SIMCHA FISHER

“I’m waiting for marriage” for sex, say three young women interviewed in . . . Cosmopolitan? Yes, that Cosmopolitan, the pink trash women’s magazine that’s been screaming sad and ridiculous sex advice at supermarket shoppers for as long as we can remember.

Curiouser and curiouser, the abstinent women in the article aren’t presented as zealots, oddities, or hopeless naifs, and the premise isn’t “vigins are inherently laughable and undesirable.” They’re allowed to explain in their own words why they’re abstinent and how it plays out.  Here’s how the interviews are introduced:

Although Millennials are often criticized for just wanting to hook up, never falling in love, and never going on any actual dates, there are twentysomethings out there for whom dating is about everything but sex. Cosmopolitan.com spoke with three women in their early 20s who are waiting until marriage to have sex, and yes, they’re still going on dates, and yes, they’ve used Tinder.

But wait, it gets stranger! The first woman, “Sara,” 22, says,

“I decided I wanted to wait when I read St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. In it, he discusses how Christ loves us totally, definitely, and sacrificially through his body, and that is what sex was created for us to do as well — to love others totally, definitely, and sacrificially through out bodies.

I don’t care how many monkeys had how many typewriters: No one expects a Theology of the Body name drop in Cosmo, not without the influence of an Infinite Improbability Drive.

The third surprise? I’m not even actually that surprised. We’ve been slogging around in the sexual wilderness for long enough. The original generations who were so in love with Egypt’s fleshpots are starting to die out (or at least their relevance is), and the younger generations aren’t blind. At least some of them are looking around at the dust and the squalor, the disorder and the pain, and they’re thinking, “This is no way to live. Let’s see, what else is there?”

And they are discovering abstinence before marriage. They are discovering Natural Family Planning. They are discovering the sanctity of life.

I’m no pollyanna. The world is in bad shape, and I know it. But there is hope, too. Sanity still has a foothold, and the sane are gaining ground and telling their friends.

Lots of secular people really do want something more. This would be a great time to make sure your friends know they can come to you, as that one Catholic friend who’s happy to answer questions without being pushy or rude. This would be a great time to signal to a lost world that there really is something better than the sexual, ethical wilderness that tried so hard to brand itself as the promised land.

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Image: Bart Everson / Flickr (Creative Commons)

The wise and lovely Daria Sockey said on Facebook this morning: “I will not read or share a single post about Donald Trump this week or next week. This week is too solemn, next will be too glorious for such activity.”

A wonderful idea, worth expanding. I resolve not to read or share anything, Trump-related or otherwise, that’s likely to encourage myself or anyone else to be nasty. What do you think? Want to join me?

You can decide how far you want to go. Maybe you will skip complaining, or skip criticizing . . . including criticizing yourself. Maybe you will only share positive news, thoughts, and images; or maybe you will still talk about sad or ugly things, but will strive to respond to them in the most productive way you can. Productive = likely to make the world better instead of worse. Kind of a basic Christian goal, but not an easy one.

Oh man, this means I’m going to have to swallow some very witty zingers, and I’ll miss out on some fascinating, invigorating debates.  I won’t get my share when the latest juicy outrage bobs to the surface. But it’s just a week. If not this week, then which week? I think we can do this.

Feel free to use my chimpy image to post on your social media page, or just make a private resolve without announcing anything. No nastiness for Holy Week. Ready . . . go!

[img attachment=”95836″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”alley 2″ /]

That “here’s what a week’s worth of food looks like around the world” article is going around again. If you want to feel streamlined and virtuous, despite being a fat cat westerner who feeds off the misery of Africans, just take a look at our Aldi haul from last week:

[img attachment=”95451″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”shopping carts” /]

Then I go to Hannaford and pick up whatever I couldn’t find — usually bananas, Coke, seltzer, tonic water and wine, some meat, herbs, and half a dozen other miscellaneous items. Maybe I should ask for carbon credits for Christmas this year.

SATURDAY
Hamburgers, chips, salad

That’s what it says on my magic blackboard, so it must be true. I have no memory of this.

SUNDAY
Zuppa Toscana, pumpkin bread

Pretty good recipes I’ve made many times before.  While I was shopping for the cream, I saw something called “fat free half-and-half.”

