Today's Links & Timewasters

Just a quick note...I'm heading out to pick up Maeve. But i wanted to link a couple of things here i've run across/are currently important/etc. So.

To begin with, my coffee buddy Colleen has a friend who is a lay Carmelite, and who also makes amazing digital images--mostly of biblical imagery, angels, etc., but using real people and warping/layering the images. Colleen says it starts with a scanner. She's found at Aeturnus.

Next, Good Shepherd Catechesis is taking up so much of my brain lately, I felt like I had to link to them too. I found a site of an individual Atrium, with good basic pictures, which will suffice until I take pictures of our Atrium at St. Margaret's. I start in two weeks (Maeve's birthday, I realized suddenly...I guess we'll have to put of the trip to Cairo until the next weekend. Hmm.).

A few new blogs I've started looking at. Outside the Box I'm still trying to get a handle on. I think I like reading him. Not certain. And two male knitters...Knit Like a Man, and Brooklyn Tweed, who has taken a doily pattern and knit it up in chunky yarn, thus making a big doily blanket. I'm intrigued. Must resist.

And in the category of must resist, I'm going to Rhinebeck with Annie in October. A Sheep and Wool festival. Really? How shocking.

And....I'm making my oblation this weekend. I can feel myself settling into those prayer stalls already. That's at Clyde--which is linked on the sidebar to your right. It's been a fabulous 16 month journey thus far. I'm hopeful this continues. Remember me on Sunday--during day prayer is when I take this small plunge.

Random thoughts & tonight's soundtrack

Otherwise, by rubbing too hard to remove the rust, she may break the vessel. (Rule of Benedict 64)

Vigilance and control. The desire to be unique but not having the tools required to make the steps towards individuality. Striving for perfection everywhere, and thus running the risk of leaving oneself fragile, shattered.

Leave a little room for joy. You don't always have to be in charge. Letting go of that control is frightening, but it's the only way to give the gift of allowing others to give you the gift of happiness, spontaneity, surprise.

The only other choices are a lifetime of dull dissatisfaction, or a lifetime of bitterness.

The longer I live in St. Louis, in one spot, the more tangible it becomes that we are all interconnected even if we do not realize it. My actions in one spot of my life do have ramifications elsewhere. I recognize this both when I see others react to me, positively or negatively, and when I catch myself reacting to others. Unless I choose to move to Wyoming or Arizona or some other far-flung spot in my imagination, I am going to keep running into reminders of my past behavior. It only makes sense to be prudent.

But honesty? Self-preservation? Saying no?

It's a delicate balance.

Maeve's Rules

One of the "mommyblogs" I read had a list of twenty-five things every toddler should make sure to do/be expert at/etc. I figured, just to give a glimpse of life at the Halliday House lately, I'd throw in a page torn out of the Maeve Manual.

1. Every day is a school day. Demand to go to your classroom every morning.
2. Every day deserves a pretty dress. Or two or three. Leotard with tutu underneath pretty dress is of course acceptable. Pull it from the dirty laundry basket if you need to. Mom puts them there so you know where to find it.
3. Demand juice at every opportunity. Juice and food. Then eat none of it and demand new juice when it reaches room temperature. Or before.
4. Only poop in the potty or the pull-up. Mom's caught on to the poop-in-the-panties routine and it's not a good idea anymore.
5. Demand to know who is on the phone, and then contradict the answer.
6. When it's time to get out of the van, demand to go to your cousin's house instead. In Texas.
7. Never ever have an accident at school. This way the teacher will think Mom's crazy.
8. Tell your sister at every opportunity that things belong to you. Even songs on the radio. This will distract her from your true purposes.
9. That top bunk? It's full of treasures you can have if you just make it up the ladder. Don't worry about getting back down--that's what Mom's for.
10. Always, always put your shoes on the opposite feet from how Mom arbitrarily demands. You can't let her control your shoes.
11. Insist to play with friends every time you come home in the van. Regardless of time, weather, and schedule, there are friends who want to play with you right now.
12. If someone catches you breaking their arbitrary archaic rules, just say "I just kidding." It works every time.
13. If that doesn't work, say "sorry" and stick out your lower lip. This magic word fixes everything.
14. Mom is holding you back from your true potential when she demands you hold her hand/get off the dog/put the scissors down/take a nap/sit in your carseat.
15. Your lips and tongue really really want to be green. Use marker.
16. The only good ladybug is a dead ladybug.
17. Knitting needles must be freed from their yarn loops at all costs.
18. Forks and spoons ruin the way most foods taste. Better safe than sorry.
19. Speaking of forks, they make great cat combs.
20. You are a princess. You are a ballerina. You are a cowgirl. You are a fairy. You are never Maeve. Unless mom calls you some term of endearment. Then you are Maeve and only Maeve and make sure she knows it. Use force if necessary.
21. Get a good pout on, and never crack a smile.
22. Church will only cease to be mandatory if you raise enough ruckus to embarrass Mom and Dad. Say things like "It over now!" at every silent pause.
23. The VCR is a great place to store treasure.
24. Never smile for the camera.
25. Contradiction is the best offense.

