Category: Uncategorized

Pray to Edith Stein. It couldn’t hoit!

I don’t know what my problem is, but I have a problem with novenas.  I guess I’m overly cautious about superstition — maybe I’ve seen too many of those classified ads:  “Force the Sacred Heart of Jesus to grant your top wishes!”  I may be an idiot, but even I know better than to drag the Holy Spirit into a pyramid scheme.

But seriously, I do understand the theology behind a novena.  You’re just kind of proving to God that you really, really mean it, like the woman in Luke 18 who wouldn’t leave the judge alone, so he finally said, “[B]ecause this widow is troublesome to me, I will avenge her, lest continually coming she weary me.”  My kids know this method, too, and that is how I found myself at the cash register at Walmart, shelling out genuine cash dollars for three hideous Lisa Frank lunch boxes that they really, really, really, really wanted a lot.

Recently, someone heard that my husband was out of work, and she suggested a novena to Edith Stein.  I don’t know what the connection could be between Edith Stein and employment, and I couldn’t actually find a very good novena online.  The one that we ended up with turned out to be kind of a sacrifice in itself:  it’s so awkwardly and pretentiously written, I can’t decide if it was translated by a computer from another language, or just written by a sadist.

But my husband had been out of work for eight months, and we happened to get this tip about the novena on the day before Edith Stein’s feast day.  Not wanting to annoy God, who was clearly trying to get our attention, we started the novena.

He got a job on day 2.  We added a couple of other guys on, and they both got interviews — and they didn’t even get the full nine days!

So–what can I say?  As Edith Stein’s old Jewish grandmother used to say,* “It couldn’t hoit!” Here’s the novena we’re saying.  Maybe someone can suggest a better one?

*probably

I didn’t start with a photo of Edith Stein, because I couldn’t find the only nice one I’ve ever seen.  Normally, she looks crabby and irritated–not at all someone you’d ask for help–but I once saw a photo of her playing with a baby niece or someone, and she looked relaxed and happy.

Here’s an explanation of the picture at the top, according to the CASE website:

This beautiful painting of Our Lady protecting Europe illustrates the Christian roots of Europe, and shows Our Lady surrounded by six patron saints of Europe: SS Cyril and Methodius , St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), St Benedict, St Bridget of Sweden, and St Catherine of Siena. Robert Schumann, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, looks on. St Benedict offers the monastery of Canterbury to the Blessed Virgin, and St Cyril writes of the conversion of the Slavs.

The painting is by John Armstrong, who is involved in a forthcoming celebration of religious art in Liverpool:  see Vision of Hope.

(cross-posted at The Anchoress)

Have you ever seen such cruelty?

I happened to pick up Isabelle Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea, and now I’m sorry.  Okay, so the cover said it was “[t]he sweeping story of an unforgettable woman–a slave and a concubine determined to claim her own destiny against impossible odds.”  So I was warned.

In my defense, I didn’t expect it to be great literature, and I assumed I’d have to skip some steamy parts (right-o).  But Allende’s earlier novel, The House of the Spirits, was actually a good book — not perfect, but interesting, carefully made, funny, and original.

Island was none of these.  The author apparently felt that what the world needs now is yet another novel about a strong and valiant woman who is cruelly crushed by western culture and masculinity, yet rises from the ashes and manages to learn to support herself and have children and orgasms — but historical!

I’ve never written fiction, but I know an early draft when I see one.  Even if you ignore the loud creaking noise made by the elderly clichés  described above, you will get lost in the disorder of this sloppy work.

Major plot points are exposed so clumsily that you can just hear the author thinking, “Crap, I meant to put that in sixty pages ago!  Well, a deadline’s a deadline — I’ll just cram it in . . . let’s see, here.”

Some characters are elaborately and meticulously introduced, only to evaporate without explanation in the second half of the book; while others leap fully-formed halfway through the plot, leaving the reader to wonder, “Wait, who is this guy?  Howdid he get to be so important?”  Subplots are hinted at, never to appear again, and satisfyingly huge denouements are promised, but all you get is a fizzle.

There are long, confusing passages of dry historical detail (the book takes place during the Haitian revolution, which should have been interesting) which are followed abruptly by hastily sketched-in descriptions of the cruelty of a slave’s life, the cruelty of a young student’s life, the cruelty of men toward women, etc.  I kept thinking about this scene from Blazing Saddles:

In Island Beneath the Sea, whole chapters go that way.

