7 Quick Takes: Good, Bad, and Ugly

--1-- Ugly

Last month (more specifically the July/August polyglot that was the last 45 to 60 days) got away from me. We had the flu. We had a newborn. We had excuses! Literally. Though we homeschool and though it was summer, we were in such bad shape that our family physician and pediatrician kept trying to hand us official "Excused from School" slips. I took that as permission to flounder on couches and gripe with abandon, but the slips were unnecessary. My husband is a wonderful man who steps up to the plate every time he's called up to bat. Lucky for us, he's an excellent cook because he did more than his fair share of it these last few weeks.

Thank you, sweet guy!

--2-- Good

We have started homeschooling this week. The Kindergarteners are happily devouring their First Grade math program. The Fifth Grader is embarking on a study of the American experience from Greenland to the Moon. The whole lot of them are doing a Neighborhood Unit that will give me the excuse to take my homeschool group on a tour of our the fire station, airport, and local news station.

--3-- Good

I would like to ask prayers for an old, old friend of mine who is embarking on her career as a homeschooling mom. She, like me, has schoolteachers in the family tree, so there is a bit of self-imposed added pressure to do a stellar job. Since I don't have her permission to use her name, you may pray for her under the name of Scholastica, if you please. God will know who you mean.

--4-- Good

Since we are on the subject of homeschooling, I wanted to share this gem of a post from Tara. I like how she has been flexible enough and honest enough to modify her game. She has discovered that sometimes that wall that you beat your head against is a guide and not an obstacle. I also like how well she manages to put the purpose of raising children at the center of her homeschooling. Enjoy!

The Night Before Homeschooling…

September 2, 2013 By Tara Edelschick Leave a Comment

..and all through the house, Tara is procrastinating.

That was the first line of my first blog post, written the night before our first official day of homeschooling.

That was three years ago, and much has changed.  The night before we start our fourth year of homeschooling seems like a good time to stop and reflect.

Click here to continue...

--5-- Bad

This one is so bad, it is ugly, horrific. In England, no one is interested in putting a stop to the abortion of girls simply because they have the misfortune of being girls. Feminism is so adamantly for abortion, that it is lining up against the birth of girls.

Like so many of the unthinking zealotry, do we now see that to be a feminist ultimately means to be against all things feminine? We modern thinkers have repackaged misogyny and pronounced it good. We have streamlined the ancient ideas that women are inconveniently fertile, that everything that makes us uniquely women is an inherent flaw. The result is the same and ages old philosophy: we women must be sterile and we must be as genderless as possible. Feminists are so for us, my friends, they are against us. As Victor Hugo describes this phenomenon, "It is to be a partisan of things to the point of becoming their enemy; it is to be so strongly for, as to be against." (Les Miserables by Victor Hugo)

Thank Heaven for Little Girls…Not

September 5, 2013 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker Leave a Comment

The UK law enforcement authorities decide that it is not worthwhile prosecuting abortionists who kill unborn baby girls…simply because they’re baby girls. Read about it here.

The silence of the feminist pro aborts in the face of this outrage is deafening. What more can one say except that these cruel women clearly prefer the “choice” of grown up females over the lives of unborn females. Why else would they be silent? What the pro aborts are saying is, “We would rather people continued to have the right to abortion for any reason than to have any restrictions at all on abortion. We would rather allow the killing of baby girls by selective gender-chosen abortion than see abortion restricted in any way.

Click here for more...

--6-- Good

Speaking of modern heresies, modern dating has boiled down to using other people for entertainment purposes. Dating is more about culling your spouse from the herd than it is finding something(one) interesting to do Friday night. Here's a How-To on dating, in case this is all news to you...

How to Go on an Actual Date

Ask 20 people what a “date” means or looks like and you will get 20 different answers —different etiquette, different expectations, different experiences, different everything.

Apparently most of us are just making it up as we go along.

Done well, a date is an art and a mystery. Few things are more intoxicating and memorable than a truly great date. Unfortunately, it seems the proper date is becoming a lost art.

Click here to read more...

--7-- Good or Bad, Depending

Just to lighten things up a bit before you head off to your weekend jump here to hear the best a capella rendition of the Tetris theme song ever!

7 Quick and Late Random Takes

--1--

When the telltale signs of immanent regurgitation briefly interrupted our bedtime bedside chat, my nine-year-old son and I resumed with a new topic.

"Hairballs," he reflected, "that's not one of His finer creations."

