Author: simchajfisher

If you want to talk us out of getting an English Mastiff …

. . . you have about 24 hours.

Oh dear, here is the story.  No, we’re not going to have two dogs.  Poor dear Shane of happy memory had a glorious but short life with us.  Here is what happened:  A couple of weeks ago, it was snowing, which always made Shane go completely bonkers with glee.  Someone opened the door, he shot past them, got hysterical because of the snow, and ran right out into the road.

It only took one car. He was hit hard.  Many broken bones, many internal injuries.  They carried him inside and called the vet, but you could see that there was no hope.  My husband and older son stayed with him and said good bye and thank you for being a good dog, and they put the poor boy to sleep.

Shane was a good dog. He was not smart.  He learned almost nothing beyond the basics.  But he loved the kids with all his doggy heart.  When he was just a baby, we took him to the beach.  One of the kids put Benny in a floating tube.  Shane was terrified of water — didn’t even want to get his paws damp — but when he saw what he thought was his baby floating away, in he went. (Of course he ended up tipping her over and getting everyone soaked, but he meant well.)  Here is Shane at the beach when he was just little:

and here is Shane having a wonderful day afternoon in a safe spot out in the woods, off the leash:

taking a break from zooming around, and laughing his head off, on the inside:

You see, a happy life.  I was not able to tell the kids that dogs just disappear from existence once they die.  I just couldn’t do it.  I know animals don’t have immortal souls.  But they have something.  Shane was someone, not something.

It was a hard few weeks, after he died.  Once the shock wore off, we talked a little bit about another dog, maybe a smaller one this time.  Our house is not big, and we were constantly tripping over Shane. We thought it would be smarter to scale it down, and look for a more sensible kind of breed.

Then this guy turned up:

PIC mastiff in red wagon

 

This is not the actual dog, but it looks just like him.  Here is another dog of the same breed:

PIC mastiff in back seat

The one we met is one year old, a brindle English  Mastiff.  He grew up with three little kids and another mastiff; but his dog pal died, and now he’s lonely all day.  He is like a slow-moving armchair, and lets the kids treat him like a jungle gym.  Damien and I went to meet him, and he seemed pretty much like our dog.  His paws are the size of candlepin bowling balls, and he will be growing for another two years.  I know, I know.

Anyway, here is a bit about  his temperament.  We will be picking him up — well, not “picking him up,” but getting him, on the day after Christmas.  He goes by “Boomer.”  He drools and farts and snores, and is completely ready to love you forever, unless you maybe might be going to hurt the family, in which case he will sit on you.

I know, I know.

What’s your roast beast?

My favorite part of How the Grinch Stole Christmas is where he brings back the roast beast. Because while it’s true that Christmas isn’t about presents or decorations or food, you really do want to have that special Christmas food!

PIC the grinch himself carved the roast beast

 

If we can manage it, we spend Christmas Eve drinking egg nog and decorating the tree, then going to Midnight Mass.  Then Christmas morning is presents and chocolate and a breakfast of eggs, bacon, fresh fruit, and cinnamon buns.  Candy all day.  Then — and here is the most brilliant idea we’ve ever had — Chinese take-out for dinner.  I think this tradition was instituted on the Christmas that I was 8 and 24/30ths months pregnant with baby #6, and was not up to cooking a ham or turkey that nobody wanted anyway.  But somehow, no matter how stuffed with marshmallow Santas you are, there is always room for meat on a stick.

For the rest of Christmas food (which we make during vacation, which means they may not appear until after Christmas day) here are my tried and true recipes, suitable for anyone who can follow directions, but isn’t especially gifted in the kitchen:

Skaarup’s Lunatic Fudge Lots of variations.  The kids like the one with crushed candy canes.  You don’t need a candy thermometer to make this stuff, and can turn out pounds and pounds of it pretty easily.

Buckeyes. These are delicious, and easy enough for the kids to make mostly on their own.  I just go in the other room and pretend I don’t know what horrors are transpiring.

