Plague Journal 2013 – Lite Version + Home, Free to Good Kitten

I keep falling off the internet because . . . we’re only a little bit sick. We’re in and out of the plague-ridden life just enough that everyone can keep the momentum on the flesh-and-blood obligations, at least for the highest priorities, but not so sick that we get to stay home in bed and play the internet all day. Yes, that’s right: If only I were sicker, I’d blog more.

(Hush your mouth, we aren’t praying for that. Bad reader! No biscuit!)

If anyone can read my mind, circa early-December, and remember what my brilliant idea for my next New Evangelizers column was, please speak up. It’s due tomorrow, so I’m counting on you reminding me by mid-afternoon. Thanks!

***

The next bit of this update tells a story that includes a death scene. A real one, not fiction. You might want to go ahead and click elsewhere now. Especially if thinking about dead cats bothers you.

***

Morbid Dead Cat Story, with handy funerary tips.

So last Thursday night the testosterone wing was safely away at hunt camp, two little girls were in bed, and my little singer was up enjoying the fire and the Advent Tree, and generally getting her internal clock adjusted per the midnight-Mass situation. Fifi the cat wisely chose this time, when all was quiet and peaceful, to drop dead.

This surprised us.

She was just a middle-aged cat. Looking back, Ev recalls that Fifi had not quite been her usual self that week, but there was no particular lead up. One minute, Fifi is sitting at her usual spot by the fire, doing her cat-by-the-fire routine; next thing I knew, she wasn’t.

Note: If a cat were to just slip off into eternal bliss while sitting by the fire, you would not notice. It would probably be a few days before your realized that your cat hadn’t moved lately. Fifi did not do this.

Instead, some time after she was last spotted in her Queen Cat location, she was no longer there. In place of a cat, I noted that mild stench, which those of you who have been around dying creatures know about, coming from under the coffee table. The rest of you can be surprised later.

We fished the Fifi out from her hiding place, and made a bed in a cardboard box with an old dog towel. We have a dishpan in the linen closet labeled “dog towels”, but they can be used for other pets, too. Every now and then, they make a good burial shroud — more on that later.

Ev extracted a promise from me that we could take the cat to the vet in the morning. I did not break the news to her right away, but once the rapid shallow breathing starts, you have to at least give your child a head’s up that this is probably the end. I cleaned up the minor mess under the coffee table, and we sat around watching the cat in her box. She mostly just lay there panting, but sometimes not.

The dog jumped over her dog gate and came to investigate. I sent her back to bed. The last thing I needed was for the dog to catch cat-plague, and have Mr. Boy come home to a dead pet, too.

Having been a delinquent auxillary member of the LOM that day, I started into my rosary under my breath, and made it through the first decade before we could no longer see fur moving. It was the first time I’d ever been praying that “and at the hour of our death” line during someone’s actual death, even if it was only a cat.

Black and white fur, thick for winter, by the light of an Advent tree, plays tricks on your eyes. You can only watch it go up and down so many times before you think you see it moving even when it’s not. Ev fetched her stethoscope, and we listened for breath sounds and a heart beat, just like they do on TV.

We made that face that the pioneer doctor makes right before the last commercial break.

It was midnight by now. After a suitable period of mourning, Ev extracted a new promise from me: Yes, we can get a kitten.

It was not only midnight, it was cold and dark. Not the time for a burial service. I sent Ev to bed, and told her I’d sleep out in the living room with the cat-corpse, since I did not want to wake up in the morning and discover that the dog had taken an unusual interest in dead things in the small hours of the night.

The handy pet undertaker’s tip: If you are not going to bury your pet until morning, go ahead and curl up the body in a cute and compact sleeping-cat pose right away. And get the ~~dog towel~~ cat burial shroud all wrapped around the body, with just a tiny bit of sleeping-cat head visible, but easily covered when the time comes. You will be glad in the morning, because: Rigor Mortis.

FYI – I was glad in the morning. Got up, made myself go out and bury the cat before I took a shower (because: Co-op — still had a very long day ahead). On a frosty December morning, you will be happy that you posed the cat in the most compact suitable-for-viewing position possible, because: Smaller hole.

(You do know, don’t you, to fully wrap your child’s pet before you start shoveling dirt? They are going to watch. Even though they know exactly what’s inside the towel, it’s better to see dirt landing on just a towel.)

That’s my dead cat story. We told Ev to research the easiest, least-hassle way to obtain a fresh re-supply of cats, and she’s been comparing policies at all the various shelters around town. Meanwhile, yes we were agressive about washing hands and disinfecting. Also, I told the kids that if anyone developed acute abdominal pain, I was taking them to the ER ASAP. But it has not come to that, so I think we’re safe.

The Hard-Headed Life

Snippets since I fell off the internet – no, nothing bad going on, not really. Just my life. You know the scene.