The prose (it can’t all be the translator’s fault) is also clunky beyond belief.  Wade through this if you can:

He was amazed by his ardor, renewed every night, and even at times at midday, when he arrived unexpectedly, boots covered with mud, and surprised her embroidering among the pillows of her bed, expelled the dogs with one sweep of his hands, and fell upon her with the jubilation of again feeling eighteen.  (271)

I knew a guy who surprised my embroidering once.  It wasn’t pretty.

So, to sum up:  Women damaged by rape and oppression, healed overnight by a tender lover who’s not so grabby?  Check.

Women controlling their fate through choosing when and where to be slutty?  Check.

Swooning approval of loathsome behavior as long as it’s done consensually in the name of lurve?  Check.

Catholic priest who’s a good guy mainly because he says that voodoo is basically the same as Catholicism, so you go right ahead and bite the head off that chicken?  Check.

Writing whole chapters in italics to show that certain characters are deep souls who speak interiorly? Check.

Dreadfully predictable switcheroo with an inexcusable number of various mixed-race babies?  Check, check, and check.

Railing against the senselessness of racism and sexism while shamelessly exploiting both in lieu of character development?  Check.  (For a quick reference guide:  dark skin=good; female=good.  Light skin=bad, male=bad.   Black female is double plus good; white male double plus ungood.)

Throw in some tutti fruity quasi-lyrical nonsense about surrendering to the power of the drums and the dance, and, according to Allende, you’ve got yourself a novel.  For a more insightful and entertaining exploration of race, just go ahead and watch Blazing Saddles.  It’s twoo, it’s twoo!

(Cross-posted at The Anchoress)

Where’s Mama? Where’s Mama?

There she is!  Oh, um, sorry, I mean, please come see me in two other places today.

Such a day!  I have a piece up at Faith and Family Live–an interview with Kathy Rivet, who has been teaching Creighton Model NFP for over 30 years. Kathy has also been my instructor for about eight years, so I can personally attest to the fact that she is a woman of supernatural patience and fortitude.  Come check out what she has to sayabout the changes she’s seen in the world of NFP.

And today The Anchoress is going to Rome, and I’m not jealous at all, do you hear me?  She has very generously invited me, Danielle Bean, and Sally Thomas to write guest posts while she’s gone.  So come on over and see the video of Dolly Parton that I found!

How should I do this?  Should I post the same thing here and there?  Or should I just leave a note here to remind you to see me there?  What should I do?  Where did I put my coffee?  What’s that smell?  You thought it was okay to just step over this mess and keep on walking? And with a track record like this, you think I’m going to get you a dog???

Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to again.  Nooo, I wouldn’t rather be in Rome….

This-a and that-a – UPDATED

1.  I just got home from school supply shopping.   Well, I’m used to checking out with heaping full cart, but usually that’s when I’m buying a week’s worth of food for ten people, not desk supplies for four little kids.  Sheesh.  Sheesh.  Sheesh.  Those kids hadbetter learn something this year.  Two of the kids had flash drives on their supply lists from the teachers!  Okay, that’s actually kind of cool, but still.  When I was in 6th grade, we were using computers to run the following program:

10  PRINT “I LOVE UNICORNS”

20 GOTO 10

RUN

and then Mrs. Blanchard would get all mad because the boys were making the computer run “DEAD MEAT DEAD MEAT DEAD MEAT DEAD MEAT DEAD MEAT.”

2.  In two weeks, I will have my first very own linky list!  So get ready to share your SEARCH TERMS POETRY.  This stuff practically writes itself, and sometimes tells you a little more than you wanted to know about what kind of thing you write about.  For instance, every single damn day, at least one person finds me by entering “Horshack” into a search engine.  I write about Bach; they want Horshack.  I mentionadoration; they clamor for Horshack.  I write about Horshack; they search for “when simchas go wrong.”  I’m not making any of this up.

 

I don’t even actually know who this person is, this Horshack.  But I realize that, in writing this, I’ve now eternally cemented my and his relationship in this strange and stupid place called the internet.

The only rule for SEARCH TERMS POETRY is that you may only use words and phrases which are direct quotes of search terms for your blog or website. Or if you want to add other words in, you have to make it clear (with quotation  marks or italics or something) which words are direct quotes.  Everything else – style, length, rhyming or not, etc. – is up to you.  If you don’t have a statistical thingy on your site, you can install the free version of Sitemeter, easy peasy.

