The CDC does its part to make it seem like going on contraception is the default — that girls should do it as soon as they hit menarche, and that responsible, reasonable, clean, normal, American ladies are ladies who take care of their contraceptive duty.

This isn’t new. It’s been a constantly escalating propaganda effort for decades. The CDC lists all sorts of contraception that women can use. It doesn’t specify which one we should opt for, as long as we get on something, anything, asap, because YOU HAVE TO BE ON CONTRACEPTION NOW NOW NOW.

And meanwhile, from your school, from your doctor, from your TV, from your magazines, from the welfare office and the well-woman clinic and the hospital and the OB/GYN, from your blogs and social media and up, down, north, south, east, and west, everyone is telling women . . .

Sayyyy, have you considered an IUD?

It’s so eaaaaaaaasy. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to remember anything. You don’t have to keep track of anything. Just sit still for a couple of minutes, close your eyes and think of a field of daisies, and it will all be taken care of for you.

Every woman of childbearing years knows this. IUDs are everywhere. We see that slender little T-shape in our sleep. I hear more about IUDs than I hear about shoes, purses, and hair products combined. They. Are. Everywhere. You might hear an occasional story about a perforated uterus emergency surgery pelvic inflammatory disease chronic infection excruciating pain pregnancy that happens anyway and goes horribly wrong, but . . .

Come on. It’s just women. These are acceptable risks we can take, right, ladies? After all, we trust you to make decisions about your body and to make sensible risk/benefit assessments. Trust women. Give women all the information they need, and then let them decide what to do with their bodies, without a bunch of paternalistic scaremongering.

As long as what they decide is to turn their money and their fertility over to Mirena or ParaGard.

“The risk is real. Why take the chance?” says CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, M.D. But somehow, she’s not talking about the risks women face when they let someone cram a copper wire into their uterine wall.

Because  . . . it’s just women. If one woman gets damaged, we can always find more.

We All Have Guns, We All Have Rights—But Why?

We, too, are gun owners, but we don’t open carry, or flaunt it, or yammer about it endlessly. Gun ownership is not an end in itself; it’s part of what helps us to live a life of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which are the rights that the Declaration of Independence says come from God. Guns are not something to be flaunted and paraded about, any more than you’d flaunt or parade about your wallet, or the ample supply of food in your freezer, or the gold bars you’re saving for retirement. These are things that you have a right to amass, and which may help you to live the kind of life you are supposed to be free to pursue. But to flaunt them without regard for the people around you, as if they were in themselves the highest good, shows a stunted understanding of what it means to live well.

Read the rest at the Register.

Edited at  8:20 AM EST Feb. 5: Yes, I meant “Declaration of Independence,” not “Constitution.” Embarrassing! I do know the difference; it was just a careless error. I corrected it at the Register yesterday, but forgot to edit the teaser here. Thanks to everyone who pointed it out.

From the Department of Predictable Disasters (Accidental Brilliance Division)

My kids’ elementary school has instituted a system of school bucks, which the kids can earn with good behavior and hard work, and which they can spend on t-shirts and snow cones. Within 48 hours, there was theft, extortion, and the organization of a counterfeit ring — and that was just in the 1/2 class.

So, it turned out to be a pretty good lesson about how money works.

Why did we really quit home school? Part II: the specific good and bad

Last week, I answered a few questions about switching from home school to a traditional classroom. I promised to give some specifics about the good and the bad.

Once again: I make no claim that these are things that always happen to every person who makes the choices we made. I’m simply talking about our experience.
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Also, this is where we’re at six years in. I would have written a different post in the first few months! It was a pretty rough transition, emotionally and logistically; but the worst aspects were temporary. Even when things were rough, we never felt like we made the wrong choice.
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What drawbacks have we experienced from sending our kids to school?
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1. It’s exhausting. We have to wake up early and come home late, and on weekdays, we spend the most time together when we’re tired and cranky. We spend a ton of time in the car, and this stinks. Literally. Do you know what happens to an apple core when it gets frozen in spilled seltzer, and then defrosts five months later? Nothing good. 