1. The weekend before Thanksgiving, three kids are outside playing tag after dark. Seven-year-old daughter comes inside, weeping and telling us she hit her head. Mandatory concerned-parents questions, but we determine that it wasn’t that bad, she’s just tired, because what she hit her head on was her brother’s shoulder. She settles down, though she keeps reminding us her head hurts.

A few minutes later, Mr. Boy comes inside. His shoulder hurts. You know — where his sister’s head hit it. Can’t be that bad, right?

Next morning, as someone who shall not be named is trying to persuade the boy to quit favoring the shoulder and move it around a little so the muscles don’t get tight, the Mom-alarm goes off. Something is not right with this scene. Further Mom investigation, followed by confirmation at doc-n-box: Broken collarbone.

PSA: Do not play rugby with my 7-year-old.

2. I wrote this article at New Evangelizers. I knew it was slated to run on Thanksgiving, but I wrote it anyway. Hint: I rant about the usual things I rant about, instead of telling you to be grateful for stuff.

How did writing this column change my life? I resolved to wear hats more often. Not at church, necessarily. Just around. Because I like them.

3. At CatholicMom.com, I answered this post from Rebecca Frech. In my column, which you can find here, I assert that my children are not too sheltered, though I give no particular evidence on that point. Those who worried that by “being selective about the movies they watch” you feared I was depriving them of sappy puppy-themed formula films, or hyper-violent Korean parodies of Clint Eastwood films, fear not. We’re covering those bases tonight, that’s why I have time to blog.

4. Awkward blogger moments: I’m at the Family Honor in-town class session that finishes out the course Jon & I took last summer. Great class. Highly recommended. We’re sitting at dinner, and the program director turns to me, and says, “Jen, I just found out you blog. I just started blogging. Tell me — how often to you post?”

I had to explain to him that I had recently fallen off the internet. I went home resolving to post here ASAP, so I’d look more respectable when he clicked on my blog. But the DSL was out.

#5 – #17: About the Internet

5. SuperHusband had to take a child to a violin concert Sunday afternoon, so he put Mr. Boy in charge of contacting AT&T to get the DSL fixed. All part of the child’s education. (So. About all our sincere efforts to not make other people work on Sundays. Isn’t DSL like an ox in the ditch? Isn’t it?)

So the boy gives it his best. Of course, he does not himself work in telecom, so he’s fresh meat. Customer service convinces him we need a new modem.

SuperHusband comes home and rejects this diagnosis. A new modem is the two-aspirin of the Telcom customer service world. He starts to make the boy call back customer service and argue more, but I step in and plead mercy, mostly on me but a little bit for the boy and his father, too. SuperHusband gets on the phone, talks customer service off their ledge, and after a cordial but intense discussion with Nathan in India (is it Sunday in India?), they get the idea that maybe a change of service is in order. AT&T will send a guy around in the morning. No, they won’t charge for installation.

I’d been planning to go to Chik-Fil-A in the morning to check my e-mail, but I agree to stay home so the problem can be solved.

6. 8:10 AM the friendly customer service guy rouses me from a sleep even St. Josemaria couldn’t touch. He’ll be there at 8:40, will that be okay. Yes. I lie and tell him yes. It is not exactly lying if you are also praying that by 8:40 it will be okay.

7. My excuses for being tired include the fact that we are gradually shifting #2’s sleep schedule later and later, so that she can sing at midnight Mass. Thus, all children are asleep. Or faking it because they know it’s Monday, always a risk they might have to do work on a Monday.

8. I have no excuses for the way my house looks.

9. So what I need is a WWMDC bracelet. I go to the kitchen and start asking myself, “What would Mrs. Darwin clean next?” I clean that thing, then repeat repeat repeat. By 8:40, as long as the blinds remain closed, and all the lights except in select cleaned-places remain turned off, the house looks like a place that would not cause a telecom tech guy to call social services.

10. I failed to think about the phone guy when we put chicken prison in exactly the place where the phone lines enter the house. I apologized. He pretended it was no big deal. Tech guys lie just as much as housewives.

11. He was incredulous when I explained that we had no crawlspace, and yes, the phone lines go through the attic. A tech had just fallen through someone’s attic only last week. AT&T does not want to send people into your attic.

12. There were complications. Complicated complications. We eventually get hold of the SuperHusband, who has an intelligent conversation about telecom things with the tech guy.

13. Tech guy gets permission from AT&T to install the new service on our ancient phone lines. Since running a new cable would involve the attic. And other things.

[Note: During all this time, I am continuing to clean my house. The children wake-up eventually, and I convince them to clean the house, too. I am acting as if there is some good reason why I woke up to a trashed house on a Monday morning, and that naturally if no DSL problems had arisen, I would not have spent the morning answering e-mail and blogging, I would have done those dishes! Right away! By the time the tech guy has his marching orders, the house is looking sort of civilized. My children transition to acting like they are doing school work. They are pro’s at this, and even I am briefly fooled.]