On Monday, Sept. 13, post your poem on your site, and leave a link to it on my blog, and we can all have a good laugh at the poor suckers who Googled “spiritual help” and ended up with you.  Here is the search term poem I came up with.  Spread the word!

3.  The one and only, the fabulous, the indefatigable, the outrageous and yet humble, the incisive, the witty, profound, and now globetrotting Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, has done me the inadvisable honor of asking me to write guest posts for her blog atFirst Things while she is in Rome!  Danielle Bean and Sally Thomas will be there, too!  I believe that officially makes me the Gummo of this particular group, but I don’t mind.  I will be cross-posting the same silly stuff here and there.  Posting will probably start Tuesday!  I still can’t believe she asked me!

Here is The Anchoress’ lovely introduction of Danielle, Sally, and me.

7 Quick Takes: “Pearls Before Swine” Edition

Seven Quick Takes:

“Pearls Before Swine” Edition

In choosing movies, my kids have more or less beaten me down.  Of course I don’t let them watch just anything they want, because, obviously, some things are harmful or inappropriate in themselves; and some things are just so dang stupid, they do damage to immature aesthetic organs.

On the other hand, it’s so unpleasant to spend an evening shushing and chastising sulky kids while they ruin a perfectly good movie.  And all they remember about the movie is that you yelled at them all the way through it.

So we more or less compromise, and let them watch a small amount of really worthless stuff (Scooby Doo); a lot of accessible stuff that has some merit, even if it’s only the merit of well-crafted entertainment (Daffy Duck); and then some Good Movies They Ought To See (High Noon), whether they want to or not.

The following list is a subcategory of accessible-with-merit:  things they ought to easily enjoy, but don’t, just to drive me crazy.  For these movies, I wait until the kids are really desperate for entertainment, and then gradually wear them down until they accidentally start enjoying themselves.

–1–

The Thief of Bagdad (1940) (available to watch instantly on Netflix)

Is this actually even a good movie?  I sure loved it as a kid.  It’s a Sinbad-ish story about a (remarkably white-bread) beggar/king Prince Ahmad who goes adventuring with his little brown buddy Abu, and wins the princess with the help of a gigantic and greasy genie with Brooklyn accent.

I sometimes think that the more clumsily-executed special effects of this era (together with the garishly brilliant color scheme) portray magic  better than slick and perfect CGI.  The roughness makes it all the more startling and otherwordly, which is how it ought to be.

Why the kids didn’t like it:  It’s dated and goofy.  I think there are songs, too, which is intolerable to sophisticates like themselves.

–2–

The Adventures of Milo and Otis (1986) (often on sale for $5-7 at Walmart and Target)

A completely charming live action dog and cat buddy story set in the lovely Japanese countryside.  Dudley Moore narrates and does the dialogue, perfectly giving voice to the natural gestures and expressions of the animals.  He’s clearly ad libbing in places, and some of it is just comic genius.  I thought the turtle part was especially funny (for my TMC classmates:  the turtle always made me think of Mr. Shea), and I really like the fox:

Why the kids didn’t like it:  I really don’t know.  They do show a dog giving birth in more detail than I would like.  It’s not a typical computer-manipulated, squeaky-voiced animal picture, which takes some getting  used to.  Also, it opens with an irritating folksy kid song “We’re gonna take a walk outside today,” which really gives the wrong impression about what kind of movie it is.

–3–

A Christmas Carol (1951)

The only movie version of this story you will ever need.  Most convincing (and entertaining) conversion story you will ever see.  So many elements of this movie are unforgettable:  the pagan grandeur of Christmas Present, the terror of Scrooge alone in his cold house, hearing the dragging chains coming closer and closer; the the brilliance and sincerity of Alastair Sim’s timing and facial contortions.  A nearly perfect movie.

 

Why the kids didn’t like it:  It’s black and white.  Some of it is pretty hokey, and the emotionalism (Scrooge’s sister’s deathbed; the miniature lost souls in agony waving their arms around) made them uncomfortable.

–4–

West Side Story (1961)

A modern (50′s) retelling of Romeo and Juliet with unforgettable music by Leonard Bernstein.