[img attachment=”95453″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”portrait of a woman encaustic” /]

I thought the kids would like pumpkin bread muffins in their lunches, so I tripled the recipe. The whole time I was adding ingredients, this little alarm bell was going off in my head: “Ding ding ding . . . something about this feels familiar . . . ding ding ding . . . nine cups of sugar . . . ding ding . . . kind of a lot of batter . . .ding . . . ” By the time I started really listening, it was too late, and I had about six gallons of pumpkin bread batter. Not a problem, exactly, but definitely a lot of pumpkin bread. This is part of it:

[img attachment=”95449″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”pumpkin bread” /]

There would have been more, but I ate a ton of raw batter because I am disgusting.

MONDAY
Chicken burgers, cheezy weezies, salad

Boy, Monday feels like a long time ago.

TUESDAY
Oven roasted pork ribs, mashed potatoes, steamed asparagus

This may be the first time we’ve ever had leftover mashed potatoes. I think I made eight pounds. I woke up at 5 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I seized the moment and became a potato martyr. Just kept peeling and peeling. The day went downhill from there, but at least we had a lot of potatoes.

[img attachment=”95440″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”potato difference” /]

WEDNESDAY
Omelettes, hash browns, grits

Usually, I made omelettes to order, but I felt very deeply on Wednesday that I did not feel like doing this. So I figured I’d made giant omelettes and cut them up into servings. I started with just plain egg, assuming that that was what most people would want. Seven eggs went into the pan and started to fry up nicely. Then I asked the kids what kind of omelette everyone else wanted.

Guess how many people wanted just plain egg?

One.

Luckily, that one was my 13-year-old son.

[img attachment=”95448″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”emperor-snake-582202_640″ /]

Oh yes, he ate the whole thing, plus hash browns and grits. Then he just sat there, digesting, and the villagers crowded around and weren’t sure what to do, besides keep their distance.

THURSDAY
Boiled Dinner

Although my husband’s family is Irish through and through, we go with the apparently inauthentic traditional American St. Patrick’s day meal: corned beef, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots, boiled with peppercorns and bay leaves, and served with mucho mustard. I also made a couple of loaves of soda bread from a mix, because nobody likes soda bread, so why should I bother to make it good? I should get an honorary Irish birth certificate just for that.

I think I have a picture somewhere, but it looks exactly like everyone else’s boiled dinner.

FRIDAY
Pizza with homemade dough

We have the day off, not even sure why, so I’m making a stab at homemade dough. I quit doing this when we graduated to three pizzas, because my recipe only made enough dough for two. We now need four extra large pizzas, so we shall see. I’m going to use this Martha Stewart recipe.

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So, how are you doing your part to deflower the natural world with your unnecessary packaging and your unhinged jaw?

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Mashed potatoes photo credit

snake photo credit

woman who is having none of your fat free nonsense photo credit

As we all know, drinking yourself stupid is no way to honor St. Patrick. Also, it’s offensive to actual Irish people when Americans perpetuate the stereotype of heavy drinking as characteristic of this noble people who happen to be heavy drinkers.

And green beer is for losers. Do not drink green beer. Beer is not green, begorrah. Beer is not green.

Isn’t it time that we, as a sensitive and responsive people, find some way to recalibrate our alcohol consumption so that nobody’s widdle feelings get hurt? Begorrah?

Here’s what I propose: don’t drink because it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Drink despite St. Patrick’s day.  What, you don’t have any other reason to get a medium-sized load on, assuming you can find a glass that your lousy kids haven’t filled with sand and glue and left in the driveway?

1. Drink because it’s almost spring. Hooray, spring! Have a drink. What other reasons? Let’s see . . .

2. Your teeth are like that because of heredity, and you’re doomed to carry flossers around in your purse, to become intimately familiar with that faded oil painting of irises on the oral surgeon’s wall, and to occasionally experience the disquieting sensation of tiny shards of bone working their way through the wall of your gum. Yes, that would be pieces of your skull coming out of your mouth. That seems fine. Have a drink.  It’s a kind of oral care.

3. You keep finding what looks like a really perfect college for your kids, and then it keeps turning out they’re yet another one of those “please let us know if your roommate isn’t following the underwear folding guidelines. You know, for her soul” colleges. Bottoms up.

