Category: Castle News

Pavlov’s Rosary

Every time I sit down to pray, my dog brings me an object for fetch.   She was not very appreciative last night when I tried to explain that it was cold and dark now, and that I refuse to throw a frisbee in my bedroom.

(What does this say about my prayer life?  A.  I am still.  B.  I have at least one hand free.)

So today I made a point of tackling the ol’ rosary earlier in the day, when I could still pray outdoors.

–> Yes, that is where I stand on the piety-meter.  The Lord has sent me a german-shepherd-mix to help prevent excessive procrastination.  Very gentle about it.  All cute eyes and respectfully dropping the flying object closer and closer.   How could I not want to pray with a partner like that?

Or perhaps the Lord has sent me a rosary to make me get out and play with my dog more.

UPDATE: Edited to add a photo.  But I promise I am not turning into a pet-blogger.  No really.  Just seriously goofing off.

Mission Accomplished

Succeeded in re-crowding my life, without actually becoming a walking person.  Slightly inaccurate: I am in fact doing 100% normal, un-aided walking for the amount that I actually walk. Which is very little.  But using my special powers of over-commitment, I have managed to re-fill my recently emptied life, with all new low-to-no-walking activities.  Ha.   Told you I would.

–> So I suppose it’s no surprise that my desk is covered in chaos again. Gotta tackle that one first thing tomorrow morning (yes, when I am also scheduled to instruct my children, per that whole ‘homeschooling’ thing), because the miraculously-endowed organizational system is still functioning, but it will suffocate if I don’t rescue it soon.

So that’s the update.

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Another really funny story below, but only for people who know the routine with bizarre ailments.  The rest of you go read something normal.

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Ha, so get this: Weakness in the right leg has resumed, and I’m guessing it’s doing so with relative vigor.  But I *have no idea how bad it is*, because of course the injured foot means I barely use the leg anyway.   So that’s going to make an interesting discussion with a medical professional.

(Normal people I told you not to look.  Bad normal people. No biscuit.)

Time for Silence

(From this morning’s first reading).  That time is upon us again.   Hands have gone AWOL, and typing is right out.  My review of The Salvation Controversy is written and awaiting a final edit with hyperlinks, so I will get that up when I can.  (Update: It’s up!) Otherwise, we’re on blog silence.

Update 10/14/10 – hands are 98% better, so long as I take it easy on them.  Yay.  But not typing much these days, still need to limit that.  Foot, btw, is still doing its wonky thing.  See doc again Tues for new ideas.  Meanwhile, school has never been better.  No really.  Turns it out homeschooling works better if you both stay *home*, and do *school*.  Go figure.

[Editing to clarify: It was my much more sensible co-catechist who proposed we do the journals.   Needed to give credit for brilliance where it really belongs.  I was too chicken to mention it myself.]

Peeking in to say an enormous thank you to Dorian Speed, whose  Journal thing we copied wholesale with the 5th graders.  First night of class.  Went beautifully — kids had something to focus on during those first fifteen minutes of class when everyone is still trickling in, and for me as a catechist it was a privilege to have this way of connecting to each student.  Our choices for topics were:

1) What’s on your mind this week?

2) What prayer requests do you have for us?

3) What questions would you like answered this year in Religious Ed.

I will concede we’ve been spoiled — pretty much someone stacked our class with all the best kids.  (Well, okay, I looked at the roll and the other 5th grade class got some of the best kids too.)  Once again proving my end-of-year fear wrong: I always wonder how my next year’s class can possibly hold up to the standard set by the current year.  But they do.  Every time.  Man I love that job.

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H/T to Domenico Bettinelli for this happy little video:

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Upcoming on the blog:

-I owe you my review of the St. Francis DVD from Tiber River.  Draft is on my PC, waiting for me to do a final edit and stick in the necessary links.  Coming soon.

-Still reading The Salvation Controversy by Jimmy Akin. (That’s my current Catholic Company review title.)  So far it’s a recommended read, if you are the target audience.  I have a spare copy, btw, if you are local and a real-life friend and would like to borrow it.  A spare because, of course, I lost the first one, and had to order a replacement.  I assume that was all part of the Divine Will.  In a chaos-redeemed kind of way.

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Foot news: No change.  Getting about 20 min/day of walking out of it, and then it’s all over.  More or less, depending on everything else.  Have a call in to the referral lady to get an appointment with the foot guy.

–>  Discovered that my girls can be very helpful and cooperative in the grocery store when I actually need them to be.  (Well, Squeaky just likes to ride in my lap.)  So that’s nice.  Taught Aria about unit pricing.   Been a little overwhelmed other wise, and must tell you that my attention to blogging responsibilities is about representative of the rest of my life.  Ah.  Go watch that video again.

Foot update: Big Fluffy Sneakers

Apparently I had a fashion problem.

Doctor dx’d me with ‘metatarsalgia’, which is the technical term for “your foot hurts, and if it doesn’t feel better in a month, we’ll try to find out why”.    (Fair enough: ruled out a visible break or some other quickly-diagnosable ailment, and since the other choices require massively expensive and complicated testing to detect, makes sense to see if the time-n-rest cure doesn’t fix the whatever-it-is.)

Meanwhile he referred me to his shoe guy (that is, the store where my athlete-physician shops himself), who specializes in picking out big fluffy sneakers that take the pressure off whatever part of your foot tends to get pressurized.