Haven’t actually made them watch this one yet (it’s not so much the sexiness as the sad ending that’s made me hold off.  I’ve been really chicken about exposing them to sad endings)–but I’m pretty sure they’ll hate it when I decide they’re old enough.  The baby, however, loved it:  lots of jumping and dancing, loud drums and swirling skirts.  Boy, the music is so great.

Why the kids won’t like it:  the dated scenario and slang, the gang members doing menacing jetés and arabesques, and some of the plot points (the wedding scene comes to mind) are important but subtle.

–5–

The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)

How did they pull it off?  It’s a story about a small tribe of simple and noble Bushmen being threatened by the violence and consumerism of the western world.   But it doesn’t preach.  It doesn’t even teach.  It’s more of a funny, moving, and unusual fairy tale with a happy ending, which creates strong affection for several of the characters (and not just the Bushmen).  I remember the sweetness, but was surprised at how much slapstick is in this movie, too.

Why the kids didn’t like it:  Because they’re bad, bad kids.

–6–

The Iron Giant (1999) (available to watch instantly on Netflix)

A little boy discovers a giant robot, who has to develop a conscience and save the world.

Why the kids didn’t like it:  I suspect it’s because they were made nervous by elements which they thought I wouldn’t approve of:  the main character is really bratty, occasionally uses bad language, and there’s an irritating anti-establishment vibe.  But I think the good of this movie outweighs these slightly distasteful aspects, and one scene (when the Iron Giant murmurs “Superman . . . “) makes me (and–shh!–my husband, too) leave the room when I know it’s coming, because it makes me cry.

———

Whoa, that’s only six!  Oh well.  I also forgot to list which scenes might not be good for kids.  Sorry!  Going to bed now.

Don’t forget to check out Jen (and excuse her dust.  I love that phrase!) at Conversion Diary, where she is hosting the weekly 7 Quick Takes linkaround.

I’ll just say it for you: AWESOME!

Since as many as two of my readers have asked for pictures of my van (which I described here), here are some pictures of my van:

You know what, I think one picture is enough.  You get the general idea.  Contain your jealousy!  If anyone deserves to tool around rural southern New Hampshire in a vehicle this awesome, it’s me.

As you will see, it is an intimidating vehicle, weighing in at two-and-a-half tons of pure kid-schlepping menace.  If you are unlucky enough to find yourself stuck behind our van in traffic, you’ll have this stonelike visage to contend with:

So what we have here is not so much a picture of how the decals under the back windows resemble the mustache of Muammar El Qadaffi, as an illustration of the law of diminishing returns, exacerbated by the husband who brings around gin.  That is to say, the harder I worked on this stupid picture, the stupider it got, until my husband came along and asked what I was doing.  So I explained it, and then he decided to bring around some gin.

Oh, the time stamp on this post that says 7 a.m.?  Don’t think about it too hard.

Why we’re dropping out of home school

A couple of people have asked why we’re not home schooling any more.  We will be, a little bit — my six-year-old son will be at home for first grade, and my four-year-old daughter keeps handing me notes composed of random letters, in a pathetic plea to be taught how to read and write.

And of course we’ll keep our feral three-year-old, whom no school can hold, and the smartest baby in the world (16 months old), who is not only putting together two- and three-word sentences, she can say “Come ON!” just like Gob Bluth.  So clearly, we will be maintaining a richly educational atmosphere, even though I’m sending the oldest four off to a classroom.

I don’t know, is it too passé to say I’m burnt out?  It wasn’t the hard work that wore me out; it was the crappy job I did, and the worrying about it.  That’s what was so exhausting.  And then there was this:

(This was the first day of school last year.  We wondered why she was letting us get math done.)

We had nice times,  when the kid would have revelations about free will, or when they’d groan because it was the end of our Latin lesson.  The dining room is still decorated with the heraldic coats of arms we designed for our Medieval unit, and there were some thrilling moments in stovetop meteorology experiments.

But I was sitting here ordering the math books for the school year (yes, now.  Shut up!  It isn’t even labor day yet) and feeling nothing but weariness.  We enjoyed some of the benefits home schoolers promise:  the closeness, the leisure, the freedom, the intensity, the depth.  But really just not often enough.  We did it for six years, and I’m about ready for something different (not necessarily easier!) for a while.

If I’ve learned anything in the last twelve years (and I haven’t), it’s that you never, never know what your life will look like this time next year– so who knows?  Maybe we’ll go back to home school next year.  Or maybe the world will come to an end, and I won’t have to explain place value again.