"No," I replied, "and I wasn't too appreciative of the cat's gift."

"Or God's!" he said giggling.

Catching his giggle, I opine in my best God voice, "'Oh, my child, this steamy hairball is for your greater good! That you may grow in holiness!'"

Mimicking me, mimicking God, he deadpans, "'And besides, it's Lent.'"

Catholic humor. You just have to love it.

--2--

Speaking of Kids

America has stopped having them. We slipped below the replacement rate and are holding at about 1.9 children per woman. There's not a peep about this out there? Really? I guess we can all go quietly off into a demographic winter.

Here's an article on it for further study...What to expect when nobody's expecting

A link to the documentary released in 2009 entitled Demographic Bomb.

--3--

Speaking of low birthrates

There are forced sterilizations all over the world. The most widely known program, which is still little known, was during the 1990s when the World Health Organization swept through Peru taking women's fertility by stealth or bribery, often without the woman's consent or full understanding. The public outcry over the lack of follow up care made a stir on the fringes of American media. The practice is continuing. I know of a woman in Zimbabwe who had a tubal ligation performed on her without her or her husband's knowledge or consent while undergoing an unrelated procedure. The evidence of it was discovered as they investigated the cause of repeated miscarriages. Women's rights, indeed.

--4--

What, me marry?

According to the stats in this article about this article, young men are giving up on the idea of marriage. Predictably, not only are women angry about that, feminists are angry about women reporting about women being angry about that.

--5--

Spring Snow

It's snowing. It's freezing. It's Spring.

--6--

It's getting cheesy!

I made my first mozzarella of the season this week. For the first time in several years we have reliable air conditioning so I shall dabble once more in aged cheeses as the season progresses. Whoot!

--7--

A recipe

My Momma's Cereal

5 cups Old Fashioned Oats
1/2 cup oil
1 cup honey
Add nuts and various dried fruits as desired, 1 cup each

Heat oil and honey in a good sized pot until warm. Add oats and extras. Stir until well mixed.

Place mixture in a greased 13x9x2" pan and bake at 275 degrees for 1 hour, stirring every 20 minutes. Pour onto waxed paper and spread to cool. Break up and store in tightly lidded container.

Serve as a cereal or a yogurt or ice cream topping.

Goody Goody Gumdrops: Easy Christmas Candy

Sheila's over here getting eaten alive by trolls on the blogosphere. One even strayed over to bite me for saying essentially the same thing (she says it way better). I do advocate practicing accommodating hubbies on this side of the sheets first so that the shouts of delighted surprise emanating from the bedroom doesn't wake the neighbors. (Those would be your shouts, by the way. Hubbies are generally very accommodating to accommodation in the bedroom.) All of this oppressive politeness and Neanderthal niceness seems run of the mill to me, but you never know what will tick people off. Makes you have to work hard for it.

Hubby and I on a vacation in Europe

At any rate, since being sweet to your husband is this year's outrageously offensive behavior, I thought I'd be even more scandalous and advocate cooking again.

I know this cooking habit of mine is downright stereotypical of me, but I can't help myself. My husband eats. My children eat. Even I have been known to eat. My family is referred to as the "Plague of Locusts" among our friends. We descend upon a kitchen and leave dishes spinning in our wake. If I didn't cook, just imagine the effort entailed in feeding the Martin Hordes. I'd have to strap five children in their age appropriate car torture devices and appear with them in public. I'd have to comb hair, wipe faces, and even wear shoes! Anything but that! Have you seen my shoes? Cooking is my only recourse against such horrors. 

I wear them because he likes them!

It doesn't help that I'm cheap. To move Martins, we must use a vehicle. The vehicle has about 6 round trip town runs in its tank. I have to tell you that what I cook, for the most part, is better than the food we can afford once we feed this member of the Martin Family.

Most restaurant food isn't worth the gas.

So, now that I've got my daily recommended allowance of snark out of my system and have once again implied that I seriously believe that wives should at least act as if they like their husbands, I guess I should give you the candy recipe. I adapted it from a magazine that advocates, among other anti-happiness propaganda that wives should have boyfriends to practice being nice to. I guess that makes sense. Since we gals are supposed to treat our husbands authentically (i.e., rudely, impulsively, irrationally), we have to make nice somewhere or we'd lose all social skills before our divorce.

Gumdrops
 

6 tbs (8 envelopes) of unflavored gelatin

1 1/2 cups cold water

2 1/4 cups boiling water

6 cups sugar

Sugar to coat

extract to taste (5 drops butter extract, 3 drops mint extract is super yummy!)

food coloring as desired (try some of the neon colors)

Don't hate me because I'm sweet!