Wow.  Magic.  Went from “No way I’m walking on this thing, BAD BAD BAD” to, “Hey, look at me, I can limp and it’s okay!”.

So maybe some more days of giant fluffy sneakers and I’ll graduate to regular walking.

Happy happy.

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(Just in time to really get my nerd-mother look fully-formed before my children turn into teenagers.  Would be tragic to miss out on the maximum adolescent-embarrassment potential.  Maybe soon I’ll develop some kind of disorder that requires me to buy all my clothes at the same shop as my doc.  Or maybe I already do that, and don’t even know it . . .)

Quiet at the Castle

In working on the homeschooling book (still working on it), I begged Karina Fabian to tell me about her experiences with homeschooling versus school-schooling.  She obliged me despite a crazy-busy spring, and this is the crux of what she shared: “I’m a better mother when my kids go to school.”

Me?  I’m a better mother when I’m not allowed to walk.

Started back to school this week, and conveniently I came down with some kind of foot-ailment on Saturday.  While awaiting diagnosis the nurse advised me to keep my weight off the thing, and I agree — what with the bit about how it only hurts when I use it, hehe.

–> Turns out I’m a better teacher and a more attentive, involved mother, when I’m not sidetracked trying to do everything else other than the heart of my vocation.

Reminds me of that twinge of dissappointment when the lights go back on after an evening power outage.   The house flips back to life with buzzing and beeping, you blow out the candles, and family members gathered by the fireplace disperse to their preferred distractions.

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These moments of forced-quiet are an illusion.  Lacking electricity, there’s no reason to think the SuperHusband and I wouldn’t assemble plenty of lower-tech conveniences and distractions.  Blessed with a permanent injury, I’d figure out how to re-mobilize and get just as busy as ever.   I score in the 99th percentile for the ability to think up new hobbies.

But for now, I’m enjoying the quiet.  In a wishing-I-could-grow-up-to-be Bill Shannon kind of way.  Incorrigible.  Utterly incorrigible.

Milkshakes all around . . .

. . . is what we get if I pull a would-have-drowned child out of the pool, and she gets an all-clear on the lung check afterwards.  Yay!  A certain mother needs to work off a  little adrenaline now . . .

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In the meantime, back-to-back interesting posts by Eric Sammons:

Just say ‘no’.  Hands down this is my number one spiritual problem (in addition to all the others).  And of course he posts these timely words just when I’m trying to goof off on the internet to unwind a little, heh.

And then, 100 things? I’ll consider it, if I get to count all my books as a single item.  Otherwise, I guess it’s 99 books and a toothbrush?  I think everything else maybe I could borrow from someone.

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Funny story about self-denial and materialism: SuperHusband and I are in the market for a new motor vehicle.  Exact nature TBD, but we’re leaning towards a commuter-mobil.  There’s about $5K difference between the car he really wants, and a less-expensive, more practical car that would (we think – haven’t test-driven yet) do everything we’d expect from the dream car.   Poor guy, he’s checking out vehicles on the internet last night, and his wife leans over and says, “$5k would build a lot of houses in Haiti.”

Or, part of a hospital?  Investigate this one, if you are looking for a worthwhile cause.  No personal connection on my part, so do your own due diligence.

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Meanwhile, a funny story from the child-not-drowning incident:

So I’m watching my preschooler from the sidelines at my local community pool, because I am one of those mothers who lifeguards her own children even when there is one lifeguard on duty and three others giving swim lessons nearby, and I see Squeaky go under.  So I walk in and pull her out — real easy, because we’re in the shallow end, and she is right next to the wide concrete staircase so it’s just step in, pick up child.  Hurray.

[Yes, my child was literally one step from where she could have stood up and been fine.  But she stepped down to where it was just over her head, panicked, and didn’t think “oh, just walk up the stairs”.]

I carry her up out of the water, do my check to make sure she’s okay (she is), and I’m standing there with her swim instructor from the previous hour’s lessons,  who had come over both because she saw the incident and because she had some papers to give me.  Then the lifeguard on duty looks over in our direction; the whole incident couldn’t have lasted ten seconds, probably more like three or five — and he didn’t see it happen.

[No fault here: there was nothing for him to hear – neither my daughter nor I made any noise through all this — and this one guy has an entire pool of swimmers to watch.  No one can physically keep their eyes on that much space and that many people simultaneously.  The best a lifeguard can do is scan continuously, and hope he sees what he needs to see when he needs to see it.]

So the poor guy sees me there standing soaking wet in my street clothes, realizes something is amiss, and comes over to speak to me.  And his brain has not connected all dots yet, so it falters on the what-happened-here process:   He kind of hestitates, then says, “Um, we’re supposed to wear swimming attire in the pool.”

I assured him I don’t *usually* swim in leather shoes.

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Have a good week.  And no combox pile-on about my lifeguard.

No news is good news on this end. Castle residents are mostly healthy, house-cleanout is progressing nicely, and VBS starts tomorrow. Violated my sewing moratorium to put together some Roman garb for myself, as the ol’ “Bible Voyage” will be wandering the Roman Empire with the Apostles.   Need to get my special-effects in order for a shipwreck on Tuesday.

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Tara Livesay has a guest post by Amie Sexton, looking at inter-racial adoption. Go read it right now.

I had much more to add, but got my finger stuck in the door on the way into Mass this morning.  Not so bad an injury, but it hampers the typing.  So you are spared my deep thoughts.  Happy Sunday.