The four oldest kids have a lovely, rural charter school to go to, and I want them to be happy and busy.  Also, a couple of them turned out to be more complicated than we thought.  And I’m not the kind of mother that it’s okay to be around all day.

I do know that all my kids have learned that reading is a wonderful way to spend your time, and that figuring out things and hearing new ideas is thrilling.  They aren’t embarrassed to talk about ideas, and they have no idea how dorky they are.  So I feel more or less okay with the start I’ve given them.

Boy, I wish I still had that gin in the photo.

Poetry Monday – UPDATED

Hamburger Washer Sleep Blog, Or:

Will Okra Slime Hurt Me?

. . .

Mad Jesus
Laughing Jesus
people choking
Jew site
.
Snappy kid talk
What is spillcock
baby powder help with lice
.
I have sit
I must sit down
Ha ha suckers
toilets blog
.
Mark Shea butter football
baby shower old wise tales

.

How to wet sitting down
Sit down joke
I need sit down
.
frog brothers
pasty vampires
Hallie Lord the jerk
. . .
Dear everyone,
Well, I did it again.  I thought the joke was really obvious, but it turns out that it was just me being a big weirdo again.  I hope no one was offended, disgusted, or, you know, weirded out.  This poem was made up of search terms for my blog.  Each line was an exact quote of a phrase that someone entered into a search engine, and then ended up at my blog.
“Hallie Lord the jerk,” for instance, is not a statement of opinion — it’s just a sad statement that Hallie Lord is now inextricably linked (at least as far as Google is concerned) with people like me.
Sorry!

The blessings keep rolling in.

So I was sitting there, refusing to get up.  My six-year-old wanted a glass instead of a cup, the eight-year-old kept doing his evil laugh even though it makes him throw up, and the four-year-old wanted to tell me a story about how first, see, she forgot to flush, but then she suddenly remembered to flush, but then. . .

And remember, I have five other kids, too.

My husband is back at work after eight months of unemployment (and may I say:  heckova job, Barry), and I miss him.  It’s not just that suddenly, everything that needs to be done, said, investigated, cleaned up, controlled, and decided by an adult has to be done by me, me, all me.  I just miss having him around.  And I’m back to being surrounded by kids in a way that I wasn’t surrounded when there were two parents around.  The days are so long!

So despite my relief that he’s working again, I was feeling pretty mopey and despondent.  The kids were eating their stupid supper (in the fridge, waiting for husband, was ziti with chicken sautéed in olive oil with fresh garlic and basil.   The kids were eating naked noodles and poached chicken chunks.  That is a stupid supper) and I just wanted to sit down and feel sorry for myself, because I cut my toe on one of the plates the baby smashed while I was sautéing.

While I was fending off the needy ones, I read this little article from The Daily Beast(via Slate’s XX Factor blog):  I Refuse to Freeze My Eggs! (UPDATE:  Ooh, looks likeZoe beat me to it, and she chose the same quotes, too!)

The author is single and childless at 35–the age when, as she says, “all the petals fall off [your] vagina and dozens of cats suddenly park themselves in a circle around [your] cobwebby old hope chest.”  She’s enduring a gynecological exam, and her doctor starts harassing her to start freezing her eggs, just in case.

It’s super easy, she said. All you have to do is inject yourself with hormones a couple of times a day for about fourteen days, then you go to the doctor, and they scrape your eggs out of your body! Hopefully a few will be ripe enough to make a baby. They put those in the freezer. The rest are thrown into the river. I think that’s what she said. Something like that.

My doctor, who I adore, asked if I wanted to take home some “literature” about the procedure. (I never understand why these medical pamphlets are called literature, as if Faulkner was up all night feverishly writing about NuvaRing.) And in that moment, I made a decision. A decision about how I’m going to handle the fact that I’m thirty five (today!) and I don’t have kids and a kid-making partner isn’t currently on the scene. I decided I didn’t want the literature. And I don’t ever want the literature about anything related to the world of Fertility. It’s my big thirty-fifth birthday present to myself.

I’m sharing this story with you for two reasons:  first, because it’s refreshing to hear a (presumably) secular woman say what she says:

[W]hen I think about my uterus (which is rare) I don’t have any desire to bully it into doing something it may not naturally feel like doing. In vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, egg transplants, surrogacy, fallopian Xeroxing—I have no interest.

Hear, hear!