Insert Knitting Pun Here

You probably haven't noticed, since if you're not Ann, you probably aren't a knitting blog reader, but a great majority of blogs about knitting are titled with puns (Purls of Wisdom, for instance). I was trying to think of a title for this entry and I decided to avoid stale knitting puns and let you come up with your own if you need it.

I just finished a sleeve, a green cotton sleeve, for Sophia's shrug/bolero jacket/whatever, for the wedding she's in this October. It's spring green and it's made of string. I can't believe how much wool has spoiled me--wool clings to the needles, it jumps to my fingers, it keeps an even tension. Cotton lies there like kite string. And I'm using a pretty nice cotton yarn for this. Not the standard dishcloth yarn. But it hurts my fingers to knit with it, and at first I thought, oh, it must be the size three needles, until I remembered I've done wool knitting on size 2s without wondering if I was developing arthritis.

I knit German style, meaning I hold the yarn in my left hand and pick it up with the right needle, holding the left needle static. This is different from the way most Americans knit. Its great benefits are speed and ease of ribbing/cables; its weakness is gauge. It is hard to maintain gauge on the knit side and the purl side of a stockinette stitch swatch. But with wool, nothing is hard. It's amazing that way. My gauge is never off pattern, rows don't gap at all, I just figured I'd gotten better at knitting lately. And I have--it's just that I haven't practiced on cotton for a long time.

So why not knit this in wool? Because my little honey has this sensitive skin thing she inherited from her father (oh, how many different detergents I had to go through when we were first married). She won't touch wool to her skin. Cannot abide by cheapy acrylic or fuzzy mohair or anything that isn't cotton string--no, I take that back--I made a scarf for her last year that was half cotton and half baby-soft acrylic, and she uses it. Nothing else, though.

So I got the cotton, worked up 5 gauge swatches, had to drop from size 6 needles down to 3s and knit the size 4 directions to get the size 6/8 result...and my hands hurt. The way I have to hold the yarn, I mean string, in order to purl, involves holding my left hand intensely still with the first two fingers holding the yarn between them in a death grip. Did I mention that wool eagerly stays put and lets the right needle flick in and purl? Cotton doesn't if I want to maintain any tension at all in the thread. I guess I could wear rubber fingertips, BUT OF COURSE this spring latex stopped being my friend, too.

The touch, the feel of cotton. I can't wait to get back to my cable knit sweater in raspberry pink wool.

Ok, enough complaining. Mike's face is doing fine. He's done with the antibiotic course, the big nasty swelling is gone, his face looks like his face, except for the scabs in his cheekbone, the black eye, and the benign eye hemorrhage. But he no longer resembles a batman villian.

SPV Blogging: St. Augustine

Flaming heart, pierced by arrows. Our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. St. Augustine, revered by all three major branches of Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant), is renowned for his Confessions (thought to be the first Western autobiography) as well as his shady past before he converted and became priest and then bishop. His mother was St. Monica (the patron saint of disappointing children, by the way) and she finally had her prayers answered the way she would have desired, with her oldest son leaving his old life behind and turning to the light.