4. 41 years old; still don’t know how to use eyeliner. Glug glug.

5. They’re going to clone a T-rex, I guess. Honest to goodness, I feel like death by imprudently reconstituted savage dinosaur is the best kind of future we can hope for right now. Cheers!

6. I guess we’re still talking about thigh gap, still? (I unlinked the link because of bad effing language, but really, all you need to know is that they’re still talking about thigh gap, still.)

7. There’s this:

At first I was like, “Oh, they’re just not listening very carefully, and the sidewalk is pretty noisy.” But no. They heard. O dinosaurs, do not delay.

8. Begorrah, I got up at 4 a.m. because my head was killing me, and then right before it was time to bring the kids to school, I threw up for no reason. No, I’m not pregnant.  I just thought about what kind of day it was going to be, and throwing up felt right. And now I need to start boiling the traditional repulsive slab of red fat strings, in honor of St. Patrick. First person to play Clancy Brothers at me is going to get a wedge of hot cabbage served up in the worst way.

9. You know what, the Clancy Brothers deserve their own number. Those sweaters. Gevalt.

10. I don’t mean to be a hideous racist or whatever, but it occurs to me that doing something just to spite someone else, whether it’s drinking or not drinking or taking a breath, is probably the most Irish thing you can possibly do, unless maybe it’s doing something you do enjoy doing, but pretending you don’t enjoy it and that you’re doing it just to spite someone else, because that’s not crazy at all, you crazy Irish person. So I’ll leave you to sort that one out. I’ll be over by the bar, by which I mean the driveway, digging glue out of my glass. These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Shantih, shantih, shantih and have I mentioned, begorrah.

Some time ago, a reader whose life sounds a lot like mine sent me a message:

Just came across your blog. Looks interesting.. I’m copying it to my “Look Into” heap of links– which, sadly, is a bit like the giant warehouse at the end of the Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but at least it’s there.

Oh, yes.  Saving for later.  I spend so much time making sure the right things get saved.  There was a pile of papers on the kitchen island, and I finally bit the bullet and sorted through them.  Along with paid bills, cancelled checks, and warranties for products long since broken and thrown out,  there were reams and reams (yes, I realize a ream is 500 pages.  That’s what I meant) of drawings of birds, ballerinas, flowers, and clouds stuck together with stubby little rainbows.  I smiled at each one, and then, feeling like Satan incarnate, threw them away.

Sometimes when I sort, I save a few representative samples; sometimes I am ruthless. But of course saving everything is not an option.  Even if I had the space to somehow neatly and un-hoardishly preserve all the hilarious and charming pictures my kids draw, when would I have the time to enjoy them?  I have some fantasies about old age, but even the most unrealistically golden ones don’t include spending years of my life looking at thousands of pictures of rainbows rendered in blue pen.

And yet it cuts so deep to throw them away.  Same for sorting through baby clothes.  It’s not that the little purple onesie is so precious and unique in itself; and it’s not as if I actually want my child never to grow out of size 3-6 months.  It’s just the act of leaving things behind that hurts.  I get better at making it happen, but I don’t get better at not letting it hurt.

People are always saying, “Store it in the cloud!” Give it to the cloud rather than cluttering up my poor overworked hard drive:  my pictures, my music, all the words words words that I churn out.  It’s only the price of ink and the shoddiness of my printer that keeps me from printing out everything — every cute kid story that goes on Facebook, every draft of every half-baked idea that never makes it all the way home, every well-turned phrase of love or encouragement I send to my husband at work.  I want to save it all, and never let it go.

It’s not that I hope for fame that outlives me:  “look on my works, ye mighty, and despair” and so on.   It’s just that I want it all to last — somewhere, somewhere, all the things I love and have poured my life into.

It’s a terrible anxiety, the fear of losing things that are precious — terrible because it hurts so much, and terrible because of what it means about me and my disordered loves. When the fear of loss is bad, it drains the joy out of my treasures even as I’m holding them.  My little baby smiles at me with such a direct, melting simplicity:  two perfect teeth, tiny and fresh like little bits of shell, her mouth pops open, and she lunges like a jack-n-the-box, so unthinkingly in love with the world that she wants to eat it all.  On a bad day, her happiness gives me pain, because all I can think of is how it passes, how she passes, how I am passing away.