Begin boiling 2 1/4 cups of water. Coat 2 8x8 pans with cooking spray and set aside. In another pot, sprinkle gelatin evenly over cold water, avoiding clumps. Let stand for 5 minutes. Pour boiling water into gelatin and water mix. Stir until dissolved. Add sugar. Gently boil mixture for 25 minutes. Pour mixture into the 8 x 8 pans. Add extract and coloring and stir gently until uniformly colored. Chill for 4 hours or let stand overnight. Coat a knife with cooking spray (this is important) and cut gumdrops into cubes. Coat in sugar and let stand for a few hours for the sugar coating to crystallize. Store in an airtight container. Tastes great! Ships great!

The Culture of Divorce

REWIND WEEKEND: As I am off on retreat this weekend, I thought I would rerun some of the marriage posts. We can all use a refresher course on being sweet, after all. (Me included and me especially!)

The Culture of Divorce

"The unchallenged acceptance of divorce has infected our world with hopelessness" from the Retrouvaille vision statement

A friend lamented recently, "Why wasn't I taught how to be a wife when I was growing up?"

I thought on that for a split second and then I opened my mouth and said something along the lines of: well, my mom had tried her best. She wanted to teach me to be independent. She made sure I knew how to balance a checkbook and stay within a budget. She stressed the importance of maintaining good credit, limiting your debts, and paying your bills on time. She also trained me up to maintain a house for myself. I could cook, clean, maintain a decent schedule for myself so I didn't burn out. I resisted all along the way, of course. She insisted on choosing a solid, dependable career as part of my training, and it was in college that I learned to resist anything that resembled "women's work." If it smacked of the domestic chains, I wanted nothing of it. She had her work cut out for her.

When I took a breath and she had half a chance, my friend, obviously a tiny bit irritated with me a bit, said, "Not that stuff. That other stuff."

Come to find out what she really meant was the skills like keeping your mouth shut when you want to let loose, apologizing without rationalizing, allowing space for emotions without letting them run the show. That's a whole different kind of training.

All my married life I've struggled to learn That Other Stuff.

The more I thought about this the more I realized I've been trained to be divorced better than I'd been trained to be married.

Here's some Divorce Preparation Tips I picked up along the way:

• Get a career and keep your own money in case he dumps you.
• Keep track of what belongs to whom.
• Let him know exactly how you feel.
• Men want to rule women.
• Men are silly.
• Men don't feel.
• There's no difference between men and women--it's all cultural.
• Because you feel it, it must be true.
• You're not just arguing with your husband, you are arguing with thousands of years of male domination and female repression.

Most of this "helpfulness" came from those women's magazines that are chock full of articles my husband and I joking refer to as "How to be divorced in 6 years or less!" The real stuff took some real maturity and some real pains to learn.

The Real Stuff like:

• There's no winning an argument.
• Actions speak louder than words.
• Emotions are just emotions.
• Love and trust are not emotions all the time: sometimes they are conscious decisions you make.

There's No Winning an Argument

You can win debates. You can even even win the lottery, but an argument with your spouse is unwinnable. Winning means there's a loser and when there's a loser, you both lose. It's like scoring a touchdown against your own side. You and he are in this together. You're a team. You may have won the war of words, but you've lost something more important. Keeping score and using conflict to do it is a no-win.

You need to approach conflict as the inevitable result of two people living in close proximity. You're going to have to come to a compromise of some sort. This other person has needs and desires that are at the very least just as important as yours. Try to find a way to accommodate each other. The first step is to listen to him. Try restating his argument for him. "Are you saying...help me understand." Let him know you are really listening and really considering his side. That generally takes the heat out of the friction between you, and once that happens you can get down to the business of working things out.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Are you still acting single? Do you have your own space, your own money, your own stuff? Do you make decisions that will affect the two of you without his input just because you can or even because you merely feel like it? Do you resent the demands he makes upon you?

If so, consider how loudly you are communicating two thing: my spouse doesn't make a difference in my life and he is not worth any extra effort on my part. You may not ever say such rude comments out loud, but consider how much wear and tear is done to the relationship when you daily act as if they were your truth.

But He Isn't Perfect!