In reading a bit about Augustine to write this up, I found that one of the phrases attributed to him is "Love the sinner, hate the sin." Something I don't think we as Christians get very right very often. It seems as if we lump them together--if you are sinning, you are a sinner, the two are intertwined. This can run both ways. The sin is often seen as no big thing, since we love the sinner, thus diminishing the sin and making everything comfortably relativist. Your sin is no worse than mine, and of course mine is no big deal because I'm generally a good person, therefore, we're all good people and there are no consequences. On the other hand, the sin can overtake our vision, and we can yet again intertwine personhood with action, making the sinner equivalent to the evil deed. But in fact, we can tread the center line without losing either our moral center or our hearts.

One of the spiritual works of mercy is to admonish the sinner. This is not meant, I think, to stand on the street corner and yell into a megaphone at the passing parade. What does that gain you or them, in the end? Inciting anger cannot be how it is done. Admonishment, in order to work best, must be done gently. Aha--here we are again at the Rule of Benedict. The prioress should always observe the apostle's recommendation in which it is said, "Use argument, appeal, reproof" (2 Tim 4:2). This means that they must vary with circumstances...they should not gloss over the sins of those who err, but cut them out while they can, as soon as they begin to sprout, remembering the fate of Eli, priest of Shiloh. (RB 2). But it should be done together, one on one, if true correction is to come about. Like in the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation. No fingers are pointed, nobody is scorned or banished or told they are, in no uncertain terms, evil sinners. Turn back to the light. Go and sin no more.

Mikey Bikey

It was Saturday. We went to the Tower Grove Farmer's Market, and locked up the bikes. I realized as I locked one of them, that the key had broken off my keychain. I knew where the spare was, on the mantel at home, though, and so we had a crepe, walked around looking at produce, and then I was going to take my bike (the one with the lock that had a key) back to get the spare. Nah, said Mike, stay and drink some coffee, listen to the music, I'll run back and get it on your bike.

Off he went. We shopped, had coffee, tooled around. Noticed he'd left his helmet on his handlebars when he went off on my bike...and I had the obligatory mom/wife worry moment: I bet he's unconscious on Grand. We hung out a little bit more, ate some grapes, and then I started to get nervous. The 15 minute round trip (which I could reasonably add 5 more minutes to for him to get the key assuming he wasn't sure which mantel I was talking about) had stretched into 40 minutes, and then I regretted my unconscious on Grand thought. I walked over towards Christie, who sends her kids to my school and was working a booth, to see if she had a phone on her. Because, surely, I thought, he realized the spare key was gone and he'd headed off to my dad's house to see about a bolt cutter or something like that. Called a locksmith. Whatever. Surely he's fine, just inconsiderate (and I also made the decision that I wouldn't be mad, even if he told me he got distracted and chatted with a neighbor).

About 10 feet from Christie, I see him, but I don't know it's him, even. He's covered in blood. He looks dazed. He tells me what happened--avoiding a speed bump on the park road, he didn't have time to slow down and swerve to miss a parked car, and had no idea how old my brakes were. Also, center of gravity is different on my 1970s era ten speed as opposed to his brand new hybrid/touring bike. He went over the handlebars and landed on his face.

Of course, then he got up, rode my bike home, got the key, got in the van, and came back.

We go home, talk to Trisha, my neighbor the physical therapist (and therefore one of those resident experts on all things medical, which I'm sure drives her nuts). She said she'd go to the ER. I was starting to think the same thing. But I called my dad...another resident expert, a retired ER nurse (he's an accountant now). Mike took a shower and then we headed over for Dad to take a look. He thought he could steri-strip the ones on his face no problem, but the one on his chin looked like a crush injury. He said he'd go. And, lemme tell ya, when Terry says go to the hospital, one does not hesitate.

We went out to Missouri Baptist and he was seen promptly. They gave him a CT scan because they were afraid he'd broken his cheekbone (point of impact). But no, thank goodness. In the end, it was 3 stitches in the chin, a smearing of neosporin, and a prescription for percoset and keflex.

Saturday night he was uncomfortable; Sunday he was in bad shape. He stayed home from work Monday, but he went in for a half day today. He teaches computer class Wed-Fri this week, looking like a batman villian, should be great. But he's fine. Or will be.