I feel better temporarily, less existentially bereft, if I take a video, to capture the tricks and charms which are uniquely, adorably hers, which will never be repeated by any other baby, which must be remembered, must be saved — mustn’t they?  But saved for how long?  Technology is outmoded.  Today’s cutting edge video capture will be tomorrow’s wax cylinders.  Today’s acid-free photo paper will last only in the same way as “worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.”

So much has been lost, irretrievably. Does it matter? My kids want to know what their first words were. I remember a few. Some I wrote down, but lost the book. Moved away, left it behind to be discarded by some overworked landlord or U-Haul maintenance man. Does it matter? I still love them now; I listen to what they are saying now. Does that mean that what I’ve lost doesn’t matter?

Remember how poor Ivan Karamazov saw all the pain in the world — the brutality against children, most of all, was what he could not abide.  He did not want to be able to abide it.  He understood that, in the light of the Resurrection, all would be made new — that Christ would return and reconcile all things to Himself, and the pain of innocents would be subsumed into a peace and justice that passeth understanding.

Ivan did not want this to happen.  He could not bear for it to happen.  He did not want outrageous injustices to be all right:  He wanted them not to happen in the first place. This is how I feel.  I don’t want it to be okay that they are lost.

Still, I know that if I try to save, save, save, then in most cases, what I’m really doing is burying them.  I’m not doing anything useful, not respecting their value by agonizing over preservation, any more than the workers in that final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark were doing a good deed by packing away that precious crate among tens of thousands of nameless, dusty crates in a warehouse that stretches on for dreary, nameless acres.

So I try.  I do a little saving, just enough to make me feel human, and then I inwardly send the rest up “into the cloud,” hand it over to Jesus, who has infinite capacity to keep every drooly smile, every first word — if that’s what He wants to do.  I don’t really, in my heart, want Heaven to be a retirement village where all the saints have endless hours to pour over memories of the good old days back on earth!  Ugh.  So I uproot and uproot these things from my heart.  But this disease of affection, this pathology that makes me love the world, and ache as I love — what is it?  And am I sure I want to be healed of it?

That’s the problem, right there. Lose it all or save it all: either way, it’s wasted. Either way, it’s lost. That’s what we mean by the Fall: loss. Everywhere. Everything. Our very mode of being is defined by loss.

Well, it’s Lent. And I am not Ivan, because I have tasted God’s love. I am not a government flunky, senselessly sealing up treasures, because I’m the one giving orders here. I’m not a dragon sitting on my stinking hoard, flying out in a jealous frenzy when some trinket goes missing.

I am fallen, but I have been saved, am being saved, and I will be saved. Nothing is lost, not even me. I know it. I wish to God I could feel it.

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photo By Axisadman (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Conversion of heart is a long process, not a moment, and the effects of original sin come creeping back constantly, and have to be scrubbed away constantly, over and over again. But as Father Barron says, the real goal is disorienting ourselves from our self-imposed prison of self-regard, and re-orienting ourselves correctly: positioning ourselves in the proper relation to God.

And God isn’t fussy! The smallest effort will be received by Him with joy. If the best we can do is tell God, “I know I’m not praying right. Please help,” then that’s a sincere prayer, too. The only real mistake you can make is to do nothing. Nothing is the one thing the devil is hoping for. Nothing is his stock in trade. Nothing is his dearest wish for you, forever.

Read the rest at the Register.

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Image via Pixabay, public domain

Did we appreciate Mr. Rogers when he was on TV? No, we did not. My sister and I didn’t, anyway. We thought he was unbearably gooney (and it didn’t help that I was secretly terrified of Lady Elaine). When his show came on, we would elaborately die of boredom, rolling our eyes so hard, we could see the inside of our snarky little skulls.

Also, I couldn’t deal with his face. I just didn’t want to look at it.

He had that smile of extreme simplicity that you see in people who have gone through tremendous sorrows, or in the mentally impaired at Mass. It’s a radical openness, a lantern that burns too bright.