If you are expecting him to be perfect before you are willing to make any changes yourself, you'll have a very long wait. Neither he, nor you, will ever attain that glorious state. Waiting for him to change first is a perfect excuse. It's your handy dandy get of responsibility free card. When you find yourself thinking he doesn't deserve the best from you, I can pretty much guarantee you probably don't deserve the best from him either.

Believe It or Not, It's Controversial!

REWIND WEEKEND: As I am off on retreat this weekend, I thought I would rerun some of the marriage posts. We can all use a refresher course on being sweet, after all. (Me included and me especially!) 

Until recently, two good friends and I had an unspoken rule: never bad mouth your husband. The rule is still in effect. We just simply got around to actually talking about it.

Imagine! Three women working, schooling, sewing, cooking, watching children together and not talking about something. Well, it happens. Especially over a topic so potentially hazardous: respecting men.

Don't think the topic is so touchy? Try broaching it among the gals sometimes. If you are male, brace yourself for the look. (You know the one I mean.) If you are female, better just brace yourself. You are in for a diatribe about how backward, oppressed, brainwashed, and just so ickily Catholic you are.

Or maybe you are in for the worst of all, the whispers...Her husband won't even let her talk about him! What!?! Oh, the Poor Thing, and all those children, too!

Male bashing is a sport. On the commercials, sitcoms, and other television drivel, the woman has to take charge and take action in the face of the ineptness of men. Cue the canned laughter, please. He's at it again! Movies, too, especially "family fare" present the bumbling but well meaning father as the standard. Men are childish, we are told. Men can't function without us women, they say. This swill is swirling all around us. We are steeped in it. As a result, women bash their own men. Why not? It's fashionable. It's funny. It's a conversational gimmick, "Oh you'll never believe what he's done now..."

Meanwhile our girls are hearing it all, and our boys are swallowing it.

Back to my friends and I and our unspeakable rule. You'll first need to understand that we sometimes do charity work together, sewing Blessing Blankets for crisis pregnancy centers, sending stockings to soldiers at Christmas, that kind of thing. Working with your hands sets your mouth free. There's a whole lot of conversation covering a whole lot of ground. Plus, we're all Southerners by birth or by association, so for us talk ain't cheap, it's precious!

Well, around November, an acquaintance and her children joined us and ours and worked right alongside us. It was exciting! Here was a new person, with new stories to hear, new kids to get to know, new jokes! It was great!

Until It happened.

She bashed her husband. Not a terrible bash, simply sharing an embarrassing moment of his that I am certain he would not want shared. Especially not with a stranger. So I smiled, caught her eye briefly, and changed the subject. Just the way my mother taught me.

First, you may need to let me teach you: It's a polite Southern way of saving another person's face. One is to ignore a gaffe, smile, and change the subject. It's gentle. It's subtle, and for Southern women, it's unmistakable. You know you've messed up and are being given the grace of an instant replay. It's best to take it. Like being offered gum or a mint. You take it. It's a nice way of saying your breath is bad.

It didn't work. I don't know if she was locked in a habit, but it was almost as if she couldn't help herself. The more I tried to change the subject, the more she offered her husband upon the altar of mutual feminine scorn. It became awkward, so I invented an excuse to briefly leave the vicinity, hoping the conversation might reboot with the interruption. It didn't. I felt terrible. I knew I had probably already ruined any chance of her liking me, and I was sad to be unable to move her mentally from my "acquaintance" category to the "potential friend."

She tried the same conversational gambit with the others throughout the day. And with the same results. The good thing that came of all this awkwardness was that afterwards we three finally broached the subject of male bashing. We spoke our unwritten rule for friendship and realized we all three carried the same litmus test, "Are you trustworthy with your men?"


For me it's like this: I just can't be friends with a woman who would betray someone's trust. Even if that someone is a man. Even if that someone is her husband. In a purely selfish vein, I know that if she's going to do that to him, one day she'll do it to me. And yes, as a mother I don't want my children hearing this type of conversation about a husband and father. As a wife I don't want my husband to overhear me involved in the tearing down of another husband.

But most importantly as a woman and in my small way, I feel duty bound to protect other women's sons from senseless attack. I know how ugly women can be. I thank God I am not a man for that very reason (among others). In all, men are different, a little strange in their thinking, but loveable just the same.

So ladies, if you want to be my friend, you know the rule.


Related Posts:
http://gardenofholiness.blogspot.com/2009/04/attitude-tips-for-wives-and-moms.html

Oven Jambalaya and Adopting a Lousiana Heritage

My biological stepfather introduced me to Jambalaya, but before I share the recipe I'd better untangle the relationship we had.

