So here’s what I say to the Columbia students clutching their carefully cultivated pearls as they face down the hot breath of those terrible, wild gods: you’re damn right it’s not safe. You’re not in control here, not on this playground. You may find yourself climbing too high and too fast, and you may reach out for that rung on the monkey bars only to find that you’re grabbing thin air, and down you will plummet, onto the hot asphalt, or maybe further, down into the underworld, where dark Hades glowers over the fluttering dead.
I’ve recently started using Marquette, and haven’t yet formed the habit of putting the monitor away in the morning. (I haven’t yet formed the habit of putting anythingaway, to be honest, but that’s a separate problem.) This means that the kids keep finding it and going, “oooOOOOOoooo, what’s THIS?” Because yeah, the new style monitor kinda looks familiar:
So when my son, who is ten, wanted to know what this machine does, I told him, “Well, you know a woman’s body changes throughout the month, and she can’t make a baby just any time. Sometimes her body isn’t ready to make a baby. So this machine helps her figure out if her body is ready right now, or not.”
So he says, “Oh, it’s like when you preheat the oven, and it goes ‘ding ding ding!’ when it’s time to put the cake in?”
It’s so important to stay hydrated in the summer. If the only way to achieve this is to drink too much and then spend the next day guzzling water to try to wash your headache away, then so be it! Therefore, in the name of health, and because Eve Tushnet’s post about ice cream sodas reminded me about drinking, here are a few of our favorite summer drinks:
***
1. THE ANGRY PIRATE
Sometimes known, by people who actually know the names of drinks, as DARK AND STORMY. (Also occasionally called STORMY NIGHT, which is actually a different drink, which please don’t drink. It sounds revolting.) Call it what you like, and keep on protesting that you’re truly, truly not trying to be cute, it’s just that your mind is going, and what’s so funny about that? Either way, it’s easy to make and very refreshing.
The recipe:
Put ice in glass. Pour in two oz. dark rum, 3 oz. ginger beer, and the juice of maybe half a lime, and stir.
We use Gosling’s Black Seal rum, but I imagine it would be fine with other brands of dark rum. And yes, we make it with ginger ale if we can’t find ginger beer, and we somehow manage to muscle our ways to the bottom of the glass.
***
2. MOJITO
Now that the craze is over and people have stopped going all “Oooh, mojito, mojito!” all the time, you can safely drink this lovely concoction just because it’s great, and not because you need to use those mason jars with pictures of mustaches on them that you bought on clearance at the G.D. Hipster Warehouse.
This one is a teensy bit more complicated, so it’s best to make a whole pitcher of it ahead of time. I have a round-bottomed, thick glass pitcher with a cobalt blue rim that makes me feel SO FANCY, and it’s perfect for a big batch of mojitos. Last time we used it, I didn’t even notice that the soles of my Tevas were puffing up like Mickey Mouse shoes because my feet were too close to the campfire. That’s how good mojitos are!And there’s so much green crap floating around in there, is practically a salad.
The recipe (this will make two drinks – expand as needed)
In a shaker, lightly muddle about 15 mint leaves. Add about an ounce-and-a-half of simple syrup, the same amount of lime juice, and three ounces of white rum and three ounces of club soda. Dump in some ice and shake. Pour unstrained into glasses. Garnish with a lime wedge and another mint sprig if you like.
UPDATE: Matt Yonke makes this suggestion, and he’s totally right:
“I highly recommend mixing all the ingredients BUT the soda first, then top each drink with soda and stir lightly. You’re bashing up all the carbonation if you shake it with the others.
That’s super essential if you’re making a pitcher since you don’t want to be drinking hours old, flat club soda at the end of the pitcher. Fresh soda in every drink makes all the difference.”
***
3. GIN AND TONIC
This is not really a summer drink, it’s just a drink for the ages. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is get most of it in the glass and you’re set. So accommodating.
The recipe:
Come on, you can figure this out.