Mr. Rogers was remembered by François Clemmons on StoryCorps last week. (The very short StoryCorps features on National Public Radio are almost always worth a listen — sort of the audio equivalent of Humans of New York.) In this edition, Clemmons tells how Fred Rogers invited him to come play a policeman on his show.

Clemmons, who is black, says that the idea didn’t appeal to him. 

“I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers. Policemen were siccing police dogs and water hoses on people,” he says. “And I really had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excited about being Officer Clemmons at all.”

But he agreed; and one show in particular stands out in his mind. It was 1969.

Rogers had been resting his feet in a plastic pool on a hot day.

“He invited me to come over and to rest my feet in the water with him,” Clemmons recalls. “The icon Fred Rogers not only was showing my brown skin in the tub with his white skin as two friends, but as I was getting out of that tub, he was helping me dry my feet.”

Something to think about as Holy Thursday approaches. Fred Rogers clearly saw his career as an opportunity to invite, to serve, and to model charity. He was goony, yes, but that is who he was. He did what we are all supposed to to, in our own way.

It strikes me, too, that Rogers didn’t hide behind the TV screen and consider that he had discharged his duty by broadcasting his message to the millions of people who watched his show. Bloggers, take heed! Talking to a crowd was not a substitute for talking to the man in front of him. There is no substitute for the personal.

[Clemmons] says he’ll never forget the day Rogers wrapped up the program, as he always did, by hanging up his sweater and saying, “You make every day a special day just by being you, and I like you just the way you are.” This time in particular, Rogers had been looking right at Clemmons, and after they wrapped, he walked over.

Clemmons asked him, “Fred, were you talking to me?”

“Yes, I have been talking to you for years,” Rogers said, as Clemmons recalls. “But you heard me today.”

Okay, so, that sounds familiar. Doesn’t it? Who talks that way? You know who. That’s why I find it hard to look Fred Rogers in the face. He was a holy man.

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Photo: By Dr. François S. Clemmons (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Last night, my friend Elisa posted a picture of something amazing she made: a fold-out, fabric icon book in a leather cover.

[img attachment=”94876″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”icon book” /]

I’ve never seen anything like it. (More pictures here.) Very kid-friendly, ideal for Mass, but not cutesy or sentimental, like so many religious goods for kids — and it would make a beautiful devotional display for adults, too.

I wanted to spread the word about her gorgeous icon book — and then it occurred to me that there are lots of other Catholic crafters and artisans out there who have lovely goods for sale. So I put out a quick request, and the result is this little feature.

First, check out Elisa’s shop, Door Number 9, where she sells a wide variety of quirky, geekish handmade items, along with little oratories and contemporary styled religious jewelry, at her Etsy shop, Door Number 9. We have a few of her products and love them. Elisa graciously used my name, SIMCHA, as a coupon code for my readers, for 15% off a $25 purchase or more.  It expires Easter Sunday, March 27.

If you have handmade religious goods for sale, feel free to add a link to your shop in the comments!

PLEASE NOTE: Many, but not all, of these sellers can ship before Easter. PLEASE check the delivery details on the individual pages, especially if you are ordering a custom-made item.

Annie Tillberg makes the items for sale at Annery’s Handmade: Take a look at this sweet Roses Gift Set, meant for little hands that fidget or older hands that can’t grasp small rosary beads anymore:

[img attachment=”94882″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”rosary roses annery” /]

Also for sale: Communion veils and knit and sewn infinity scarves.

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Bumblebee Bonnets: ADORABLE. Handmade bonnets for babies age newborn to 36 months.

[img attachment=”94883″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”bumblebee bonnets 2″ /]

Bumblebee Bonnets can deliver by Easter. Check out the selection of fabrics available now, and see the most lovely bonnet model in the world.

I also like the “The Lord walks among the pots and pans” watercolor.

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Anyone who follows my blog knows that I’m hopelessly devoted to the lovingly handmade cold process soap by my dear friend Robin. Robin is on hiatus for the moment, but her store still has plenty of gorgeous, fragrant soaps for sale in many varieties. Here’s my family’s favorite: just plain goatmilk

[img attachment=”94919″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”goatmilk” /]

Wonderful for dry skin, very gentle and dense. Robin also has some sweet flower-shaped soaps for sale, along with a variety of beautiful and aromatic hand-cut bars. 