14. There’s a problem. The newly-installed service works, but not to the company’s quality standard. More investigations. A manager is called. They visit all the phone jacks in my house. They are gathering evidence that we have the weirdest wiring in the Southeast. (There’s a place that’s weirder, I’ve seen the photos, but it’s in Baltimore.) They need to install new cable.

15. The manager moves on, the tech guy installs the new cable. Through the attic, of course. He sustains no injuries, thanks to my helpful tips. (Stay on the plywood. Not on the pink stuff.)

16. It’s not the cable in the attic after all. Maybe it’s the box at the curb . . . the one with the oak roots entangling it, such that the box cannot be opened.

17. More investigations. Actually, the problem is a few blocks up the road. Tech guy apologizes for mistakenly upgrading my wiring.

Utterly unrelated. Not really. #18. I agreed to be one of CatholicMom.com’s Gospel-reflection writers for 2014. Lisa H. immediately signed me up for the 16th of each month, before I had time to change my mind. This means I have to read a snippet from the Gospel twelve times a year, and think about what the snippet says.

Yes. I know. It seemed like a good idea to me, too.

NFP Saves Thanksgiving

Also, I reviewed a good book.

Back to NFP: So yesterday I woke up at six (normal), and thought it might be prudent to see if I could sleep until seven, what with having a long day ahead, and having been so tired all week. Success. Seven rolls around, SuperHusband’s alarm goes off, and now there’s no more stalling except that old married-lady trick: Reach for that thermometer.

Here’s the thing you need to know, you innocent ones, about women of a certain age: We pretty much know whether we actually need to get a temp that day or not. Round my castle, yesterday was not that day.

But if you want five more minutes of laying in bed, a sudden diligence in Following the Method is a dodge that even St. Josemaria WAKE UP Escriva can’t get down your back about.

So I got my minutes. Thermometer beeps, and if you don’t go turn on a light and check and see what it says, and write that down someplace, Josemaria’s gotcha. So I do that, because I don’t want to be in deep trouble with select saints.

100.0.

Benefit of NFP: You know a fever when you see one, the way baseball fans know a bad batting average when they see one.

–> This caused the surreal experience of knowing I was sick, but since I still only felt like a tired person waking up in the morning, I had no idea exactly what sort of sick I might be. Also, NFP saved Thanksgiving, because:

(a) If I hadn’t known I was sick, I would have gotten up and prepped for co-op.

(b) I would have felt tired and unmotivated, but I would have chalked it up to a moral failure on my part, made extra coffee, and pushed through it. Probably grabbed some allergy medicine when I felt a little sneezy.

(c) Well, yes, by 10:30 my throat would have been very, very sore. But I would have assumed it was from talking too much, not enough fluids, something like that.

(d) My friends at the co-op would have observed my pathetic __insert doubtful behavior here__, but they do that every week, so even they might not have realized I was a walking bio hazard.

(e) Germs. Incubation periods. Major holidays around the corner. Doesn’t take a public health official to add it up.

So you see? Moral of the story: The quest for holiness had side benefits for the wider community.

***

What happened instead is that I called in sick, other people went about their lives happily, and I spent the day mildly ill (not that bad, if you don’t have to talk to anybody and can sleep a lot of the day), read books, and then goofed off on the internet while my children faked doing schoolwork. Which means two more side benefits for the wider community:

1. NFP related: I discovered Simcha’s new book, print version, is now available for pre-order from OSV. The book doesn’t include every single NFP Secret, like the one I’ve just shared, but it does cover the most important bits.

2. As linked above, I finishing reading and wrote a review for Fr. Longenecker’s book More Christianity. It’s a good book. You should consider reading it, if you are one of the qualifying candidates.

A couple notes re: full disclosure on this one, since no one is pestering me at this very minute to get off the computer:

I read the first edition (issued by OSV). The cover pictured above is the revised and expanded edition from Ignatius. You can still buy the old version direct from Fr. L, but I bet the new one is even better.
Fr. Longenecker sent me a review copy because I had been so kind in my comments about Catholicism Pure and Simple, a book I paid for with my own money and think was money very well spent. I’ve also reviewed The Gargoyle Code (loved it), and astute readers may have noticed I tweet an awful lot of Fr. L’s posts from his blog.
This is because he writes good stuff. My usual rule for when he, or anyone, says dumb stuff, is to take it up privately or else just ignore it.*

I would torment you by saying, “I also read a pretty bad book yesterday,” but that would be unkind, unless I meant to tell you which bad book it was. I do read bad books, though not usually an entire bad book.

–> If you reach the point where you have read all the very good books, and need a list of books that are pretty good but have a few glaring weaknesses and possibly even some objectionable content, e-mail me. I know a few. But I bet you haven’t read all the very good books yet.

*I know this is difficult for you to believe, longtime readers of a blog with a whole category called Rant-o-Rama. But I assure you, my curmudgeonly powers far exceed anything you witness on the internet.

Cover art courtesy of Ignatius Press. Ordering information here.

