Pardon the Interruption

For those of you who enjoy the weekly Wifey Wednesday posts, please pardon me while I attend to some wifely duties today in lieu of blogging about them. Advent is right around the corner and I have to unpack a few more boxes and varnish the living room floor before Sunday (we moved last January, but we're renovating and therefore still half packed).

When I come back I'll have some (hopefully) interesting topics, such as "What do you practice?" and "So, he wants to talk about Bigfoot" after the regularly scheduled "7 Quick Takes" to take us into the weekend!

This Interruption Brought to You By a Narrow Eustachian Tube

My kind of girly has never been the vapory, cute and charming type. The first time my husband had romantic thoughts of me, I took his breath away, sure, but that was only after I'd made him laugh until he cried over my chicken impersonation--inchickenation? It was the cow impression, my finale, that knocked him flat, though. He really did fall out of his chair laughing. He said he knew right then he'd never forget me. He never did. My impromptu impressions made an impression, and yet I'm not at all like the type of gal he's ever dated. His type had always before been dainty, wispy, and delicate. He married me, though. Maybe because I have a strange way of dealing with awkward pauses, which is why I broke the ice with "Want to see a chicken?" all those years ago, but I think it's mostly because I can still knock him out of his chair laughing.

I do have one "dainty" part of me. It is my Eustachian Tube. Because of it's delicate nature I am the only adult I know who still gets regular ear infections. Everything else is a solid "medium to large," alas. At any rate, being upright the last few days has been a challenge, but today, I'm feeling better. After I am done shoveling out my laundry room, I'll get back to blogging!

7 Quick Takes

1 - I am working on very few hours of sleep due to my mother running to the hospital last night. My father took her in before midnight and they got back after three. She is doing just fine now. It turns out that all the mysterious and scary symptoms she was experiencing were very treatable, though Emergency Room worthy. What a relief!

2 - P.S. to #1 above...Pardon the typos or rambling incoherency. Today, and today only, I can blame it all on the lack of sleep.

Image source: http://thesavannahsoapco.com/wash-dry-fold

3 - My main focus today is to write this post, finish the homeschool week, and make sure my parents stay asleep as long as possible. I shall do this without grumbling (if I'm doing it right) and while folding laundry. I did very little laundry while laid up with the rib, so the Laundry Monster needs some taming.

4 - I have an idea for a brand new blog--which may wind up being a page on this blog since I have made the Garden purposefully broad. I'm going to go ahead and create it so that nobody steals my cool name, but I'm not going to work on it until the focus of it comes more into focus. I'll keep you posted on how that is going to work out.

5 - After tossing out a fleece (see Gideon) regarding blogging, I am being answered in the affirmative to continue blogging. Now that my personal ego is out of the way (all the goodies I wanted from blogging have long been outweighed by the grind of producing posts), it seems that I am being called to practice the discipline it will take to make blogging a part of my vocation as a wife and mother. I had thought blogging was all about fulfilling my personal interests of writing and socializing, it turns out blogging is more about me working out my salvation (Philippians 2:12--14) through my primary vocation. I think that because I use my posts as a way to remind myself of what I know I should do but often don't, it is more vital to vocation than I had thought. Now the trick shall be to keep at this without allowing it to interfere with my duties. Can we say 4:00 a.m.? Oh, yes we can! No grumbling allowed (Philippians 2:14).

6 - Part of the Catholic celebration of All Saint's Day and All Souls Day is praying for the people who have died. If you are of the Protestant persuasion, the non-Christian persuasion, or the semi-catechised Catholic persuasion and have questions about the Catholic understanding of life, death and the afterlife, this is an excellent time of year to ask. The Catholic Blogosphere is gearing up towards November 1 and November 2 and, in fact, the entire month of November should have plenty to offer in that regard. Feel free to ask away!

A picture of an elaborate All Souls Day remembrance.

7 - I should seriously get going, so I am going to leave you with the guilt-ridden thought that I took exactly 40 minutes out of my duties today to write this. This is better than my 3 hour average, though. It must have been inspired.

 

Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler, a fellow Texan, for hosting

7 Quick Takes Friday 

over at Conversion Diary.com

Pondering my ponderings...