2. The paperwork and logistics. Our school is really good about keeping paperwork and homework minimal, but it was hard for us to get used to even basic things like, “Where’s my lunch box?” Sometimes it feels like there is always something to sign, always a check due, and always something to volunteer for (and we are probably the least volunteering family in the school). It’s unrelenting, and the kids always remember they need something at 11 PM.

3. It can be expensive. We never spent much money on home school (because we didn’t have it), and when we first started sending the kids to school, it was really hard to find the money for basic school supplies, normal-looking clothes, and gas money for the commute. But our income has increased as our expenses have (partly because I can work more now that the kids are in school); so now if we have to buy special binders or pay for a field trip or replace water bottles or indoor shoes, we can swing it.  They are also pretty generous with scholarships. Our kids are used to the idea that we only order pizza every other week, and we aren’t doing book orders and ski club and such, so it’s manageable.

4. The influence of bad kids. Some of the other kids they spend time with are jerks, and our kids pick up some bad stuff from these kids. This worries us. Even the good kids have some bad ideas. They all think divorce and gay marriage and premarital sex are normal, for instance. We try to make this aspect of our lives into an opportunity to remind kids that they are born to be evangelists; that they should expect to stand out because of their faith; that we don’t do things just because everyone else is doing them; and that we all need to learn how to be good to people we don’t like, and we all need to learn how to treat people well even when we don’t approve of (or imitate) what they are doing.

Our younger kids are in a small school with involved parents, and we like most of our kids’ friends. The high school kids have to put up with a lot of unpleasantness (profanity, sexual talk, kids who are promiscuous and drink and take drugs and have contempt for decency in general), especially in the hallway and on the bus. They try to find decent friends, and they wear their earbuds when they’re outnumbered.

Most of our kids have a bit of chip on their shoulder about not conforming, and I sometimes worry more that they’re turning into snobs than I do about them becoming too worldly.

5. It’s harder to shape their tastes. We haven’t come across the teachers exposing the kids to anything objectionable — the last thing most teachers want is start some war with the parents — but they do introduce them to mediocre stuff sometimes, especially fiction and music. It’s harder to get some kids excited about Narnia if all their friends are racing through the 374 volumes of Pixie Friends of Bubblegum Hollow available at school.

6. I hate sending my little ones off. When they are gone for a big part of the day, our relationship changes forever, and it hurts (even when I see that it’s good for them in many ways). But we love our kindergarten teacher to bits, and the kids do well when they get in on the ground floor.

7. We don’t get to choose how to spend our time. This is the one thing that makes me really miss home school. We don’t have much time or flexibility to do fun or important things together as a family, like go to museums or other cultural events, or celebrate religious feasts in a big way, or have long vacations, or have vacations when we need or want them. We haven’t even been to the library in a very long time (although they do use their school libraries, and the older kids walk to the public library every day to be picked up). Reading aloud has to happen in the evening, and we may or may not be in the mood. Religious education has to be crammed in here and there. And summer vacation is criminally short. We have to be really judicious about our free time, and there’s never enough of it.
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8. It’s harder to find time for religious practices. We used to be able to build any Holy Day or observance of the liturgical year into our day. Now it’s hard not to feel like HDOs are a burden, because we have to schlep to the next town in the dark at the end of a long day, rather than taking a day off school and baking a cake in honor of the Blessed Virgin. We have to fight to celebrate Advent while all the other families are already halfway done with Christmas. And so on.
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The benefits to our kids and our family:
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1. It’s a relief to have someone else in charge of the crappy, boring stuff. It just is. I never have to teach place value again. I never have to look at a periodic table unless I want to, which I don’t. I love this relief, and I’m not ashamed to admit it! I enjoy sharing certain books, music, art, and ideas with the kids, and I can let someone else handle the draggy stuff. Woo hoo! When I help them with homework, it’s always a wonderful reminder that we made the right choice to quit home school.
 