7 Takes: What to Wear Next Summer, a fabric tutorial

You might be thinking right now, “She is very late to the game, writing about summer fabrics in November.” Or perhaps, “Trying to spike that Southern Hemisphere readership?”

On the contrary. Studies have shown that readers at this blog are the type of people who are (a) expected to be presentable some of the time, (b) don’t / can’t pay full retail, and (c) live in parts of the world that have weather. If that’s you, now is the time to purchase on clearance the summery items you wished you had last summer, if only you had known.

1. This is not fashion advice. All I ask is that you go about clothed. Think: Less naked than a lizard, but not necessarily covering as much flesh as a chow chow. I don’t really care how tacky your tastes are, I just don’t want to know very much about your rear end.

All natural fibers, but too much insulation for summer.

2. We need to talk about Mary. Mary of Nazareth, mother of our Lord, bona fide Modestly Dressed Person. This is what you need to know: She lived in the desert.

Desert = Dry Place. (Sometimes hot, too.)

If you live in the Southeastern United States, or some similar climate where your erstwhile hockey team is called the “Inferno”, or your city’s motto is “Famously Hot”, you do not live in the desert.

Inferno = Not a Dry Heat.

In the desert, the most practical summer wardrobe looks like this:

Algerian Tuareg sitting on the sand. — One of my best friends is Tuareg.

It is easy to dress modestly in the desert.

In contrast, people who ~~live~~ recreate in one of these sweat houses usually do it naked, or nearly so:

Modern Finnish Sauna — The South is like this, only with no snow to roll in after.

So, the rest of our takes are about how to dress during the Sauna Season at your place of residence, on those days when being naked is not a realistic option (hint: Lizards are naked). I will not make jokes if you think Sauna Weather is only 90 degrees; if you’re not used to it, it does feel warm, doesn’t it? So people who live in cooler climates, where the hottest season is “Summer” (we have that in October, it’s lovely, but in June – Sept we have “Sauna”) can also appreciate this PSA.

3. Rule #1: Natural Fabrics = cotton or linen or wool. You could count silk, but that’s out of our budget here. This is what you want. OR cotton. OR linen. OR wool. I am told there exist ultra-modern breathable synthetics, have at it if you like. But your polyester “linen look” special is not linen and it is not cool. You will sweat buckets and swear that nudity is your only choice. Not so. Stick to the rule.

Rayon and all that other stuff is right out. Yes, that’s 98% of the “summer dress” department. A flowery print does not turn plastic into cotton. Also, head’s up, “bamboo” sounds natural, but it’s typically a bizarre synthetic yarn that happens to have bamboo junk in it. That’s not what you want.

4. Rule #2 Blended Fabrics are an Evil Invention. I once read a description of a cotton-linen blend as being “absorbent like cotton but breathable like linen”. This is a lie. A big fat nasty lie that will make you so sweaty the Tauregs will have pity on you. Don’t buy it. Just no.

Here’s the scoop: A single lay of natural fabric (OR cotton, OR linen, OR wool) is breathable. When you blend two fabrics, what happens is this, pretend your body is on one side and air is on the other of our letter-fabrics below, for this poetic demonstration of how two fibers lock together like champion Red Rover players:

Unblended = l l l l l = air can get through.

Unblended = c c c c c = air can get through.

Blended = lclclclc = do you hear evil laughter in the background? I do. Also, you’re sweating something nasty.

5. Trick for making your summer fabrics into winter fabrics: Layer them. If you own a nice cool linen shirt, and another nice cool linen shirt, put one on top of the other, and you will own a nice warm double-layer shirt. You can layer several very breathable, let-the-breeze-through fabrics, and end up with wind-blocking fabric.

Neat trick, huh? Which means your summery linen skirt is something you could wear in the winter, too. Handy.

6. Rule #3: Gauzy Fabrics Are a Cruel Trick. It goes like this: You want to be cool in the summer. You buy this beautiful gauzy-thin chambray (100% cotton) shirt. It is in fact quite cool. Also, the fabric is so thin that everyone can tell by looking through your clothing whether you are a boy or a girl. So you put a nice cool cotton camisole / undershirt under your gauzy fabric, so that people have to use other clues, like looking at your face, to learn personal things about you.

Now you’ve just turned your summer clothes into winter clothes, see previous item.

Other cruel tricks:

“Linen Blazer, fully lined”

“Linen skirt, fully lined”

Wool follows the same rule as linen and cotton. So don’t be mocked by “summer weight wool” that is “fully lined with tafetta lining”. You might as well call it, “Summer weight wool fully insulated for blizzard.” But plain old wool, like a 100% wool cardigan, is not a bad summer fabric. If you have to throw something over your shoulders and your choices are a light wool or a light polyester, the wool will be cooler and way more breathable than the poly.

7. So, what you are looking for on the clearance rack are:

(A) 100% Cotton, or 100% Linen, or 100% Wool

(B) Unlined, no blends.