I blog about momming and teaching and fostering and wifing and cooking and goating with my particular Catholic and ex-unrepentant heathen flavor because these are the things that I do. I hope I don't come across as a self-proclaimed expert because I am certainly not one. My main point, in most of my posts is to think out loud, share what has worked for me and what has not, smile at my shortcomings, and hope for the best. That's it, really.

I feel that I am pretty okay at mothering. I have my good days. I know I was a pretty decent school teacher because I had these yearly evaluations that told me so. I make a poor excuse for a wife, I'll admit. I know I wouldn't want to be married to me, so I give credit where credit is due for any success there: the Sacrament, my husband's forgiving nature, and a whole lot of reading up on the real experts. Most of my wifely posts are me preaching at me reminding myself to get doing what I know I am supposed to be doing.

I thought somebody out there might have enough in common to laugh with me or even enough common sense to laugh at me at times, but I knew I enjoyed the company of others' thoughts on the ethernet and thought I might be able to contribute a thought or two, too. It's all a little awkward though, this blogging thing. I can see how easily it might degenerate into a roadblock to family time, a popularity contest, a vanity feeder, or an idea narrower. I really don't need any help finding new ways to fall short, so I do try to keep the pitfalls in mind. At best I guess, blogging is a bit like writing magazine articles, but it has a more intimate appeal to it somehow. When I read a good blog regularly, I feel the stirrings of something very like friendship with the blogger.

If this were the 1950s, I'd have you over for coffee and tea in the afternoon and we could laugh over the mountains and molehills of the daily grind together. But this is the Post-Modern Era. We are so neatly modern that I sit here in my home and type, you sit there in yours and read, and we share a moment displaced. It's much less entertaining this way. Much less civilized. All this social networking and blog reading feels cozy and homey, but is it enough to battle a certain modern loneliness we all have?

I don't know. What I do know is that I've been privileged to share some of my inner workings here. I feel very grateful and sometimes apologetic towards the people who have read what I've written. I hope you all, like my husband, find me just entertaining enough you can forgive me my shortcomings and, like real friends, point them out when they show, so I can tuck them back in again.

Watching way too many movies

We've got the flu and I'm watching an old Lassie movie. The dialogue is making me laugh until I cough...

"What do you think of Carol?"
"Well, she seems competent."

What a gal!

Now they're hunting a mountain lion and Lassie is actually tracking it and coming within sight of it. Again, what a gal!

Every dog I've ever seen in the presence of a mountain lion cowered in fear and urine on the porch trying valiantly to disappear between the cracks in the boards while simultaneously eating the front door.

Lassie, meanwhile, seems to have the psychic ability to communicate with big cats and is helping move the cougar's young to a new den under the watchful eye of the momma cat.

So much for realism.

Meanwhile I'll be back with a guest blogger when I've coughed up my other lung.

What I like about blogging...

It makes me write.

It makes me think about writing.

It makes me wish I had access to a keyboard all day.

It's probably better that I don't, but still.

Really, really, really want that vote!

You've got until the 14th, people!

Note to self: Be pithy!

As it turns out, spring is not the best time of year to take a little break from blogging to do a little gardening in the real world. Not while the cut throat battle to the death competition of the 4th Annual Cannonball Catholic Blog Awards rages!

Not only have I been nominated in the Best New Kid on the Block category, I'm shamelessly plugging it!<--shameless plug

Please expect random and repeated reference to this from now until May something or other when the nominations end and the pleading for votes begins...

Favorite New Blog

We in the Catholic Spectrum get a bit wearied with all the so-called Catholic (small p) popes who are actually (big p) Protestants with a poor sense of direction. Oh, hi, Bob. No, this is the Catholic Church. Bob's Church of He Was Only Talking Symbolically When He Said, "This Is My Body" is down the street and on the left. Only a Modern Man Catholic has the arrogance to think they can out-think Augustine and Aquinas without actually reading them.

Anywhoo, Cathy captured that irritation perfectly with the line "The Catholic Church is not a democracy. However, you have the right to go to Hell."

She had me at "hell"! Anyone who can be that funny when that ticked off is my kind of blogger. Check her out!


The Recovering Dissident