Tag: seven quick takes

-1–

I’m in Vancouver, WA for the Catholic Women Rejoice conference tomorrow!  There is still time to register.  Here is the schedule.   Looks like it’s going to be a GREAT day.  I’m really looking forward to meeting some of my Facebook and blog friends for the first time IRL.

–2–

Last night, I had a lovely seafood dinner overlooking the Columbia River (I think?) with Lisa Ferry and Sterling Jaquith, who have been coordinating everything, including putting together a lovely assortment of goody bags for the guests.  We were chatting away happily when I realized that, for the last twenty minutes, we’d been talking about dogs.  Not babies.  That is the first time I have ever gotten together with a group of Catholic moms and not immediately launched into an intimate gabfest about teething, diaper rashes, adorable tricks our kids do, and possibly some cervix talk.  But no, just dogs.  This is what you’ve done to me, Shane.

Oh, also, the waitress kept sitting down next to me in the booth whenever she came to our table.  It was the creepiest freaking thing I’d ever seen while eating salmon.  I finally figured out to put my big, fat purse on that side, which put an end to that.  What the heck!

Anyway, by the time we got to the restaurant, we were talking about babies.  And NFP.  And sending our daughters to college.  And a little bit about dogs.

–3–

The last time I got on an airplane, I was pregnant with my second daughter, who is now 14.  I was prepared for some changes, like taking my shoes off for security and not being fed anything but pretzels.  But I had completely forgotten that they will, with no shame whatsoever, charge you $12 for a bag of nuts and a pack of gum.  My husband agreed that airport prices are nutrageous.  He’s right!  I was nutraged.

–4–

So, hotel bath soap that’s shaped like a massager.

Ingenious, or slightly menacing?

–5–

Hold everything.  While I was searching for the image above, I came across this:

I stand amazed before the . . . whatever that was that made somebody decide to market these.  Whew!

–6–

Whenever I meet somebody I know in town, in the supermarket or wherever, they say, “Wow, out without any kids?!?!?” and I generally play along, like, “Lah di dah, here I am frolicking in the unheard of luxury of picking up some milk all by myself!”  And it’s true that life sure is a million times easier now that I can leave my little guys with my big kids and just do what I need to do, without the incredible hassle of finding shoes and buckling car seats and so on.

But you know what they says, “Too soon old, too late smart.”  There is no joy in being away from my kids.  I guess it’s because the older ones are old enough that I can see just how short our time together is — and also because the really labor-intensive part of child rearing is mostly past.  I still have little kids, but I have so much help now, and so much experience, and my husband and I work together so much better.

So, young moms who are dying for some time away from your little kids, go ahead and get it while you can, and don’t feel bad about craving some alone time or adult time!  But don’t be surprised when you realize, one day, that that’s the last thing you want.  I just hung up from a Skype conversation with Benny, and now I’m crying.  You working moms who have to leave your kids every day, I don’t know how you survive.

–7–

As for being away from my husband, I have decided we are this kind of couple.

***

This seven rays of sunshine have been brought to you by Simcha Fisher, who will definitely feel better with some breakfast.

I’m still finishing up final edits of The Sinner’s Guide to Writing the Book Which I Will Never Ever Ever Be Done With Ever, and working on another writing project which I’m thrilled to be a part of, but which is giving me nightmares because I want to get it right.  And I decided we should go ahead and redo the living room walls, which are horsehair plaster, covered with wallpaper, covered with cheap wood panelling, covered with two more layers of wallpaper, covered with paint.

And all of this needs to be done soon, before school starts next week, because the beginning of the school year is like childbirth:  if you’ve been through it enough times, you do so remember how painful it is.

I was going to say “I may not be blogging much in the next week or so,” but I don’t actually blog that much anyway.  So, I don’t know, here are seven things:

–1–

Suzanne Temple reposts an oldie but goodie about a perennial question:  how the heck do I deal with the little kids when I’m trying to teach the big kids?  It’s aimed at homeschoolers, but much of the advice will work for parents who are trying to get anything at all done with little guys around.