NB:  I do not recommend adding a dab of chocolate to cover up the toothpick hole, unless you are prepared for candy that doubles as a female anatomy lesson.  Ha-cha-cha!

Peanut brittle.  I always hated peanut brittle, so I don’t even know why I tried this recipe. But it is fantastic.  Very light and airy, nothing like the tooth-loosening stuff you get at the store.  Oh, and the part where you add the baking powder and it foams up like crazy?  FUN.  You can also make it with other kinds of nuts.

I don’t usually make cookies, because they just seem to flow into the house on their own.  Also, I made terrible cookies.

How about you?  What are your essential Christmas foods?

I will be on The Good Catholic Life around 4 eastern

This one is going to be fun!  You can listen at 1060AM WQOM, at www.WQOM.org and at www.TheGoodCatholicLife.com.

Because nobody wants a nicely-wrapped box full of pre-order

Planning to buy my book as a Christmas present, but disappointed the print version is only available for pre-order?  Have I got the solution for you!

Click here: giftcertificatehighres*to download a pdf of the above certificate, which you can then print out, put in an envelope, put in the bottom of an enormous box, wrap it, give it to someone you love on Christmas morning, and then point and laugh at their crestfallen faces when they realize it’s just a piece of paper!  Then tell them it’s marriage building.

P.S. You have to actually pre-order the book.  Don’t forget, it’s also available as an ebook for Kindle or Nook, an as an audiobook!  You can also pre-order directly from OSV.

And yes, I totally stole this pre-order certificate idea from the brilliant Jennifer Fulwiler, whose spiritual memoir is now available to pre-order

*No, I couldn’t figure out how to change the title without somehow wrecking the pdf.  I’m a lover, not a pdf name changer.

At the Register: How Delmar Got Saved

Zachariah, Tom Neal, and Delmar all learn that sometimes we do not have bigger fish to fry.

Like a lark who is learning to pray

Yesterday, we went to another lovely concert at the public high school that my oldest two kids attend.  As usual, I was stunned at the variety of music presented:  old and new vocal and instrumental jazz, medieval hymns, funny arrangements of secular Christmas songs, even a Sephardic song about the sighting of a star at the birth of Abraham.  And they were good.  They opened with the entire band playing “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and then the various choirs filed in, singing, from both sides.

When I was tried to sneak quietly back into the auditorium after taking the little guys for a bathroom break, the choir director, who was taking a break too, grinned and whispered, “Bless you!”  I don’t even know why.  For dragging little kids out at night in the freezing cold, I guess, just so they could hear some good music.

For the second song on the program, the stage cleared and six high school girls tottered out to the mics — every one of them wearing black or red dresses, some skin tight, some buttcheek-high, some of them constructed of evil-looking lace, straps, and bands.  One girl wore black booties with a stacked wedge, but the others were balancing atop black or red heels so high, it looked like a novelty act when they started to sing:  look, this girl can sustain a high C without breaking an ankle!

There’s no other word for it:  they looked awful.  Too young to look sexy, too sexy to look young.  You know what I mean.

PIC Bratz doll face

 

And what were they singing?  “The Sound of Music.”  They sounded good, sweet, young.  God help me, I cried.  Of course everything makes me cry, but I was just so glad, so glad that someone was teaching these girls music.  You could see what else they had learned about beauty.

To the choir director:  bless you, too.

At the Register: The Stupids Buy a Tree (UPDATED WITH LINK)

And how it pains me that I can’t find a good picture of Aunt Loweezy to illustrate this one.

If the link doesn’t work, cut and paste this:

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/the-stupids-buy-a-tree

Sorry, I have no idea why the link isn’t working.

 

link test

trying to figure out why I can’t link to my Register piece.  Does this link work?

I will be on Spirit Catholic Radio Thursday morning

. . . about 8 Eastern time.  Spirit Catholic Radio Network – click “listen live” and find out if I finally admit on air that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Tuesday T’rowback: Martha and Mary and Primitive Screwheads

[This post ran on the Register about this time of year in 2011.]