2. The kids are involved in things they never would have been involved with — extracurricular things, like band, choir, drama, Shakespeare club, ropes courses, field trips to D.C. and New York City — and academic things, like advanced math and science courses, silver smithing, Mandarin, science fairs — that we either couldn’t afford, or didn’t know how to access, or didn’t have the energy or expertise to pursue. These things were all available to us as home schoolers in theory; but in practice, they weren’t coming into our lives.
Also, this may seem trivial, but the kids enjoy class parties like you wouldn’t believe. I tried to make holidays special at home, but Valentine’s Day and Halloween and such are much more fun for the kids when they whoop it up with their class.
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3. We desperately need structure. With twelve people in the house, anarchy is always right around the corner. Even when I had a set schedule for home school, it was too easy to fudge it, and get nothing done, or never get dressed, or never leave the house. I need externally-imposed structure, or I return to muck. If I know I have to leave the house at 2:30, I finish my writing and plan dinner by 11 a.m. 99% of the time. If I know I’ll be home all day, well . . .

4. The kids get teachers who are trained in how to teach. In our charter school (which is K-8), the classes are small and there are teacher’s aides who can work with the kids individually, and they have much better success than I do, especially in math.  I know, I know, I’ve been to college, and anyway I’m their mother, and that makes me an expert in my kids. That was enough as long as I was teaching a kid who didn’t actively resist whatever I was teaching; but it wasn’t enough for when we hit a stone wall. Sometimes, I just plain wouldn’t know how to do it, and so it didn’t get done. In theory, I could tailor the lessons to the kids’ individually-appropriate learning styles; but in practice, I was only one person, with limited patience and imagination and zero training, and I was too overwhelmed to go into depth with any of the myriad tips and guides for how to teach in various ways.

Many of our kids’ teachers have been good, and a few are truly great. I was afraid the kids would get a mediocre education, but they’re actually getting quite a good one. It’s not necessarily the same kind of education I once hoped to give them, but in some ways, it’s better.

5. It’s been good to have help from experts. This is more private, so I’ll be vague, but we have benefited from the advice of experts who are trained to notice when kids could use outside help. I don’t think anyone would have picked up on these issues if we had been home schooling, because no one else would have spent enough time with our kids to notice them; and that would have been a huge loss. And it’s also been a gateway revelation for me, making me more open to the idea of getting help for myself when I need it.

6. We are off each other’s backs, which is good for kid-kid relationships and for kid-parent relationships. There are a lot of introverts in our family, and we get along better when we’re not on top of each other all the time. We like spending time with each other, and we love each other, and the kids play together and do projects together; but we seem to recharge with some time apart. We’re all happier when our relationship is not colored by the emotional and psychological stress that went along with academic work. Which is a fancy way of saying that my kids aren’t always mad at me for making them do division drills, and I can look into their pretty faces without thinking, “You don’t know about the War of 1812, and it’s all my fault!”

7. We just meet more people this way, and get exposed to the things that these new people are interested in, and are more confident around people who aren’t like us. My kids have made friends, I’ve made friends, and it’s been great. We’re all way more friendly and outgoing, more confident and socially adept than we used to be.

8. I’ve learned invaluable lessons about parenting and life in general: Not everyone needs to be just like me or my ideal. Most people are actually decent, and don’t mean us harm, and may have something wonderful to offer. I can’t and don’t give my kids everything they need. It’s okay to change my plans. It’s okay to be wrong about stuff, as long as you’re willing to change. Hardly any choice you make will be all good or all bad. And not everything has a simple solution, especially when it comes to people.

And the biggest change of all, which is both good and bad:
We’ve had to accept that we’re not in control. When we were home schooling, I used to lie in bed for hours, literally shaking with terror and guilt over the horrible job I was doing. I would ask myself, “Yes, but would I rather have no control over my kids’ educations? What’s better, to be responsible for absolutely everything, or not to be in charge of anything?”
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Turns out it was a false dichotomy. If we had been doing a better job in home school, I would have delegated more, so I wouldn’t have been responsible for everything; but now that we’re not home schooling, it’s not as if we’ve completely relinquished our influence over them.