My research: Terroir is the finest gin experience my mouth has ever known. Tanqueray is great if we have the cash. Bombay costs about the same as Tanqueray and is fine, maybe a teensy bit less smooth. New Amsterdam is drinkable, and even comes in a surprisingly glass bottle. Seagrams, you might as well start throwing up now before you even get to the cash register.
***
4. WHISKEY SOUR
You don’t hear much about whiskey sours anymore. There’s no reason for this, especially if you have someone in the house who doesn’t really like whiskey, but on the other hand, the kids are in bed. You can get complicated with egg whites and sugared glass rims, but really you just need to make a bit of strong lemonade and throw some whiskey in there. A maraschino cherry will just slow you down.
Now hear this: Wild Turkey tastes fine. It really does!
***
5. THE SECOND CHILDHOOD
The recipe:
Fill up a blender with ice cubes, chop ‘em up somewhat, then fill it up again with whatever kind of ice cream you like, plus a few generous glugs of Kahlua, and blend again until the ice is in little nubbins. Find a big cup and a big straw.
What, you’re too sophisticated? Shut up, I’ll make you another.
***
FOR THE KIDDIES:
6. EGG CREAM
An essential part of my rich Brooklyn heritage. Possibly an acquired taste because it’s not terribly sweet, but it’s deeply refreshing.
The recicpe:
In a tall glass, pour an inch or so of milk or cream. Squirt in a ton of chocolate syrup and mix, until it’s so sweet you’d never drink it on its own. Fill up the rest of the glass with plain seltzer (pour slowly, over a spoon if necessary, because it works up a huge head). Gulp gulp gulp. Resume complaining, “Oy, was I toisty!”
Around 1:20 eastern, I’ll be on the great Jennifer Fulwiler’s SiriusXM radio show. With an eye to the approach of mother’s day, we’ll be talking about how important it is for all you ladies to follow one rigid, clearly-defined plan to achieve Perfect Catholic Motherhood. OR WILL WE?
Also, I keep meaning to remind you that I am on the radio every Monday from 5-6 PM eastern, with Mark Shea with his show, Connecting the Dots. All the shows are archived, and you can listen to podcasts here.
But what if you can’t buy a new pair of shoes for your growing child? What if your child must go barefoot, or cut the toes out of shoes that are too small? And what if your child walks miles every day to get to school, and what if he is constantly picking up diseases and parasites through the inevitable cuts and scrapes on his feet?
Any normal person, when faced with a heap of excrement like this, would go get the shovel and clean it up. Maybe they wouldn’t be happy about it, but they would clean it up, because it is a pile of dog poop in the middle of the yard. Instead, I started listing all the things I had already gotten done that day, all the things I was still going to do, and I said, “No! It’s not my job! I had enough things that are my job. Not gonna do it. Not. My. Job.”
In a craven attempt to grab some page views on a day when I’m too busy to blog, I interviewed my three-year-old about her views on Star Wars. Here’s what I got:
And it went on like that. Then I tried to take a picture of her holding a Star Wars cup, and she declined, explaining, “Uh-uh. I’m eating my nunch.”
That’s what I get for trying to cash in on my toddler’s cuteness. Hey, you should share this all over the internet to shame me for my exploitative parenting!
Happy feast of St. Joseph the Worker! I was a little confused (NOT THAT I’VE BEEN A CATHOLIC ALL MY LIFE OR ANYTHING) about the day. Didn’t St. Joseph just have a day back in March?
Yep, St. Joseph’s feast day is March 19. St. Joseph the Worker is a separate feast day instituted by Pius XII in 1955, “apparently” (according to American Catholic) “in response to the ‘May Day’ celebrations for workers sponsored by Communists.”
Barely making it, for a family, is quite an accomplishment.” –A resident at St. Francis House in Chicago.
If you’re not where you want to be, relax! Keep working because God is in the work.
Somehow, that is a tremendous relief to hear. Relax into the work. Even if you’re not there yet, you’re there, because God is there in the work. This dovetails nicely with a quote from Catherine of Siena, whose feast day was yesterday:
“All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, “I am the way.”