And how was your weekend?

Oh, comme ci, comme ca. Et vous?

More details later. Mike is fine. But he doesn't look that great. You can view his lovely road rashed face here and here and here. I didn't want to put it up on the blog itself.

Mah Jongg Continues to Rule My Life

Back in July, a woman wrote to Janine, who passed the information to me. She was a librarian at Rend Lake Jr. College, and the whole region around them was participating in the Big Read. Their book of choice is the Joy Luck Club, which I have shamefully never read, although I did see the film (one of the few I paid to see in college). I thought it was kind of an odd choice for central Illinois, but that wasn't until later. The point of the email was asking me to come teach mah jongg, maybe talk a little bit about it beforehand, at their kick off meeting/celebration. This past Wednesday.

So I taught myself simplified Chinese mah jongg, thanks to Tom Sloper, and set out in the van with a couple of sets Wednesday morning. I got to talk a little bit about the history of mah jongg (what is known, at least, all taken from a little book I got at the library). Then I sat down with a couple of different groups of students and librarians to teach them this version, which is more like rummy than the one we play. In fact, it's easy enough, I don't think it would have caught on here on the block. The girls I play with, we're all so durned smart, we would have figured it out in about ten minutes, played that one evening, and then it would have joined a repertoire of games like Scrabble, canasta, pictionary, yatzee--things to play here and there, mostly out of novelty concerning the tiles.

Of course, Chinese mah jongg can be a lot more complicated than the simple version I taught on Wednesday. But I just don't think it would have done the same sort of thing for us that National Mah Jongg did.

Which leads me to the other mah jongg moment of the week. It's not mine, but it was told to me. Janine's store on the corner is where I teach mah jongg on first Wednesdays, and a woman called her a few weeks ago, not to look for lessons, but to sell a set. Cheap. Janine put an email out to us on the block and Mary called her, out in Creve Couer, and went out yesterday to buy the set. It's another bakelite set, from the 30s-50s or so, the woman, Mrs. Solomon, said she'd been playing for 50 years. As opposed to all my sets, which are anonymously picked up on ebay, this one has a story. She saved a dollar a week until she had enough to buy this set. And she and her neighbor girlfriends, five of them, met in each other's houses and played--left the kids with the husbands, but close by enough to help out if need be. Sound familiar? But, she told Mary, they started playing for money after a while, and it ruined it. "You know how some people get greedy." One woman supposedly started getting really competitive (for quarter games? What the heck?) and they had to stop playing. "Now we play canasta." When Mary told this to me, I took it as fair warning.

I used to play for money, with coworkers, when I first learned. But the folks on the block, I do more than work with them. I live here and share babysitting and meals and wine and worries and joys--I think Mrs. Solomon is right. Don't bring money into it, even if it's just nickel and quarter games. It really does change the atmosphere. In a way that a game of poker here and there doesn't--you don't bet on mah jongg. You pay the winner. You never fold and then get out of paying more. And I could see this getting ruthless (I probably would, for instance). And that wouldn't be as much fun. And as much as I like canasta, I wouldn't trade mah jongg for it.

Response to Clearview: Six Years Ago (Of Course)

LisaS of Clearview asked the now-perennial question, where were you? It is of course September 11, and for many of us who are too young to remember Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination, this is our benchmark. Lisa's remarks are markedly similar to mine--her daughter was to be born three months after, my daughter was three months old. But we asked ourselves the same questions.

And yesterday, Ann came over and we had the same talk. I wonder how long we will have this talk--I guess until something else horrible happens. My mom and dad have mirror image memories of the day Kennedy was shot; it shouldn't be surprising that people of similar generations in similar places remember things about the same.

I was a new mom, no job, getting used to that fact very slowly. I slept a lot. I was lonely and disconnected from life as I knew it. So I usually woke up after 11 in the morning, wandered around the house, watched a lot of TV, and waited for Mike to get home. This morning, which was also a Tuesday, was no different. The night before, I'd been at a La Leche League meeting that had made me cry. I felt pretty miserable about my state in life. Wow.