Other people now have a big influence over our kids’ attitudes and what information they’re exposed to. Do they learn things I’m not happy about? Yes indeed. The kids sometimes casually mention some fact that I know is false, and I realize there must be more that I don’t know about. This is probably the scariest part. We have to be on the alert, especially when a kid is taking a history course (what will they teach about the Crusades?) or a biology class (what will they cover in the reproductive unit?). So nu, so it’s called talking to your kid.

But we get to know the teachers for the younger kids, and have learned to trust them; and we check in with our older kids to see what they are reading and learning. We accept that this is part of this kind of schooling. It just is.  I used to believe that teachers were just aching to usurp the parents’ authority. Turns out most of them, as I mentioned, just want to educate kids, and they love it when parents get involved. The schools are good about keeping us in the loop  — for instance, we could opt out of the sex ed sessions in middle school, and we have to give written permission for the high school kids to watch movies.

More importantly, it was always true that I was not in control of how my kids turn out. I just wasn’t able to face that fact. Learning to live with that has been one of the hardest, most valuable lessons of parenthood and of life in general.
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Would this have happened if we had continued to home school? Who knows? God is flexible, and He can tell you the things He wants you to hear no matter when and how you decide to start listening. For us, making the change in how we educate our kids was opening to the door to some of the best things we have now.

And I got away with it, too!

When I was in high school, I worked at McDonald’s, and eventually secured the primo position of Drive Thru First Window. In that spot, you only have to talk to people and collect money, and you rarely touch food, or clean up grease, or get your forearm branded by a white-hot fry basket.

Still, it got boring, so I used to amuse myself by using a heavy German accent when I was talking through the speaker. “Velcome to Mick Donaldtss!” I would greet each customer ponderously. “Und may I interrrrrest you in an Ahhhch Deluxe?” Everyone was invariably painfully courteous and patient while I struggled to take their order completely and accurately and to find my way around the presumably foreign jumble of cash register buttons that were not in my native tongue.

Then they would get up to the window, and I would just talk in my regular voice.

And I got away with it, too! No one ever said, “HEY, weren’t you just German a minute ago?” I have a distinctive croaky voice, too, so they must have known it was still me. Ha ha. Boy, I enjoyed that more than I should have.

Now you tell one. What did you get away with, you irresponsible scamp? (Reminder: bloggers are mandatory reporters. No murder confessions, please.)

What’s for supper? Vol. 21: Veg Bad!

Last week, I talked about how much food we actually cook. The same reader also asked about how much our kids help with the cooking. They do a lot more when school is out, of course, but they’re usually involved somehow, because it’s good for them and because I really need help.

For reference, my kids are 17, 16, 15, 13, 11, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 11 months. All but the youngest two are at school until around 3 at the earliest, and I usually don’t get home until 4 or 5 or 6. I generally make dinner in segments, cooking or prepping in the morning, heating it up again in the afternoon, and then adding something right before dinner. My husband usually gets home several hours later, and either reheats dinner or has something frozen.

This week, I had so much green stuff in the house, but I got spooked by listeria, and threw it all away. The action of tossing perfectly good salad into the trash triggered some kind of psychological aversion to vegetables in general, and I was unable to serve any this week, because I love my family.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.  Here’s what we had this week, besides veg:

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SATURDAY
HAM AND CHEESE ON BAGELS; CHEESE PUFFS; COOKIES

On Saturday, Damien and I went to a music festival our 16-year-old daughter was singing in, so we left the others at home to fend for themselves with an easy meal. I ate before we left, because we’d be gone during dinner; and then when we got back, I ate again, because we had been gone during dinner. This is what we call “mindfulness.”