*****

This year, we were bound and determined not to ruin the last few weeks of Advent with shopping.

This year, no sobbing in the aisles of Target as some undeserving jerk nabs the western hemisphere’s last remaining copy of Godzilla Unleashed for Wii. No tense evenings hunched over the computer as mom and dad show their love for their family by nearly coming to blows over whether or not one can trust the Amazon reviewers of the Li’l Cutie Maggot Farm Starter Kit.

No, this year, we were going to dispense with that foolishness, and keep Advent the way it ought to be: a holy season of quiet anticipation and preparation. We were, for once, going to choose the better part.

We accomplished this by cramming all of the shopping into the first couple of weeks of Advent.

I’m sorry, but you go ahead and find even modest presents and stocking stuffers for eight children without getting a little wrought up over it. It’s too late to turn into one of those nice families that doesn’t care a whit about material things. You don’t just suddenly tell a 9-year-old boy, “Son, you’ve been waiting all your life to be old enough to have your own MP3 player, much like the ones your older sisters unwrapped so gleefully last Christmas. But this year, we have a much better plan. Everyone’s going to get a biography of Blessed Ubalda the Dreary and a nearly new pair of socks, and some missionaries in Bangalore have promised to remember you at Matins!”

The truth is, I really don’t feel bad about making a big deal about presents—or, for that matter, about any of the sensuous foofarah that goes along with preparations for Christmas. I’m more or less at peace with the balance we’ve found between Mary and Martha, hymns and gingerbread, piety and pie. We try to make Advent a distinctly spiritual season, but a distinctly pleasant one: Every prayer comes with a cookie attached—because, darn it, cookies make us happy, and so does the Incarnation. That seems right to me, especially with so many little kids in the house. (The trick will be to make sure that our kids continue to spend Christmas with us when they get older, so I can continue to have cookies with my prayers.)

However, we do draw the line somewhere. This year, my husband and I spent a good 40 minutes online hunting down a specific action figure—which, I hasten to add, no one actually asked for—until we realized that maybe, just maybe, this particular gift wasn’t the most appropriate way to celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Oh, I have nothing against action figures in general. Actually, I do. The prices they charge for these shoddy little, poorly-painted hunks of plastic just designed to lose limbs and accessories and cause grief and heartache until they disappear entirely! They seems to me like the worst present ever. But the grit of my grousing has been gradually covered over, year by year, by the pearly nacre of inexplicable joy shining on the face of a kid who really, really, really wanted a three-inch representation of Indiana Jones, and who got a three-inch representation of Indiana Jones. I know happiness when I see it. I still don’t get it, but I’m willing to admit that, for some kids, an action figure is a Good Present.

Except for the one for which we came within inches of pressing “buy now” last night. It was this guy:

image

As you can see, it’s part of a play set for children. Just previous to the tasteful vignette depicted here, Ash has managed to scrape his face off the hot stove, whereon he was hurled by a team of malicious miniature Ash demons. After being impaled with a barbecue fork, Ash retaliates by swallowing one of the mini Ashes and the scalding him with a bellyful of boiling water. But! (and this is where the “play set for kids” part comes in) when he regains consciousness, he discovers that an entire new Ash—Evil Ash—is growing inside him, and, in a truly revolting and explicit scene of anguish, it begins to separate gruesomely from his body as it grows into a full-sized man.

After that, it gets kind of gross.

What’s that you say? You can’t believe that good Catholic parents would allow their children even to know about such a clearly demonic and horrifying movie, much less let them watch it, much less let them watch it often enough (twice!) that an innocent and malleable 9-year-old soul might actually consider such a gift to be desirable?

Yeah, well. How about I give you the address of those missionaries in Bangalore. Apparently they’re running a special this year, and you can get a whole novena said for the salvation of our family’s souls—half price!

You know what the worst part is? I lied. We’re only halfway done shopping. But still, we didn’t buy Evil Ash. And for a couple of primitive screwheads like us, I think that’s pretty good.