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Another option for handmade soap: Clean River Products. Christine Lyons says: “Our specialty is Chrism Scented Soap.”

[img attachment=”94920″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”chrism soap” /]

“This is a perfect gift for the newly Confirmed, Ordained, or for anyone who would love to be reminded daily of the outpouring of Grace received from the Sacraments. We use only the highest quality essential oils to scent our soaps.”

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AND NOW FOR THE ROSARIES!

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Every well-appointed Catholic home has a large collection of broken rosary bits. If you’re ready for something that will hold together forever, check out my friend Kyra’s awesome new chainmail-and-hematite rosary.

[img attachment=”94891″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”chainmail rosary” /]

While I was writing this post, her rosaries sold out, but she is making more!

These rosaries would make excellent First Holy Communion gifts, and more will be listed soon. In the meantime, check out Kyra’s strikingly beautiful and amazingly strong handmade chainmail jewelry at Iron Lace Design.

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More custom-made, one-of-a-kind rosaries and chaplets from Allison Kinyon of  Rosaries by Allison. There is a huge selection in a wide price range. Here’s one that caught my eye, because I am a sucker for sea glass:

[img attachment=”94893″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”sea glass rosary” /]

Many lovely and unusual rosaries for sale. Several rosaries are ready to ship in time for Easter.

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Another personal favorite: wrap-around rosary bracelets and other goods from Apple and Azalea, handmade and designed by my dear friend Theresa Barger, who lives in Webster, NH. It was hard to choose one to feature, but this swirled red brecciated jasper rosary with jet black glass Our Father beads is especially striking.

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Thanks to all the artisans who contributed to this post! If you have handmade religious items for sale, please feel free to leave a link in the comments.

SATURDAY
Hot dogs, baked beans, cheesy weezies

WYSIWYG.

SUNDAY
BLTs, Pringles, Banana splits

Birthday at the Fishers’ house! Cake at some later point. Jeff Miller used to do this “test your detachment” thing on Fridays in Lent. Here’s my contribution, with five pounds of bacon:

[img attachment=”94611″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”bacon” /]

Imagine your suffering if I had a better camera, you backsliding reprobate.

We also had banana splits. Corrie’s was served pre-deconstructed, which pleased her majesty:

[img attachment=”94612″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”corrie banana split” /]
MONDAY
Chicken pies

I last made chicken pies maybe eight years ago, and nobody liked them. I thought it was time to try again, so I went with the most bourgeois version I could think of. No leeks or fennel or white wine involved to challenge anyone’s palate. I also made a lot of Mr. Tweedy jokes, just to prime the pump and make everyone feel jolly about the meal to come.

In chicken broth, I cooked chicken breast, carrots, potatoes, peas, mushrooms, celery, and onions. The sauce was a plain white sauce (flour, butter and milk) seasoned with two envelopes of onion soup mix. And I made it in store-bought pie shells. Here’s what they looked like before I put the top crust on. VERY NORMAL, right?

[img attachment=”94619″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”chicken pies” /]

The family deemed them . . . okay.

I thought they were delicious. They tasted exactly like they ought to taste. Now my only problem is, where am I going to find a new family? HA.

TUESDAY
French toast casserole, Sausages

Everybody was ridiculously happy about this meal in the aftermath of the immense suffering of homemade chicken pies yesterday. Here is my lovely bread-tearing assistant, hard at work:

[img attachment=”94628″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”benny bread for french toast” /]

I also served one of the leftover chicken pies, because I am mean.

WEDNESDAY
Ziti, salad

They were also really excited about this meal, not sure why. Ziti from a box, sauce from a jar, limited cheese requiring the oversight of the teenage cheese police.

Oh, so I have this colander problem. Our old colander is a standard size, which means that whenever I made enough pasta for our family, I have to do it in batches, or else some of it ends up slithering out into the sink, which is always gross, because Fly Lady can go suck an egg. (Actually, Fly Lady seems so quaint and reasonable now, doesn’t she? All the cleaning experts currently in vogue are all, “Do you really need a front door? Does it spark joy? Consider achieving inner peace by dispensing with your floorboards, and just skipping lightly from joist to joist. Japanese mothers have been doing this for years, and they glow!”)