–2–

Here is fog rolling in in Newfoundland.  It’s just fog and it’s gorgeous, but if I were standing on that road, this would freak. me. out.

–3–

Speaking of being freaked out, here is an underwater sinkhole eating some trees whole:

Hmm, I’m noticing a pattern here in the videos that capture my imagination.  Could it be that I’m feeling a tad overwhelmed?  Nah.

–4–

Here’s someone who did not get overwhelmed:  Antoinette Tuff.   I embarrassed my kids by bursting into tears when they played the 911 call recording on the radio.

She tells the shooter that she almost committed suicide last year, when her husband left her, but she got through it and here she is now.  She says to him, “It’s gonna be all right, sweetie.  I just want you to know that I love you, though, OK? And I’m proud of you. That’s a good thing. You’ve just given up. Don’t worry about it.”

God bless her.  Wondering about what the “feminine genius” looks like in action?  Here you go.  She never forgot for one instant that he was a human being.  Just beautiful, and terrifying.

–5–

From the sublime to the ridiculous:  MST3K is back on Netflix Instant View!  They started with only four episodes, but seem to be adding more gradually.  Looks like we will have a Patrick Swayze Christmas after all!

–6–

The other night, we saw the International Space Station go by overhead.  Well, duh, of course it was overhead.  It was very nice.  It just sailed along, so quiet and orderly, so full of astronauts.  We waved.  Here you can check out where and when to look for the ISS in your piece of the sky..

–7–

One of the reasons we bought my laptop from Walmart is because of their excellent service plan.  I’m not going to point any fingers, but somehow coffee was spilled in a very bad place, and my keyboard stopped working.  So we put in a claim and they sent us a postage paid padded box to mail it in.  Then somehow (again, not naming names), it got sent off without the order slip (with my name and address and description of the problem) inside.  But even so, a week later, I got it back, all fixed!  Good deal.  Furthermore, I guess I left a Steely Dan CD inside, and they returned that, too.  Thanks, Walmart!  This one’s for you:

Don’t forget to check out the other Seven Quick Takes at Conversion Diary, and happy weekend!

Hey, it’s been a while since anyone passed out any useless internet awards.  Here yuh go, in no particular order, for no particular reason:

1. The Weeping Putin Award goes to Mark Shea for his egregious crimes against totalitarianism.

Who does he think he is, etc. etc.  Hermeneuticalosityness.  Constantine.  Etc.

2.  The Bruce Wayne Award goes to Joey Prever/Steve Gershom, because he’s recently come out as Batman.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

3.  The Peeping Pope Award goes to Elizabeth Scalia

I mean look at that!

4.  The Mixed Feelings Award goes to the people who took away the dancing hillbilly’s raccoon

because dammit, you can’t keep a pet raccoon!  But aw, he named her Rebekah.

5. The Best Damn Soup I’ve Had All Year Award goes to hot and sour soup

for being the opposite of a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich I found on a chair and finished eating, because hey.

6. The Hey, Remember Me? Award goes to Dick Gephardt’s wife, Jane Gephardt

because no, we don’t.

7.  The Best Blog Post Ever Award goes to me.

See #1-6 above!  Eh?  Eh???

1.  Today, I’m very pleased to be part of a neat website called 3 Things for Mom, created by Lauren Warner (who is the wife of Matt Warner, of Flocknote andRead the Catechism in a Year fame).

3 Things for Mom delivers bite-sized nuggets of information and insight from one mom to another, with a truth, a tip, and a find.  Their line-up includes moms who are, oh, editors-in-chief of Martha Stewart Living and Redbook, writers for the NYT, producers of the Today Show, anchors of the news (is that how you say it?) at ABC and CNN, and sitters around in their kitchens, picking their scabs at 3 a.m. because they can’t sleep because they’re worried their children can’t recite the seven deadly sins, and besides, it’s hot.