You will still sweat, if it’s actually that hot out. You do live in a Sauna, after all. (In the desert, you won’t feel the sweat, you’ll just discover patches of salt forming on your skin.) You still need to follow common sense rules like putting on a sunhat (real straw, or following the fabric rules above), taking advantage of the shade, drinking cool water, and replacing electrolytes. But if you are wearing a single layer of natural fabrics, your sweat will in fact cool your body, because air flow => evaporation.

–> In contrast, if you wear a cute little synthetic mini-dress on account of how hot it is, basically you’re putting on a shortie wetsuit. No evaporation => layer of moisture acts like insulation. Appropriate for the cold, cold ocean, not so great for a summer picnic.

Artwork:
Chow Chow: By Remigiusz Józefowicz (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 pl], via Wikimedia Commons
Tuareg: By Garrondo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
Sauna: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sauna_2.jpg
Varanasi: © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar, via Wikimedia Commons

Small Success Thursday: Not Too Much Jesus

1. I’ve been tired lately, mostly because that’s the way my life is. The first thing that goes is the prayer life, because of excuses:

(a) Tired = willpower AWOL

(b) The things that make me tired (= my life) are always happening during the times I had planned to pray

(d) and of course the “I just forgot” problem.

So the solution was to buy a new book. This one. Which I was resisting valiantly until some knowledgeable person went and said I needed to learn what was in it. She was right.

It arrived a few days ago, but remember, tired, so I didn’t really succeed at anything until this morning. Wow.

I sorta kinda new how different it was to sing the psalms than to say them, but no, I didn’t really.

Zowie.

2. I’m pretty sure I’m doing it wrong, by the way. I can’t sight read, and for various reasons the only instrument I had on hand was my daughter’s thumb piano, which means, if you are me, you have to give your best guess on anything that straddles Do. And thumb pianos make me so confused anyway. But even doing it wrong . . . what a difference. Slower, though, but I didn’t mind that. I even mostly paid attention to the words, which is an improvement.

3. I am not using #3 to complain about anything.

4. I turned in my column for New Evangelizers that is supposed to run one week from today. It is not about Thanksgiving, so maybe my trusty editor will flip it around with another post. Or maybe people want to spend Thanksgiving reading what I have to say about the Mass and church-n-stuff. The thing you need to know:

I linked to Katie O’Keefe’s article about the Christmas Carols & Advent Hymns.

You should go ahead and look at that now. She even tells you the difference between a hymn and a carol. I didn’t know that before.

5. If I were to sum up my Theory of Leadership it would be this: Do the things people ask you to do. I’m puzzled that people keep wanting to meet for the discipleship group, even on busy weeks when we also have a Bible study and a long day at the co-op and Thanksgiving coming up. But people do, so we will. You can’t really tell people, “No! Stay Home! Too Much Jesus!”. Since that would be false and all.

6. The reason I know that people want to meet for discipleship group on Sunday is because I switched to a pediatrician at the clinic in the ‘hood.

7. Yes, that kind. Where if you don’t have insurance they treat you on a sliding scale, and the New Patient Form doesn’t just ask you whether you’re homeless (they don’t ask you that in the ‘burbs), it has five different categories of homeless for you to choose from.

8. I did not do this out of solidarity with the poor. I did it out of total exasperation with the reputable practice in the ‘burbs, combined with the fact that my eldest are tweens and teens now so the stakes are a lot higher in terms of the moral values of their physician, combined with the fact that my friend the homeschooling pro-life Catholic pediatrician from our discipleship group is one of the doctors there, and she told me to get off my rear and make an appointment because the kids were due for tetanus shots, ahem.

(She didn’t say it that way. I am translating for readers here who do not speak Gentle-and-Sweet, which I don’t speak either. I can understand it though, mostly.)

9. So the practice in the ‘hood is a whole lot better than the one out in the sprawl. Not just because my friend is one of the doctors. (Though she might be having an impact). The desk staff were both competent and friendly, they got things done, they were efficient, and they didn’t treat you like you’re an idiot. And no one prescribed weird extra lab work ‘just to be sure’. I’m sold. Also, it’s closer to my house.

10. The kids were pretty scandalized by the routine questions, though. They don’t ask about whether you use sunscreen in the ‘hood. They do ask about whether you, 11-year-old, use drugs or alcohol. Also, “Are you sexually active?” My children were mortified, sheltered little creatures that they are. Our parish youth minister would have been nodding her head vigorously — the big problems kids face are not starting in high school, they are starting much younger.

11. So maybe that explains why people are so keen for God more days of the week.

12. Which point (scheduling discipleship group, Little Flowers, Bible study, etc.) we were able to confer about during the pediatrician Q&A, so that I could go home and e-mail folks to let them know, sort of, what’s up.

13. Also, we discovered #3 child is a little bit near-sighted. Follow-up with eye doctor scheduled for early December.

14. Hey, and music! SuperHusband recorded this from Mass on Sunday, and Dr. Mad Musical Super-Genius set it to a slide show. There’s nothing like an apprenticeship to the mad scientist at the choir lab downtown to make a man quite relaxed about cantoring one teeny tiny psalm back at the home parish.