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SUNDAY
PULLED PORK, RED ONIONS, POTATO PUFFS; ICE CREAM

I had tons of writing to do, so I threw some hazy directions to my 17-year-old daughter about how to start the pork, and then went into my fortress of solitude. (Directions: Put it in a shallow pan, fat side up; pour a can of beer over it, sprinkle it generously with salt and pepper, cover loosely with foil, put in 250 oven for several hours.) My husband checked on it throughout the day. When I emerged, I shredded the pork while my husband sliced onions and put the potato puffs in the oven.

I had mine all heaped up in a fabulous mound of yumminess.

[img attachment=”89678″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”pulled pork on potato puffs” /]

The kids helped by grumbling that there were no rolls.

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MONDAY
PENNE with MEAT SAUCE

The older kids were home from school for some bogus reason, so in the morning, I had them fry up 1.5 lbs of Italian sausage and 1 lb of ground turkey meat with the leftover onions from the pulled pork. When I got home in the afternoon, I had another kid start water boiling (we use a giant stock pot, since we never cook less than 3 lbs. of pasta). Then I cooked the penne and mixed it with the cooked meat and jarred sauce in a casserole dish and heated the whole thing up.

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TUESDAY
HOT DOGS, BAKED BEANS

The older kids cooked this meal while I was driving back and forth and back and forth like an idiot. My husband had frozen chicken wings or something.

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WEDNESDAY
CHICKEN CHIPOTLE (but not that kind of Chipotle) CHILE on BAKED POTATOES

This is a new recipe for us, and my husband and I were the only ones who liked it! Such a disappointment. I used Pioneer Woman’s Chicken Chipotle Chile recipe and served it with baked potatoes, sour cream, salsa, shredded cheese, and cilantro. The kids mostly ate baked potatoes with sour cream, the ungrateful crumbs.

I mean, look at this!

[img attachment=”89680″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”chicken chili on baked potato” /]

I couldn’t even get them to help much, once they heard it was chili. I finally hounded my 11-year-old son into stabbing the potatoes with a fork so they wouldn’t explode it in the oven, and it turns out he paid his 6-year-old sister a nickel to do it for him.

Anyway, the recipe was pretty good. It was hot, with the chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, but not face-hurtingly spicy. I wasn’t bowled over by the taste of chili on potatoes, but my husband liked it.

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THURSDAY
ONION SOUP with croutons and parmesan; QUESADILLAS; AVOCADOS

Fannie Farmer onion soup, except I use beef broth instead of water. Benny helped with the bouillon cubes, as ever:

[img attachment=”89686″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”benny bouillon” /]

and she also spread melted butter on the ciabetta bread (on clearance at Walmart, which was weird because they don’t have a bakery at this Walmart. But they were on sale!) for croutons:

[img attachment=”89687″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”benny croutons” /]

Her comment: “I LIKE THIS GAME!”

I cooked the onions and croutons in the morning, then finished the soup in the evening. I got the 17-year-old to cut them up for me while I got in a quick fight on Facebook.

[img attachment=”89688″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”lena avocados 2″ /]

I don’t count avocados as veg, because they taste good.

The soup actually went over pretty well, although some of the kids just had croutons and quesadillas. The rule is that I will make one large quesadilla for each kid, and anyone who wants more can cook it himself. Also, if you make yourself a second quesadilla, you have to agree to make a second for any little kid who wants one.

You’d think onion soup, quesadillas, and avocados would be kind of a weird combination, but it was actually great, very balanced and satisfying.

[img attachment=”89689″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”quesadillas and onion soup” /]

My husband got home late, and had leftover chili, with quesadillas which he made himself.

[img attachment=”89690″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”quesadillas and chili” /]

My gosh, it’s like we’re living at Applebee’s or something. Maybe even a TGIFridays! There are some rusty bicycles outside. I bet I could hang them on the wall, serve watery beer, and make a milllllllllllion dollars.