So the phone rang. I didn't pick up. It was Mike on the answering maching. The phone rang agin. I didn't pick up. This time...was it my dad? I decided to get up. The second message was my brother Ian, a string of panicked obscenities. I decided to call him back first. He and Ashley, his pregnant girlfriend, were sitting at home watching this on TV, and narrating it to me as I threw on clothes and looked across the bed at Sophia lying there asleep. How will I be able to keep her safe? I told Ian I'd call him back later, and I went down to look at the TV.

I turned it on in time to watch the second plane hit. Just stared at it, listening to the CNN commentary, meaningless. At that moment--now it seems so small, but at that moment, it looked like my way of life ws going to be completely OVER. News broadcasts were filled with dumbfounded silence as was my head. I talked to Ian. I talked to Mike. I called Bevin. I called my mother-in-law (I think I broke the news to her, actually--I know I did with someone, but I can't recall who it was). Something about that day made you want to connect to people. Something else about that day made me want to pack up all my important documents, my daughter, my pets, and run down to my father-in-law's deer camp. Flee. That feeling took a long long time to subside, frankly, and still pops up now and again.

Mike came home early. Even my dad came home early. We watched TV. I nursed the baby and sat on the couch staring at it, again, and again, and again. Got this weird panicked nervous sighing feeling that did not go away for months. Listened to the radio in the bathroom, even. Voices on NPR, BBC, invading my dreams, my thoughts.

Then, that night, I made cookies and listened to the radio. And cried.

Garden in Fall

Tonight I went out and picked two more tomatoes off my anonymous tomato vine. Odd. I thought I was growing Black from Tula and Green Stripeys, but somehow this summer, I got Green Stripeys, something that lookd a lot more like Black Krim than Tulas, and three or four odd plants. There must have been some weird cross pollination going on because I got beefsteak-style, some about that size but with pointy ends, and some with the dusky black tomato look, same size, all from the same hodgepodge of plants. There would be distinctly different shaped tomatoes growing next to each other. They were, of course, all excellent.

(the green stripeys are the tiny ones hiding under the big reds--click on the picture, and they're right of the middle--alas, they are all gone. Crisper, more citrus in flavor than the standard tomato)

I have one green tomato left out there, and a few that linger outside the safety of our garden cage. Offerings for the squirrels, mostly. There are a few jalapenos, a few green peppers, and then we're down to the herbs. There's still a lot of parsley and basil and mint. I have some thoughts about these. Some pesto, some herbed butter, some dried for winter. I'm not sure about the mint.

We talked this evening about how we've almost used up our garlic for the year already (we've made a lot of pesto and sauce). Next year, we're not going to try beans or watermelon (we never got watermelon to fruit, and the beans only ever produce enough for a few meals, maybe throw in to a salad or soup. They don't enchant me the way that tomatoes and hot peppers do. So next year we're planting first year garlic everywhere there was a bean plant, and second year garlic where the watermelon vine languished. As time goes by, you figure out what works. What's worth it. I wish we'd been able to make a cucumber grow, but all my vines shriveled miserably. I wish in general that we had space enough to justify potatoes, okra, zucchini, but we just don't. This is where we live, and tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and herbs will have to be what we have.

On my way back in, I spied a moonflower blooming on the vine that trails up our porch. I called to Sophia, and she came out to see. Then she went in and got her sister, and they both stooped down in the darkness with a little camping lantern, admiring the huge white blossom.

For someone so busy...you sure are lazy

That would be a quote from inside my head. The weather is changing--rain, mild temperatures, humidity, sluggishness--and while I can't say enough good about highs in the low 80s, I can't find the vocabulary in my brain to say it. I drink coffee...and the coffee, it does nothing. I take a nap, and wake up more tired than when I started.

BUT, there is good news in the world as well. I've lost the stubborn 5 pounds I've half-heartedly been working on since June. At this rate...don't think about this rate...but this is good news. The pictures we took in the park with Renee McMahon were stunningly beautiful and now we are in the hard position of picking which ones we want to spend a fortune on. And I am almost done with a rather large knitting project, and have the math worked out to do the little bolero jacket/shrug for Sophia's wedding outfit in October.