15. Also, I think I’m going to end up banned at St. P’s, on account of how I kept leaning forward in my pew so I could get a peek at my cutie-pie 11-year-old hanging with the sopranos, who were blocked by a column if I sat back nicely. I did not wave, though. That counts for something. I definitely pray better when strangers do the singing.

15. Look! Advent Rabbits! It’s a convertible set, they turn into Christmas Bunnies on the 25th.

My friend Sandra said she’d bring home Miffy merchandise in exchange for French lessons. I’m on it. I think there’s a French proverb that runs something like Lapins de Noel arrivés, leçons de Français commencés. Roughly.

Mundelein Psalter cover art courtesy of http://www.liturgicalinstitute.org/#!mundelein-psalter/byelb.

7 Takes – Laziness ‘n Liturgical Living

1. Catholic Icing has an Advent / Christmas planning guide out, and if I were that type of person, I’d get one. Everything I have ordered from Catholic Icing has been top notch.

2. But I’m not that type of person. Which is why this Halloween about noonish my children quick went outside and hung white plastic trash bags in the tree (ghosts) in a last-minute attempt to show the world we were festive.

Most of the ghosts did eventually come back down, but we still have one up, reminding us that November’s the month for praying for all souls. Handy, eh? The ghost has to come down by the end of the month though, and by then I’ll have worked up the motivation to firmly insist it be done.

3. In this same way, you can hold onto the Easter theme all 8 weeks, and not be like those wretched sinners who put the bunnies away after just one or two weeks of Easter. After 8 weeks of looking at a smiling bunny, even the laziest procrastinators are moved by the Holy Spirit, and/or disgust, into putting the bunny away on Pentecost.

(Some of us are truly ~~an Easter~~ a Bunny People, and thus there’s a rabbit on the mantle all year. But we put away the no-doubt-anymore-they’re-dead Easter flowers in mid-June, and leave up just the Ordinary Time Rabbit.)

4. So. Advent’s coming. You might be thinking, “I need to get ready for Christmas!”

Actually you don’t.

5. Here’s how lazy people are better, following this clever decorating scheme:

First Sunday of Advent: Scramble around your house looking for some kind of Advent-y decoration after you get home from Mass, where you were reminded the season is upon you. It’ll probably involve re-purposing the purple cape from someone’s Halloween costume. Go with it.

During Advent: Stay home from all those obnoxious Christmas events you never liked anyway. You’ll be happier, and more liturgically-correct, which gives you a Pleasing Sense of Smug Superiority.

Tip: Go ahead and go to the events that you actually enjoy. You can hold onto your PSSS by telling yourself that either (a) your attendance is an act of charity towards your hosts or (b) this particular event is the perfect way to prepare for the Christmas season.

Christmas Eve: Use the One Day Rule.

6. The One Day Rule is this: Do no more decorating for Christmas than can be accomplished in one day. You may start as early at the 23rd if your schedule dictates, but the 24th is better.

The One Day Rule is superior because:

(a) You’ll never worry you’re over-doing it and losing sight of the reason for the season.

(b) You won’t get angry at your spouse for sitting around eating popcorn while you slave for weeks getting all the decorations up.

(d) It will only take one day to un-decorate, come the languid aftermath of the Presentation.

(e) Actually, you’ll probably get sick of most of your decorations before you’ve completed your 40 Days of Christmas, so the post-Presentation clean-up won’t be that bad. But you do have to put away the St. Nick statue on Feb 3rd. Or else scoot him into a pleasing arrangement with the Ordinary Time Rabbit.

Note: The spouse and children may decorate all they please throughout the Advent season, and you must only scowl at them if they either (a) really go overboard or (b) have the temerity to try to make you put down your popcorn and help. You’re busy being holy this Advent, you’ll string lights on the 24th, thank you.

Also: You are allowed to remove the batteries / cut the wires from the Singing Christmas Elf at any time during the Advent season, or even before. Advent may have a penitential note to it, but Dark Night of the Ears it is not.

7. Wait a minute! You forgot to buy presents! Never fear, Liturgical Mom is here. You just need a couple cool things for the 25th and 26th, and you probably bought them on impulse because your kids are so cute you couldn’t help it. The morning of the 27th is the perfect day to go out and acquire your other 10 Days of Christmas Loot.

Tip #1: If you know for a fact that all your kids are getting on the 25th is a shiny box of paperclips, but you *are* planning to buy something bigger come the post-Christmas sales, because you are a red-blooded American, albeit a very frugal one, you can announce that henceforth the family will be celebrating Ephiphany as the big day for gifts.

Tip #2: Some of your days of Christmas don’t have to be Merchandise Days of Christmas. Around our house we have, among others:

The Baking Day of Christmas.

The Gingerbread House Day of Christmas.