The second reason is to share with you my delight at an unexpected benefit of having all these little kids around.  I mean, I’m used to all the regular blessings:  always surrounded by love, the peace and serenity of being open to God’s precious gift of life, the constant howling, and so on.

But it never occurred to me that there’s something else:  even though I, too am 35 years old, no doctor ever, ever tries to push me into freezing my eggs.  I think I have my twenty-seven  children to thank for that.

Also, around about the time you have your fifth baby, the doctor stops trying to sneak a plain cardboard box of condoms into your hospital bag.  They’ve given up.  They think you’re an idiot; you know you’re an idiot.  Everyone’s happy, and no one tries to talk you into anything when you already have your feet up in stirrups and can’t fight back.

See what I mean?  Children are a blessing, and the blessings keep rolling in.

I’m just going to complain about my alarm clock.

Our alarm clock finally just went fatally berzerk.  It already had some issues, but yesterday it started advancing a minute for every actual second that passes.  This is a disconcerting but accurate depiction of the way our summer is going.  Happily, it gives me an excuse to buy a new clock. I hate this clock.  Someone gave it to us, back when we got caught in the wrong end of a current of well-meaning charity from a group of elderly church ladies.  They saw we had a lot of kids, and drew the only obvious conclusion:  that I would be overjoyed to receive large quantities of random junk they didn’t want in their garages anymore. I gave away most of it, but we kept the clock, because — well, because we had a lot of kids, and couldn’t afford a clock on our own.  (Even a charitable old church lady is right twice a day.) Does anyone else have such trouble with alarm clocks?  I really don’t ask a lot out of technology, but it seems to me that it shouldn’t be so hard to find a clock which will reliably (a) show the time and (b) go off when I tell it to. Our clocks do this for a month or so.  Then they don’t.  Maybe!   The main problem is that, when an alarm clock goes bad, you only become aware of the problem when you’re half asleep.   It’s sort of like going to the doctor, and by the time he finally shows up, you’ve so nervous and tense, you actually do have high blood pressure:  You just can’t make an accurate diagnosis in conditions like this. You set the alarm for 7 a.m. and drift off to sleep.  A few hours later, you’re right in the middle of a sweet and gentle dream about being a nice little fish that makes cookies, and YAAAAAAAAAA!  the alarm goes off, and it’s only  2:30. What?  What?  Did you set the alarm wrong?  Or is the clock broken?  And if you’re the one who made the mistake, did you actually fix it?  Wait, did you press the button at the right time?  Oh, you went past 7– now you have to go all the way around again!  Is that dot for a.m. or p.m.?  Do you dare to fall back asleep and trust that  will wake up at 7?  Or would it be more fun to crouch on your bed like a feral cat, unable to slow your heart rate back to normal?   Until it’s 6:15, at which point you finally lose consciousness, and sleep through the alarm. Or did you just dream the whole thing? This particular terrible clock had some kind of fancy system with two different alarms, each with a choice of different sound effects, and it was nearly impossible to figure out which one you had actually set.  Especially after some kid ripped the plastic face off, which meant that the various lights signifying “am,” “pm,” alarm 1″ and “alarm 2″ were nothing more than bald, unlabeled dots, signifying, “I mean something, and I’m on!” The only work-around was to set both alarms for the same time.  So you would wake up in the morning, turn off the alarm, start to get up and think about what you–DAMMIT, turn off the alarm again. Or, if you’re my husband, you get up and turn it off in your sleep and lay yourself  peacefully down again. Now, according to everything that is rational, and everything that I know about this man, he does this because he’s a heavy sleeper.  It’s unintentional, unfixable, and actually kind of cute. But according to everything I know when I get woken up by his alarm and must lie there poking him until he grumpily rolls out of bed and I’m too annoyed to go back to sleep, even though I had only truly fallen sleep two hours ago because I had just accomplished several pre-dawn hours of worrying about school clothes, he does this because . . . well, let’s just stick with unintentional. Anyway, what this all goes to show is that we are in big trouble this coming school year, with actual schedules and all.    Why did we home school all those years?  Why did my husband get into journalism?  Well, the secret’s out now!  We’ve arranged our lives around not getting up  in the morning. Sure, so there was a dash of planning, a smattering of the determined pursuit of our desires and the cultivation of our talents.  Maybe a whisper of answering our divinely-ordained vocations in life. But mostly, we are where we are because we can’t figure out our alarm clock.