Tomorrow is more Atrium training, 9 to 4, but it's only one day, so it shouldn't be so bad. I'm then setting up the Children's Liturgy of the Word room, and gearing up for Sunday's big start for RCIA. Next Wednesday I'm part of a symposium at a junior college in Illinois. My topic is mah jongg. After that, I realize, looking at my calendar, I am hip-deep in fall and routine and fans running at night and summer can say goodnight.

And maybe I'll say good morning?

On Obedience

I'm still working through this work with Sr. Jean Frances. My oblation is September 30 and I am shamefully behind. Last night, Mike asked me, "how behind are you?" and I said, "put it this way. If I were making my oblation next fall, I'd be ahead of schedule." But then this morning, I looked at the work left to do and realized it wasn't so much. Six essays left to read and respond to. Today's is Obedience. My essay assumes it is already understood what obedience is. It is more of a reflection on the idea as it appeared to me this morning.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Today, I dropped off my daughter at preschool for the first time, which is notable not in that she is growing up and moving on, but in that I now have, twice a week, 3 hours to myself. I may never have to take Maeve into a grocery store again. I can browse in the library for adult books and not get dirty looks from other patrons. This is a welcome change.

My thoughts on obedience this morning are twofold, based on this new step in my family’s life. First of all, Maeve is a different-drummer kind of girl. She is my second child, headstrong, not easily convinced of any path. Wild horse, while my other daughter is more of a tame dog. Sophia is a pack animal, eager to please the alphas, knows her place and moves gracefully through life. When I think of obedience, I think of Sophia. I think of having to say something only once, and then cheerfully, she does what I ask. Sometimes without having to ask. Maeve, on the other hand, simply does not. She must be cajoled, bribed, convinced, threatened, punished.

But today, she walked in to City Garden Montessori, went straight to where she changed out of her outside shoes and into slippers, walked to her classroom, and sat down on the circle with the lime green dot that indicates “this is Maeve’s place” as the assistant teacher pointed out. She did all this while I talked to the school director about tuition—without any prompting from me, she followed the rules without argument, without trying to show how her way was better. She was suddenly obedient. Maeve’s not a bad kid. But I think my house is set up for dogs—do this, don’t do that, sit, stay, leave it—and she’s a horse. She looked at the rest of the herd, saw that they had sat down at their places, and she did the same. Obedience works in both directions. In order to help someone obey, one must listen to his or her needs. In order to best obey, one must communicate.

The other thought I had, once I got back in my car and headed over to my parish, was the idea of obedience without grumbling, else obedience be a false virtue. Right now, my life is really busy. It would be a lot easier if I dropped some of my obligations to church, neighborhood, school. One of the things I do every week is walk into my church, water plants, check on linens, and clean the pews. Walking labyrinth style through the pews, cleaning up detritus, leftover bulletins, envelopes, song sheets, redistributing books where they belong. This is not onerous, in fact, it is meditative. But today, my first day of childless freedom, I wanted to go to the library. I wanted to shop. I wanted to sit in a coffeehouse and read my book for bookclub and not do anything I promised to do. I thought about church tidying and it seemed like a huge burden all of a sudden. But something in me said, ah, Bridgett, you know the day will be better if you tend to your obligations first. And I stopped my silent whining. I went to St. Pius, I watered plants, and I cleaned up the pews. I sang, tentatively at first, until it dawned on me that the doors were locked and I was alone. My voice is beautiful echoing off those windows and walls, all alone without better singers to convince me otherwise. I locked up after a half hour’s work, the rain had stopped outside, and I think my mind was in a better place. Far better than if I’d followed my own will and gone and sat in Starbucks with a book. Sometimes I’m a dog, sometimes I’m a horse, but often, I think I’m more of a housecat. I have things I need to get done, but oh, wouldn’t it be nice to nap in the sun. Not yet.

And then I went to coffee

So then I went to coffee with Ann and Janet; followed by a long conversation with Kate, who has kids my kids' ages, we were painting the children's liturgy of the word room. And all is back together again. Just beginning of the yaer stress. And the weather broke a bit. Meaning to say, it started to fix. Cleaned my house, made some more tomato sauce for the freezer, finished up some shtuff. Feel a little better.