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FRIDAY
MAC and CHEESE; CARROTS and HUMMUS

I made this this morning, yay me. Just need to make some buttered breadcrumbs for the topping. I got help from Corrie, who cleaned off the whisk for me.

[img attachment=”89691″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”corrie whisk” /]

My mac and cheese recipe is from Fannie Farmer, except I double the cheese. I use milk, no cream.

I intend to spend the rest of the day working on one of my own favorite recipes:

[img attachment=”89692″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”tearwater tea” /]

Bah.

Wella-hella-hella, what’s for dinner at your house?

Why did we really quit home school . . . and how’s it going? Part I

Earlier this week, I wrote about getting rid of the last of our home school books, which we hadn’t touched for over six years. I talked a bit about why I kept them around so long, and why it was so hard to make the decision not to home school anymore — especially considering that the photo above was taken on the first day of school, while I was teaching in the next room.

The feral kid is fine, by the way. Wears pants and everything.

Two readers asked for a follow-up of Tuesday’s post:

I was wondering if you could say a few more words about how sending your kids to school is helping your family.  What are the benefits that those of us on the homeschool side are missing?  I have always wondered what it would be like to send the kids to school.  How has your family benefited from this choice?

and

I would be really interested to hear your specifics: what were your fears and why they weren’t rational, why didn’t you feel that the “blessings” that are supposed to accompany homeschooling were being realized, how traditional school has benefited your kids/parenting, and how did you discern the difference between frustrations that indicate homeschooling is the objectively wrong choice for your family and frustrations that are simply tempting you to give up something worth it but hard. That last one is, I think, the crux of people’s conundrums.

First, I want to be clear that I’m talking about my and our experience. I don’t have any grand theories about education in general, and I know there are as many different ways to do it as there are people, and then some. I write about our transition mainly to help other people sort through their experiences. I never encourage people to quit home schooling! For many people, home schooling is the best choice (and for many others, it’s the least bad choice). I only encourage people, especially unhappy parents, to realize that change is not necessarily the same as failure.

But you’re busy, so I’ll condense my thoughts into a quick pull quote:

I think that all home schoolers are arrogant, repressed weirdos, and I am gleeful about turning my children over to the state so they can catch atheist HPV from Dungeons and Dragons. And I say this because I’m bitter and feel guilty.  Now leave me alone so I can give my kids their Adderall-n-bits, which I serve them with a side dish of not learning cursive.

 

Tee hee. I must have my leetle joke. Well, this post is turning out way, way longer than I expected, so I’m breaking it into two parts. Next time, I’ll talk more about the specific benefits and drawbacks of traditional classroom schooling. 
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This time, I’ll answer the other questions my readers asked.
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What were my fears, and were they rational?
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I was afraid that they just plain wouldn’t learn anything, at all. Not rational. In fact, they are getting a far, far better education than I did, and a more well-rounded one.
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I was afraid that the schools would be forcing all kinds of loathsome cultural agendas down our kids’ throats. In fact, most of the teachers are just trying to get kids interested in learning. They don’t get paid enough to be in it just to pervert anyone. They just want to teach, and they’re passionate about their subjects. We don’t agree with them about every last thing, but they respect our authority, and we really appreciate their devotion.
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I was super afraid of picking up germs. For us, not rational. Other than a few bouts of head lice (which is no fun, but not the end of the world), we aren’t any sicker or healthier than we used to be when we were home schooling; and no, my kids are not great about washing their hands before eating.
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I was afraid we would be scorned and rejected because we’re a big, weird, Catholic family and we dress kind of funny and our van is dirty. This didn’t happen (or maybe I just don’t know about it! Either way, no worries). Well, the high school kids think our van is creepy, because they’ve been told that vans are creepy, but oh well. The high school kids do have to put up with some trash talk about religious people, but they can take it. Not a bad thing to get used to dealing with.  In our charter school, which goes up to grade 8, there is nothing of the kind. We feel right at home, we have guests over, the kids have friends, the other moms talk to me, etc.
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And I’ve learned that lots of people, even those who look like they’ve really got their act together, feel like they don’t fit in, so I try to work harder to be welcoming, rather than being defensive against people who I’m afraid won’t welcome us.

