7 Quick Takes: Lucky Women

1.

It’s been a long few days here at the Castle.  I would be very grateful for your prayers.

2.

This is hilarious: “Teach Yourself a New Culture in 100 Easy Lessons”, in which we see how a Haitian man studying English describes the pictures in the reading book.  I want the whole series.

 

3.

Lent report:

1) Yeah, we pretty much stink at prayer-n-fasting.  Especially when housework is supposed to fit in their somewhere.

2) But I did have an Adrian Monk Moment, and clean the yard in a frenzied response to stress and frustration.  It looks really nice.  Or it did 24 hours ago, anyhow.

3) And then here’s what happened: We planned to meet Fr. W for lunch because after six months of trying, dinner just wasn’t happening.  Too busy.  And we decided that ‘at the restuarant’ was smarter than ‘at our house’.  And this morning I thought, “Yes, I’m so glad it’s at the restaurant, because this place is a wreck.”  And then I realized: “This place is waaaaay cleaner then the first time he came over last summer.  For one thing, at this time I would not need to send the children out on an hour-long mission to “get rid of the disgusting things”.

So, yes.  Progress.  Not as stellar of progress as my vivid imagination had envisioned.  But it’s something.

The Fitz House, Now 75% Less Disgusting!

4.

You thought you could just pray for my intention up there in #1. No can do.   Allie Hathaway. Right now. 

. . . Okay good. Thanks!

5.

Helen Alvare e-mailed me (and 18,000 of her closest friends, I’m pretty sure) with the reminder that:

 . . . The Obama Administration has put real accommodation of religious employers, insurers, and individuals off the table. And they have managed to get leading media to continue to claim that women are on the side of shutting down religious witness on the issue of the “free” birth control in employer insurance plans.

If you’re female and you haven’t signed the Women Speak for Themselves letter, do it now, here.

And this the Facebook page:  facebook.com/WomenSpeakForThemselves.

[H/T to the inimitable Mrs. Tollefsen for the head’s up about the letter and the encouragement to sign it.  They let me on, so they’ll take anybody.]

6.

Bearing links to a really cool history article on eugenics, politics, and the Irish in 1940.  Click on her link and read the whole thing — very well-researched and written account of a suspicious marriage certificate, and the man who made it so, 52 years after the wedding took place.  For that matter, if you’re having withdrawal because you don’t like how my 3-D life is interfering with your goofing-off schedule, Bearing’s been pretty much rocking the house lately, so you just go read her for a while.

7.

And that’s it.   Catholic Writer’s Conference starts tomorrow.  My yard is clean.  My blog is sad and lonely.  The weather is beautiful.  My truck is pale yellow from the pine pollen.  My 5 year-old has a new green plaid outfit made by her 10-year-old sister from scrap fabric, just in time to keep the neighbor kid from pinching her tomorrow.   I have given up all hope of predicting the future, and now consider my calendar to be a work of speculative fiction.

Oh speaking of saint’s feast days, last night I read the account of St. Abraham Kidunaia.  And I thought as I read, “Gee, his poor fiance, abandoned on the eve of the wedding, when he fled to the desert and locked himself in a cell.”  And then I read a little further, and concluded: “Probably once she learned he was planning to wear the same goatskin coat for the next 50 years, she was okay with it.”