The Going to the Zoo Day of Christmas.

The Eating at Waffle House, yes it’s that rare, Day of Christmas.

And so forth. This year we’ll have one of these Ornament Kit Days of Christmas, because the girls have one and they mean to use it.

Also, at our home, we invariably have the Naughty Children Day of Christmas, in which our over-festivated youth decide that housework is overrated, and since the living room is a mess, still, we send them to bed early and thus observe the Parents’ Peace and Quiet Evening of Christmas.

8. Bonus Take: Equal Exchange is a very good source for stocking-fodder. You can sign up as an individual customer or as an organizational customer (a small, private buying cooperative counts as an organization) depending on the quanities you’ll be buying. The cool thing about this is that in addition to the PSSS that comes with buying all fair-trade chocolate, you won’t be tempted to pick up those horrid overpriced impulse-candies at the store.

9. Bonus Take, Easter edition: If you live in the southern US, you have to order your Easter chocolate before Lent begins, because it may be too warm for the chocolate to survive the 5th week of Lent.

Piety Alert: Everyone will know you broke your Lenten penance if they end up with horrid grocery-store Easter candy in their baskets despite having seen the expensive stuff arrive at the door in March. Which terrifying thought will give you an infusion of self-control to help you through the long month and a half looking at the duct-taped box from Equal Exchange. (Your box does not arrived duct-taped. But, tip: Duct tape can really assist your quest for personal holiness. Just sayin’.)

Happy Minutes . . .

. . . when a guy you sent a review copy of your book writes back and says, I paraphrase, “I want to buy copies for the whole department at my parish — what’s the best way to go about it?”

Kinda cheers you up a bit.

(My answer, btw: Either go through your local Catholic bookstore, or, if you haven’t got one of those, phone Liguori directly and ask about bulk rates that way.)

7 Takes: Too Much Money & First Communion Dresses

My 7 Takes this week are because I woke up remembering I wanted to mention these gorgeous First Communion dresses from Embroidered Heirlooms: I had the chance to see them and touch them a couple years ago, and they really are that well made. Now’s the time to order if you want to have one for the spring.

1. Let’s clarify: My girls wear the polyester department store special. And that’s only because someone up and gave us a hand-me-down dress, otherwise it would not have happened. It was a little big on #2 daughter, but there’s a lot you can do with safety pins these days.

–> So before you spend a lot of money on a handmade dress to last the generations, ask yourself: If this item were to meet a box of Sharpie markers on the way home from church, how would that affect me?

I don’t for a moment endorse your purchasing things you can’t afford, whether financially or emotionally.

2. So, today’s topic: How Much Money are You Allowed to Have and to Spend, Before People Start (Rightly) Pelting you with Catechisms?

To answer the question, we don’t need to know which dress you’re supposed to buy — that’s the thing that confuses everyone. What we need to know is: Is it moral to purchase a First Communion Dress?

3. You’re already scratching your head, because you got this great deal at the consignment shop last June, and you’re absolutely sure that $15 is not too much to spend, so how could someone even suggest there’s something wrong owning an FCD?

Well, obviously I don’t think there’s anything wrong with owning such a thing, or I’d be a tad quieter about the one hanging in my closet. But the trick to understanding the morality behind income issues is this: If it’s okay to own the dress, it’s okay to buy the dress.

4. You could argue that one should not buy special-occasion formal wear. You could argue that it’s okay to buy the white dress only if you do like the Haitian ladies and wear it all year. You could argue that it’s okay to buy the FCD, but you’re only allowed to own two other dresses, the nice one you wear every Sunday till you give it to the poor next Easter, and your weekday one that you protect with a burlap apron over, and a hair shirt under.

Marie Claude Colixte stands in front of her new temporary shelter — Haitian ladies in white dresses say: Visit CRS.org for more thoughts on how to spend your money.

But once you go off and say, “It’s okay to own an FCD, no permit or registration required,” the only question left is: How much can I spend and where should I acquire the thing?

5. Let’s pause here and list the things we aren’t discussing:

“I’m jealous because so-and-so is dripping with money, and I’m eating used oatmeal for dinner.”
“She’s just showing off.”
“Do you really need thirty pair of stirrup pants?”
“She’s not really Catholic anyway, she just wants a big party.”
“If you used forty acres of silk, 3 knuckle-sized diamonds, and trained litter-bearers to escort your daughter to her FHC, that would be excessive.”

Those are all bad arguments. Distractions. Off-topic.

6. So. Here’s what confuses us: In our culture, when we think “Holy Poverty”, the first thing that jumps to mind is, “Look at this deal I got at the thrift store!”

This book will not tell you how to find costume jewelry that looks like the real thing.

We confuse “not spending a lot of money” with “not living luxuriously”. Whole books are written by good Christian ladies explaining to you how you can live like a king on $2 a day. In their proper place, there’s nothing wrong with those books: If you don’t have any money, and you still want to be both fed and not naked, and perhaps even sleep indoors at night, it’s helpful to know how to pull that off.