To be clear, it may not feel like heaven, but that’s because the world is like a damp spot, and original sin is like a mold that keeps growing over our front window over and over again. It’s hard work to keep clearing it off so we can see, but we do want to see clearly, don’t we? St. Joseph the Worker, intercede for us, so we have the energy to keep cleaning.
You’ll also find regular exercise gives you more energy to do something that is absolutely essential: putting in some one-on-one time with your other kids. It’s all too easy for them to feel displaced and neglected when the new baby comes, so it is essential to carve out some special time to connect with them, consistently and intentionally, academically, emotionally, spiritually, and just for some plain old silly old mommy-and-me fun, or else they will grow up to be crack whores.
You know this teacher. He’s the one who can turn any topic, no matter how thrilling or challenging, into something tiresome and predictable. Over years of repetition, he’s succumbed to his own droning voice, and no matter where he begins, he will eventually, inevitably work his way around to that same old, tired old pet theory or phrase.
You can lay bets on who can be the first to make him drag in Sartre, nativism, or Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe. If you’re really unscrupulous, you know you can get a solid B just by making even the most dubious mention of that key phrase, whether it’s “the sacred feminine” or “hermeneutic of continuity” or “fallacy of relative privation” or whatever impressed your teacher when hewas in college. He has fallen prey to that most deadly intellectual predator: the hobby horse.
Hobby horses are toys, for children to play with. And yet so many adults ride them every day. And there is nothing more dreary than having a conversation that you think is actually going somewhere, only to spy the other person trotting out that ratty old hobby horse once again. It’s not welcome. It’s not relevant. But it’s so familiar, so reliable, so docile and easy to steer, how can we resist? Giddyup!
We all repeat ourselves sometimes. And some ideas are worth repeating! But a good idea becomes a hobby horse when it not only turns up all the time, but it becomes the answer to all questions. It’s not just that your favorite issue keeps coming up; it’s that it seems to you like nobody is really saying anything at all until that issue has been raised. Is something bad happening? It’s all due to [bad thing that you hate]. Is something good happening? Oh, just wait until it all gets ruined by [same bad thing that you hate]. Cloppity, cloppity, clop.
A few examples of popular hobby horses:
illegal immigration
Communion in the hand
rape culture
divorce culture
princess culture
feminism
misogyny
pedophilia
failure to heed Our Lady of Fatima
failure to heed Noam Chomsky
failure to heed Ron Paul
men, and how everything is their fault
women, and how everything is their fault
this one particular woman, and how everything is her fault, and here is her address
and so on. And guess what? If you read this list and thought, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe she put such-and-such incredibly important topic on the list with all those other trivial issues!” . . . then, my friend, you are the proud and devoted owner of a bona fide hobby horse. These are all important issues. They are, however, not the only issues. They are not always relevant.
So, listen up, everybody — and I’m including myself. If you spend a lot of time yacking online, ask yourself this: could I reasonably be known as “That [something] Guy” or “That [something] Lady”? Do I often find myself saying, “If you’d just open your eyes, you’d see that everything always stems from . . . “? Have you noticed that people can finish your sentences for you, and they don’t seem especially happy about it?
Try this: stop it. Just for 48 hours, conduct all conversations without hauling out your threadbare little pet. If it’s difficult to refrain for even that long, then you have a problem.
The truth is, there are a few occasions when one answer suffices for every question. “Why are bad things bad?” — “Original sin.” “Why are good things good?” — “God.” Everything that is bad is due to a turning away from God; everything that is good is due to God’s goodness. True, true, true.
But if you are interested in better understanding people you disagree with — or if you are interested in solving a problem, rather than being right about how awful the problem it is — then you are going to have to admit that your hobby horse is not actually going to take you anywhere. You might be able to work up a fine sweat charging around on it, but it’s only your own leg power that’s making you go. And that means that you can only go so far.