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I was obscurely afraid that someone would report us to someone for something. I had very deeply ingrained fears of child protective services prying into our family life and taking my kids away because we pray the rosary or have frayed shoelaces (even though, in our state, CPS is actually under fire for being too lax, and for not prying enough into the lives of children in danger). Not a rational fear. I’ve heard horror stories about overzealous government agencies, and some of them are surely true, but many turned out to be false or incomplete. We aren’t cavalier — I have to watch what I say in public, because there are busybodies who can’t take a joke — but I’ve learned to take scary stories with a grain of salt, and also not to submerge myself in paranoia by listening to talk radio and reading websites devoted to alarmism.
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Why weren’t the blessings of homeschool being realized?

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O, time, strength, cash, patience!

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All the reasons. Maybe it would have worked if we had had some spending money; maybe it would have worked if we had had an active, thriving, supportive home schooling community; maybe it would have worked if I hadn’t been pregnant and struggling with debilitating anxiety; maybe it would have worked if we had had no other choice. Maybe it would have worked if I had been a Chinese jet pilot. I just don’t know. But I could see that things wouldn’t improve without drastic changes, and drastic changes didn’t seem possible.
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Some of these blessings were being realized, but not often enough to offset the bad stuff.
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And, as it turned out, some of them were achievable without home schooling! We still spend lots of time together, play, work, read, sing, dance, pray, and goof around together. We’re still us. We still value what we value, we still influence our kids enormously, and we still call the shots.
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How did I discern the difference between the frustration of “this is hard but worthwhile” and the frustration of “this is just not working”? 
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I knew that I couldn’t do everything, and that home schooling meant that other things would be sacrificed. But at a certain point, everything was being sacrificed, and nothing was being done well. The kids weren’t learning as much as I wanted them to, they weren’t having good extra-curricular experiences, the house was a wreck, dinner was out of control, we were broke all the time, and I was in an agony of anxiety at all times, and would have emotional breakdowns regularly. It wasn’t just that some things were getting the short end of the stick — it was that there was no long end.This being the case, I started asking some hard questions about why we were still doing it, if the benefits were so few and far between. I realized that it came down to pride, guilt, and fear: those were my main motivators.
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Pride: I wanted to be That Amazing Home Schooling Family, rather than That Family With Happy, Stable, Educated Kids. That’s-a no good.

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Guilt: My sister once said that someone gave them a couple of pretty white couches. She immediately covered them with slipcovers, to keep them from getting dirty. Some time later, she realized that the slipcovers had to stay on, or else everyone would see how dirty her couches were. She had no idea when the transition happened, but there it was. I was home schooling, in part, because somewhere along the line I had transitioned from protecting my kids from the outside world, to hiding my kids from the outside world. And as it turns out, I had some things to regret. There were some ways that I hadn’t done well by my kids, it hurt for other people to see this. But it had to happen, if I wanted things to change.
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Fear: Well, I think I’ve covered this one. I also had a lot of fears about the kids getting shot, getting kidnapped, etc., if they were out of my sight, and I really had to be weaned off this. We are still careful about safety, of course, but I no longer feel like it’s inherently dangerous for my kids to be away from me.

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Phew, I guess that’s enough for one day! Next time (probably next week), I’ll get into some specifics about how traditional schooling has been good for our kids and for our family, and I’ll also discuss some of the drawbacks and how we deal with them.

Love in the time of Zika

This is how it always is: we see suffering, and we want to solve it with death. It’s a call-and-response, and here’s the worst of it: the far right does it just as much as the far left. Radical left-wingers think we can improve the world by cleansing the world of defective babies; radical right-wingers think we can improve the world by turning our heads while the third world quietly dies in misery.

Read the rest at the Register.