So I tried for a while, but I discovered that it’s hard to find out exactly what sizes colanders come in; so I bought what seemed like a reasonable step up: 16 quarts.

[img attachment=”94630″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”colander” /]

Thanks a lot, common core. The thing is, of course, big enough to bathe a calf in — or I guess strain a calf, anyway. It doesn’t fit in my sink. I’m an idiot. Now I just have to pack it back up and return it and buy a smaller one, which I will definitely do right away.

You know what, how about one of you cleaning experts come over here and do it for me, with all your free time and serenity.

THURSDAY
Pork carnitas, Avocados 

I made carnitas once before, and they weren’t great, so a bunch of people suggested yummier, more authentic recipes. I ignored all of these and went to allrecipes.com. It actually turned out pretty great — although I doubled the meat and quadrupled all the seasoning. The flavor was mild but pleasant.

[img attachment=”94629″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”carnitas 2″ /]

One quibble: Preheat oven to 400, simmer the meat on the stove top for 2.5 hours, then put the meat in the oven? Something ain’t right there. I’ll get back to you when I put my finger on it. I’m not feeling great. Why is it so hot in here? Ugh, I must be getting a fever.

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, Tomato soup, spinach salad, tortilla chips

Pretty good for a Friday!

What’s slithering around in the sink at your house? Anything good?

Dear Young and Very Sad Me,

First, I know you won’t believe me, but I gotta say it: You’re not fat.

Honest.

Don’t be crazy. You do crunches obsessively and eat nothing but salad and ice, so do me a favor: ditch the baggy sweatshirts and saggy jeans, and find out what it’s like to wear fitted clothes in small sizes, before it’s too late! OK, thanks.

Now I want to tell you the things you will need to know in order to become happy, a good wife and mother, closer to God, and a more productive member of society.

I really want to, I say. But even now, I’m not sure what to say. I could warn you against some horrible mistakes you’re going to make: wasting time, getting into debt, treating other people badly, looking for love in all the wrong places, and so on.

But the fact is, you’ll know when you’re doing them that they’re bad ideas, and you’re going to go ahead and do them anyway. What can I say? There are plenty of people looking out for your happiness, eager to help, and you don’t want to be helped. You don’t want to be happy.

I know why. It’s because you don’t think you deserve to be happy. You think that everyone hates you. You hate yourself and you can’t imagine a future where you don’t hate yourself, because you think that who you are now is who you will always be. And at the same time, you’re furious at everybody for not being your friend, even though you are not exactly pleasant to be around.

I know you won’t hear me when I tell you to be patient with yourself. But maybe you will be able to hear this: Be patient with God. He has His reasons for letting you go through these dark and ugly times. He is softening your heart, making it tender. Ever seen a meat tenderizer?

[img attachment=”94571″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”MeatPounder2″ /]

Yeah. But it won’t go on like this forever.

I want to tell you that every misery and humiliation that you’re going through now is for something, if you will sit still and let God work on you. Some of it will make you more compassionate; some of it will make you more resilient. Some of it will make you appreciate the joys and pleasures of life a thousand times more, when they come, because you won’t take them for granted. And some of it is going to make you a genuine pain in the pants, and you are just going to have to get over yourself and realize that everybody had a crummy childhood or a crummy teenager-hood or a crummy something.

All right?

But nothing has to be wasted.

The boyfriends you think you deserve? Let them go – you and they deserve better. The guy who makes you want to change into a better person? Hold on tight. And when he says he loves you, believe him! You both have to learn what love really means, but wanting to be good is a great place to start.

Some day you will wake up every morning in a small, sunny house crammed with people you love: a strong and tender husband and a whole bunch of strange and wonderful kids (more than you expected – see paragraph one: enjoy being skinny) who know you very, very well and who love you because they know you, not in spite of it. They need your specific talents, your specific strengths and enthusiasms, your specific capacity for work and creativity. They will need your help to get through struggles of their own. They need you – the you that is being formed right now. It’s not for nothing. I want you to have hope.

So go to confession, make a morning offering every day – even a little one, even a half-hearted one. Pray before you go to sleep. These things will help. They will, in fact, save you.

God wants to save you. Let Him!

Love,

Older, Fatter, Happy Me

***

(This essay originally ran in Catholic Match in 2012.)