Light and Momentary

Return

We are in a little lull here, in which the post-Christmas numbers have stabilized and the new, more contagious COVID variant has not yet wrought any visible mischief here in Gladlyville. Yesterday I went back to the climbing gym with Pete for the first time since October (their online people-counter told us they had a single-digit number of climbers in the facility; everybody has to wear masks at all times). It felt so good to be climbing again! And today was even better -- I tuned my bass and went back to Mass in person for the first time since November. 

Elwood and I are taking it turns to worry about the new variant. "Maybe we should order groceries online so you can spend less time in the store," I said to him last week. "What about the new variant?" he said to me this morning when I told him I was thinking about texting the music director and going back to Mass today. We're pretty much on the same page, though, which is a gift I do not take for granted.

No more slaw

At some point in the last four years I looked at a big bowl of root vegetable slaw and I said, "I am going to eat slaw until I feel better." We make a lot of slaw at our house, with carrots and kohlrabi and radishes and these delicious ivory-colored Japanese turnips, and I couldn't even count the number of times I sat down at the dinner table and said, "I am going to eat slaw until I feel better." Sometimes it did make me feel better to eat nourishing food with my family, but it turns out that the healing powers of slaw are fairly limited in an era characterized by more than 25,000 lies from the mouth of the president. And let's not forget the >50,000 words' worth of Twitter insults. That's, like, a novella's worth of Twitter insults.

The Slaw of Happiness turned into a gentle family joke. "Here, Mom, have some slaw," the kids might say if I seemed down. But last night I sat down to dinner with my family, knowing that the person in the White House had started his day at Mass and had promised on a mammoth Douay-Rheims Bible to dedicate his whole soul to the work of governing this fractured nation justly. I took a deep breath and let it all the way out, immeasurably relieved that the day had passed without further violence in Washington. "You know," I said, "I don't believe I'll be eating any more slaw."

(Yes, the Mexico City policy; yes, Little Sisters of the Poor. Today, right now, I am just immensely grateful that Trump is gone.)

You too can make a pandemic blanket

MomQueenBee commented on my pandemic blanket a few days ago, so this is a post about how to make your own. Take a big pile of worsted-weight leftovers in colors that make you happy. You can also combine sportweight or DK with a strand of fingering if you want more variety, or you can throw in some Aran-weight yarn too. It's flexible.

Start with a mitered square. Cast on 51 stitches (I recommend a long-tail cast-on) and knit back. Knit 24, S2KP, knit 24; turn and knit back. On the next row you'll knit 23, S2KP, knit 23; turn and knit back. On every right-side row, you'll decrease across the three middle stitches. When you're down to one stitch, break the yarn and pull it through the stitch.

To make another square, you will build on your initial square by picking up an odd number of stitches along one side. Let's say I want my second square to be a little smaller: I can pick up 19 stitches, turn my knitting around, and use the cable cast-on to add an additional 18 stitches. After I knit back to my starting point I'll do just the same thing as before, decreasing across the three middle stitches on every right-side row. If I want my decrease line to point in the opposite direction, I can use long-tail cast-on to create my 18 new stitches before I pick up 19 from the existing square. Flexible! So flexible! 

You can also make a mitered rectangle; just bind off your leftover stitches after you have consumed all the stitches on the shorter side. In the picture above, I am knitting a mitered rectangle. Here, I'll add in a close-up so you can see for yourself. In just a couple of ridges, I will have decreased all the stitches on the right side of the decrease line. I'll stop there, and bind off the rest. It will be easier to pick up the next whack of stitches if you use a larger needle for the bind-off. You can make squares or stripes without the diagonal decrease line if you would like to do so: just work plain garter ridges. Combine shapes that please you with colors that please you until your blanket is a size that pleases you. I think I will work a crochet edging because my brain might wither and crumble into dust if I tried to do that many feet of applied I-cord.

This post at MDK contains the picture that inspired me, and if the loosey-goosey-ness of these instructions makes you unhappy, you might find some of Kay and Ann's patterns to be a soothing alternative. Their first book has a couple of different garter stitch blankets with more structured patterns, and they have reworked some of those ideas in their more recent publications. Happy knitting!