I was adopted as an infant. When I was 18, my birth mother tracked me down and we began a slow process of getting to know one another. She was married to a man named Royal Peter. He was my biological stepfather; not related to me at all really, except by marriage and by an accident of birth, and through the efforts of two families to get to know each other after 18 years of never having met before. He's been gone now for years, and one of the many ways he influenced me was through food.

When I met him I was of the mind that if I had to cook the food, it wasn't worth eating. I was right about that! I disdained all things feminine and wanted to prove my point to the point that I was actually proud of being a horrible cook. He was a Louisianne and French enough in his outlook that he considered food a heritage. That idea eventually intrigued me enough to start experimenting with my own cultural heritage--Southern cooking, among others. In a way, he planted a seed that is still growing. I love the creativity of cooking and I really love the silence that descends as the first bite of something incredible hits the taste buds and takes control of the brain for a split second before the, "Oh! Wow!" or "Mmmm!" noises begin.

My first exposure to Jambalaya came during a conversation about an impending lunch. I was working on my biological family's ranch at the time. I was outdoors and about a mile from any buildings and by some quirk of necessity and planning I had no transportation. He was the one sent to get me for lunch.

Since it was early spring I was working on sprinklers. Since it was California it was early February. Since it was early February it was nearly Mardi Gras. Since it was nearly Mardi Gras, Roy was missing Louisiana. If he was missing Louisiana, he was going to talk about it. Being hungry he was going to talk about food, too. Since it took me a bit to work myself to a stopping point and since it was a one-person job, he leaned against the bumper of his truck to chat. That's the round about way he got on the subject of food storage in the steamy state.

He said that the week started with roasts on Sunday, sausage and beans on Tuesday, chicken on Wednesday, fish or shrimp on Friday, and leftovers on the days in between. On Saturday, anything leftover from the week that hadn't turned (or had hardly turned), got put into a jumble in a pot, spiced to perfection, and was called Jambalaya. The conversation and the remains of the job took about 20 minutes from start to finish. I could almost taste the talk. He was so descriptive in that Southern gentlemanly way of his, and I was such a foodie even then when I didn't know it yet, I could smell and see all the dishes he described. I've been hunting through Jambalaya recipes looking for him ever since.

So nowadays, whenever I stir the colors of rice and beans, when I smell bay leaf and cayenne I am there again with him in his cowboy hat, big buckle, and boots leaning against the bumper of his truck, his arms crossed and his eyes far away.

Here's our latest conversation:

Oven Jambalaya

3 cups water
1 1/2 cup uncooked regular rice
1 can corn (drained)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 small can diced peppers
1 small onion diced
1 package kielbasa or Italian sausage sliced into half inch disks*
1/2 pound cooked ground beef or breakfast sausage*
1/2 pound cooked chicken shredded or diced*
1/2 pound fresh shrimp peeled and deveined*
2 tsp chili powder
2 cloves garlic crushed
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp thyme
2 bay leaves
dash of cayenne pepper (to taste)
salt and pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a lightly greased baking dish, cover and bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour. Yields 8 servings.

*The meats for Jambalaya are both interchangeable and optional. When I made this the first time, the meats I had on hand were kielbasa and beef hot dogs. I sliced them up and put them in the dish. Mmmm! I recommend making a Jambalaya in the traditional way whenever you have a bit of this and a bit of that leftover to make a jumble in the pot. Throw in leftover veggies, too, especially leftover okra!

Serves with cornbread muffins and a green salad anytime!

The New Feminism

This came on my radar screen through a great site Faith and Family Live: the Magazine for Catholic Living.



Law Professor and Catholic mom talks about the New Feminism. Interestingly, she is very gentle in her brief treatment of the "old feminsim." That's one of the reasons I decided to share it. As you know, I felt a tremendous sense of being let down by feminism's view of my chosen roles. In this New Feminism I see woman valued for her unique contribution to the world. Have a listen.



Because the comments on the Youtube site show a woeful lack of study or even understanding of the terms involved, I have taken the liberty to include some of the documents referenced in the video.

Evangelium Vitae (English Translation)

Theology of the Body: This being a rather lengthy series of documents and lectures which will probably take centuries to unlock, another resource for study on this topic is Christopher West's works.

Deus Caritas Est (English Translation)


Related links (at least in my perspective) in this blog:
Defeminizing
What Works?
Believe it or not, it's controversial
The Culture of Divorce