My entry includes very edifying photo of Benny sporting a huge mosquito bite on her eyelid, and spazzing out at the beach, wearing nothing but a swim diaper and a string of plastic beads.  They’re homeopathic beads.  For her mosquito bite.  Why do you fear the things you don’t understand?

2.  I love photoshopped “what if” pictures.  Not to be an overanalytical creep, but I often can’t help thinking, “Yeah, but if the change you’re depicting actually happened, that’s not all that would be different!” Like the series about what the sky would look like if other planets were as close to Earth as the moon is. 

Pardon my scientific pea brain, but if Saturn were that close to the Earth, wouldn’t the Earth also be drawn to Saturn and pulverized more or less instantaneously?  Or is Saturn, like, gas or something?  But it still has gravity, right?  Or else it wouldn’t have rings.  Can you be pulverized by getting drawn into gas?  Or doesn’t it have an ice core or something?  This is why we don’t homeschool anymore.

Or here, as long as I’m ruining stuff, there’s this gorgeous series, that combines city scenes with starry nights from another place on the same latitude, showing what the night sky would look like if there were no light pollution.

But I can’t help thinking that the scenes would only exist if all the people were suddenly dead.  Because the only reason the bridge is there is because there’s lots of people who need to cross it, and if there’s lots of people, there’s going to be lots of light.  I’m not really complaining; I’m just saying that these are works of art, not portrayals of anything possible or even desirable.

Sort of along the same lines, we have Celebrity Makeunders, which imagines what famous faces might look like if their lives were a little bit more like the lives of me and thee.

Scientology would be like, “Never mind, forget it, you can go now.  Sure, sure, you’re clear, just go!”

I actually play the opposite of this game in my head all the time — trying to spot people who, if they had better clothes and a personal makeup artist and didn’t work at the Walmart dressing room, would look like models or movie stars.  O fortuna!

3,  Speaking of fortuna, did you realize that there’s such a thing as tuna Jello salad?

Apparently the advantage of this dish is that the Jello really binds the tuna together, so.

4.  Today you can read Lumen Fidei, started by Benedict XVI and finished by Francis. Brandon Vogt, the second most helpful man in the world, has converted it to several popular formats so you can download it for free. The most helpful man in the world is the one who got my van unstuck from that unexpected median in the Citizen’s Bank parking lot.

5.  Despite my gloomy ruminations, we had a lovely day on the Fourth of July.  My teenage daughter read the entire Declaration of Independence out loud.  My brother, who studied Jefferson very closely in college, says that the description of the “long train of abuses” was actually the heavily edited, carefully toned down version of what he actually wanted to say.  Things were, apparently, much much worse than what they describe.  I asked why they heck they would do that, since they were already declaring their independence.  Why make their case weaker?  He says that some of the signers were hoping to sort of make a clean break with England, without any bloodshed.  Just kind of, “Hey, we’re just gonna . . . go over here now, okay?  Cool?  Cool?”

I don’t even want to tell you how long I just spent looking for a photo of George Jefferson giving the thumbs up.

Anyway, my parents, two brothers, nephew, niece, and mother-in-law all came over, we grilled meat, drank beer, argued about movies, laughed and told stories, and set off fireworks.  It was great.

6.  This is Benny on Albuterol.

She struck this pose and then froze until I took a picture of her.  Lots of moms told me that Albuterol makes their kids nutty, but this is actually what Benny is like all the time, except when she can’t breathe.  She’s much better now!  Still coughing, but her lungs are clear, and the fever is gone.

7.   I had a fascinating two-part interview with the charming and talented Steve Gershom

planned for this past Wednesday and Thursday, but I didn’t want it to get overlooked because of the holiday.  So I’ll save it for Monday and Tuesday.  It’s tentatively titled, “Ex-Gay:  Is That Even a Thing?”

Check out everyone else’s 7 Quick Takes at Conversion Diary, where Jen is contending with a huge and daunting deadline.  We all know that she is awesome enough to absolutely crush it, but still, a prayer couldn’t hurt.