And there is holiness, much holiness, in learning to cheerfully make do with what God gives you. Absolutely.

But that legitimate spiritual exercise should not disintegrate into a game of, “How many toys can I amass for my dollar?” Far worse is if it becomes, “Thank you Lord that I’m not like that surgeon over there who pays full retail.”

7. Somewhere along the line, someone has to be the one who bought that dress / couch / textbook you snatched up at the garage sale. Someone has to fund the wages of the worker who neatens the clearance racks at the end of the day. Someone has to pay the whole bill for Catholic school tuition so that your kid can get the scholarship.

–> If that person doesn’t bring in enough income to pay retail, you don’t get to live like a king.

What’s a living wage? It’s enough income that one can live in “decent and frugal comfort” without:

Someone else picking up the tab for part of our legitimate expenses.
Paying slave wages to the people who provide us with our stuff.

Try it. Make a list of what someone raising a family really needs for a year. Include the FCD or not, as you like.

Don’t forget to include a portion for things like taxes. For example, if your local public schools are spending $12K a year per student* (and let’s say you determine that’s a legitimate cost — perhaps benchmark them against Catholic school tuition at a school that provides all the special-needs services, buses, and everything else, on an all-salary, no-monk teaching staff), then the living wage tax bill needs to include that amount for tuition. Remember to multiply that by the number of children the family should reasonably hope to have. Don’t forget to add in what you think is an acceptable per-capita spending on sidewalks, roads, police, military, and sanitation workers.

Then add up the cost of acquiring those items without resorting to sweatshops.

You included a bit for the savings account, right? Emergencies, illness, and old age do happen to nearly everybody. Throw in a modest sum for the poor box and the maintenance of the Church as well.

Back to the dress, now that you’ve got your annual living-wage salary figured out: Estimate how much time it takes to sew up an FCD, and you can figure out what the wage of your seamstress needs to be in order to make that decent frugal living. Gives you a new perspective on what a fair price is for that white dress.

__________________________________

*Homeschoolers don’t be smug. Those amazing per-student costs people report rarely (if ever) include an amount for your salary, nor for the cost of the buildings in which you educate your child.

First Holy Communion dress photo courtesy of http://www.embroideredheirlooms.com/index.html.

Small Success Thursday

Before I fall off the internet again, a list:

1. That homeschool co-op thing is going pretty well. Over at CatholicMom.com, I wrote about why I think we’re doing as well as we are, and what you should be doing now so that you can be as cool as us, this time next year.

2. I read a good book. That made me think about hats. Hint: PG Wodehouse + Free Book = Happy Jennifer. Also, as always, I ended up with bacon.

3. Without giving the game away, since I’m not actually a mantilla-blogger, the hat thing comes back to this. (Yes, that link is not to my success, it’s to a good post by Dan Burke. You should read it.)

4. I have a post in the queue for tomorrow. It has seven parts. See how organized I am?

5. I dropped the boy off in Bethune today for Boy’s Weekend. On the way home, I had a BLT in Camden. I am thinking that if someone wanted me to undertake a special project in which I drive US 1 testing all the BLT’s . . . that would be okay with me. I would totally get Marian on that one. Fiat, all that.

6. Last night Christina Knauss (say: Kuh-Now-ss) from the Catholic Miscellany and I talked on the phone about bullying, special needs students, and classroom management. I did not sound completely lost and confused, because we talked for a couple minutes 45 minutes *before* the interview, and she gave me a head’s up on the topic. And then I got to think about it while I cleaned my house and she made dinner. And then we talked. All intereviews should be conducted this way.

7. It was very helpful preparation for my author panel coming up on Saturday. I don’t really know what people are going to ask me, but maybe something about those topics.

8. You’re wondering what I suggest. See page 91, highlighted in boldface:

There should be no tolerance of mockery, teasing, bullying, or rudeness from any quarter.

I’m looking at you, grown-ups.

9. Why yes, I will be saying that on Saturday. Grown-ups, prepare to squirm.

Updated: 10: Writing posts without typos is not one of my successes this week.

And the winner is . . .

Angela!

Congratulations, I’ll e-mail you in a bit.

***

For those who are curious about my method, I did this:

1) Added up the number of entries total. So Petra had entries #1, 2, &3; Kate was #’s 4, 5 & 6, and so forth.

2) Googled “random number generator” and found this one. I put in the range of numbers, and tested it a few times to see if it did what I needed.

3) I debated exactly how I was supposed to do this.

4) I shut my eyes, clicked the thing 10 times, opened them, and noted the random number now up on the screen.

5) I counted down through the entries and ended up on Angela. Yay!

Now I really do need to get ready for the dentist. Turned out I had more time than I realized. But not that much. Have a great day everyone, and thanks for playing!

The next bit of this update tells a story that includes a death scene. A real one, not fiction. You might want to go ahead and click elsewhere now. Especially if thinking about dead cats bothers you.

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