Category: Natural Family Planning

7 Takes: From My Feed Reader to Yours

7 Takes at ConversionDiary.com

 

This week, after you pray for Allie & congratulate our hostess, I send you elsewhere.  I scrolled through all my recent +1’s in Google, and picked a few:

1.  People come here when they search on “Kolbe Academy”, and presumably when they do that, they also find Kolbe’s blog, Servant of Truth.  But in case you had a google-failure, here’s an answer to a question that gets asked a lot:  How to Change Pace in a Structured Curriculum.

2.  Brad Warthen is aggravated, here, about a homeschooling bumper sticker that he sees as a flagrant rejection of a whole community.  (He’s a Mr. Community kind of guy.  A Rotarian, no less.)  I concede in the combox that he is correct, it is indeed impossible to know what part of “the village” the hostile-homeschooler wants no part of.  But I’m going to guess it’s something like this.

3. FTR, I homeschool for the library books.  The village never even entered into it.  I just want to read.  A lot.  There aren’t many jobs let you do that.  (Also I like teaching my kids, like being with them, like playing outside, like traveling during the school year, and it’s the only Catholic school I’ll ever talk my husband into paying for . . . but it’s mostly for the books.)

4. NFP Apps.  I like a pen and a free-in-the-mail calendar myself.  (Helps if you don’t particularly need a graph or white baby stickers.  About once a year I break out the graph paper to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.  But most of the time, 4/10 of degree shows up real nice just looking at the numbers.)  But all you smart-device people can do NFP the Smart Way.

5. Can’t have too many religious education curricula.  Read about Healing the Culture’s new high school curriculum, and, completely separately, Loyola Press’s new adaptive sacramental prep program for students with special needs.

Also a Bleg: Anyone have an RCIA text you really love?  I’m dumb enough to try to make up an answer to that question, but someone who knows the field would be better suited to give the real scoop.

6. At Public Discourse: the obituary of an honest historian.  Beautiful story.  Especially if you’re the kind of person who reads a history book, and then rants towards your children about all the dumb ideas the book promotes without presenting any evidence whatsoever.

My kids say I complain a lot.  I reply that easily 10-if-not-15% of the time, it’s because there’s something worth complaining about.  The rest of the time, yeah, I’m just grumpy.  Probably the nicest grumpy person you know.

7. The reason bloggers blog is because we have something to say.  Abby Johnson doesn’t play around: If you want to be pro-life, get your act together and show up for work.

Have a great weekend!

(PS: The tiny tiger has persuaded SuperHusband not to haul her to the pet shelter just yet.  Cuteness is a powerful survival strategy.)

Book Giveaway – Catholic Mother’s Companion to Pregnancy

 

Look what just came in the mail for me:

Two copies.  Free from Ave Maria, as a tie-in to Sarah’s virtual book tour, which will be stopping at this blog on Monday October 8th.  So how do you win a free copy?

Well, it doesn’t involve me mailing you things, that’s for sure.  I got a call last week from the Office of Family Life at the Diocese of Charleston, saying, “Would you please help serve cookies after the Mass for Expectant Parents on October 14th in Columbia, SC?”

And I said, “Yes, I’ll be happy to do that, but only if you agree to give these books away, because it is much easier for me to turn up for mass someplace than for me to go to the post office.”

We think there might be pregnant people coming to that mass.  Because the bishop will be giving the exceedingly cool Blessing for the Child in the Womb.  But you can come put your name in the hat for the drawing, even if your plan is to win it for some other person who is pregnant, or who hopes to be, or who just likes to read fantabulous devotionals for Catholic pregnant ladies.

Also there’ll be an NFP table.  And cookies.  Did I mention cookies?

Theology of the Body Conference, Simpsonville, SC July 6th & 7th

Why is Church teaching worth standing up for?  I’d be remiss if  I didn’t tell you about the Theology of the Body Conference in upstate SC this summer – July 6th & 7th.  I won’t make it out this year — I’ll be home attending a wedding, yay! — but I was able to go to Family Honor’s TOTB conference in 2002, and it was top notch.  Speakers this year include Janet Smith & Ray Guarendi . . . you can’t go far wrong with talent like that.  Check it out.

Hey and if you ever wondered where my header and sidebar photos came from . . . yeah, upstate SC has a few little secrets in those mountains.  Good place.

7 Quick Takes: Girl Topics

1.

An internet friend pointed me to Ova Ova, a fertility awareness site.

It’s sleek, modern, and explains the basics of NFP.  In addition to the usual caution that FAM is secular-feminist amoral NFP with all the completely different set of issues that surround that world (and much that is good and true as well), let me also say quite vigorously . . .

2.

Please do not use condoms during your fertile time.

3.

Unless you’re trying to conceive, that is.  Recall that 100% of condom failures occur during that one week of your cycle when you are actually fertile.  Which means the condom effectiveness rates are massively overstated — 75% of the time, the condom isn’t doing anything at all, it’s just a decoration.

I completely understand that couples who don’t have moral objections to NFP might be tempted to use a condom during the non-fertile time of FAM, as “back-up”.  Sure, whatever, this is not the place to lay into someone who’s willing to try NFP, or something like it, but is not 100% on board.

But listen: When you know you’re fertile, if you have a serious reason to avoid?  Avoid.  Maybe you could watch cable or something.  Not that channel.  A different one.  Or how about hard physical labor?  And separate bedrooms states.  That works great.

4.

Okay, backing up a decade or three and completely changing topic, my daughter loves PrincessHairstyles.com.  The YouTube channel is hair4myprincess. Given too much time on the internet, very little competition for the hall bathroom, and two younger sisters as willing victims, a girl can get pretty good at this stuff.

Weirdly, although this is the same child who is also the junior photographer, I can find no pictures of her handiwork on the PC.  Sorry.

5.

I’ve got a couple of trips planned this summer, including the Catholic Writer’s Guild conference, where of course I’ll want to take lots of photos.

Small hitch: I own no camera.

Ellen Gable, Sarah Reinhard, and an empty space waiting for . . .

Solution: I’m renting the 10 y.o.’s camera – 25 cents a day. It’s a good deal all around.  I need a few lessons in how to use it first.

6.

Don’t forget to pray for Allie Hathaway.  Thanks!

7.1

I am so tempted to just leave the review for le Papillon here from last week.  It doesn’t seem to be generating sufficient enthusiasm, so I persist in my mission.   Here’s the picture to remind you that you should watch this film next time you get the chance:

7.2

Back on Tuesday (aka: Man Day), I posted part two of my Teen Boys and Chastity Bleg.  If you are visiting here from Conversion Diary, might I ask you to take a look?  You might know a gentleman who has a few ideas to add.

7.3

The difference between Catholic blogs and Evangelical blogs is not the statues or the rosaries.  It’s the liquor*.  If you didn’t see it already, visit Darwin’s Give That Woman a Drink.  You can count on the Darwins for good Catholic drinking posts.  My grandmother always had an old fashioned at the family get-togethers.   Now I know what’s in them.

*Kids: Drunkeness is a sin.  So is disobeying legitimate civil authorities.