Gratitude journaling, the reboot

When I read One Thousand Gifts I took up gratitude journaling for a while. I thought it might transform me into a spiritual powerhouse but actually it just made me grumpy. Ann Voskamp wrote so enthusiastically about seeing the goodness of God in the curls of shredded cheese. And I mean, a person who says beets speak to her of the glory of God is not going to look askance at the spiritual potential of shredded cheese, but I really disliked writing in a regimented way about things I was grateful for. Oh, well, I said to myself, so much for spiritual powerhouse-ness.

I mentioned recently that I finished the book Burnout and liked it a lot (except for the surfeit of Disney princess references). The authors recommend a different take on gratitude journaling. They say most gratitude journaling focuses on being grateful for what you have, which isn't very effective as a mood-booster. They say that for a short-term mood boost, you can focus on whom you have (i.e., thinking specifically about your gratitude for the people in your life). For longer-term changes, they say, you can focus on being grateful for how things happen. Like so:

1. Think of an event or circumstance that sparks grateful feelings in you
2. Write about what happened
3. Write about how it made you feel then and how it makes you feel now
4. Explain how the event/circumstance came to be -- what caused it to happen?

One of the authors tried this for one event each day for three weeks, and she said it was amazing. (She shares my skepticism about gratitude journaling as described in women's magazine articles.) The Nagoski sisters are smart women and they tell me there is science in support of this strategy and not just personal experience. So I am going to give it a whirl for a month. I'll report back. 

Caulking the Tub

One day in 2003 I thought to myself, "I'm going to grab the caulking gun and caulk along that spot where the upstairs bathtub meets the floor." This was a task that needed doing -- we could see that there was some leakage from the upstairs bathroom of our ugly little apartment into the downstairs ceiling -- but I am not a person given to spontaneous caulking. There was an unexpected lull in my chaotic life with three small children, and something in my brain said TIME TO CAULK THE TUB.

A couple of days later a hose inside our washing machine disconnected itself, and water flooded through the downstairs ceiling. It was a MESS, and getting the machine fixed was such a hassle that I vowed never to buy another Haier appliance. But I kept thinking to myself how much worse it could have been. If I hadn't had that funny little urge to caulk the tub, the water would have poured right through that spot where the bathtub met the floor -- right into our antique set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. 

Shortly after that my husband lost his job. It felt pretty bleak at the time. We had moved across the country for him to take this job, and poof -- it was gone. In the stressful weeks that followed I kept thinking about that bathtub. It was as if God had said to me, "I can mitigate your disasters." I've remembered it ever since. We live in a world full of trouble, but it's surprising how often somebody has caulked the tub.

Remember when I railed about Gina Haspel? During the Trump purges in December she decided, for the first time in weeks, to go to the president's daily intelligence briefing. That decision made it possible for her to keep a pro-Trump extremist out of CIA leadership, even when it looked like a done deal. Thanks for caulking the tub, Ms. Haspel, and I'll keep praying for you to reconsider your position on torture.

Amid the frustrations about the vaccine rollout, it's easy to lose sight of how remarkable it is that we have not one but two vaccines to roll out, with more on the way. It hasn't been that long since we didn't know if a vaccine would be possible, let alone effective. It feels miraculous to me that these vaccines came together as quickly and successfully as they did, and I will not be surprised if some unexpected stories emerge as we go along -- a scientist who decided impulsively to try out a new idea, or to choose Option A over Option B. The pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime disaster, but the vaccine feels to me like a caulking-the-tub moment.

I am seeing it too in the stories emerging from the Capitol riots. It seemed plenty bad enough as it unfolded, but OH my friends, it could have been so much worse. They narrowly missed crossing paths in a hallway with the very vice-president they wanted to hang. Cleveland Meredith's plans to put a bullet in Nancy Pelosi's noggin were foiled when he needed a minor vehicle repair. (I will pray that he finds Jesus in prison.) I have to tell you, I haven't even been able to read all the way through this Atlantic article. But do you know what it says to me as I squint at it with one eye, as if to keep the stressful bits at bay? Somebody caulked that tub.

Anxiety Report

I am feeling calmer this week, with some thoughts I want to remember. Thought #1: anticipatory anxiety is almost always worse than being in the middle of things. Last week I just wasn't remembering how much I enjoy teaching and interacting with students. It's been a balm this week to have some synchronous classes and to see my colleagues again -- even if everybody does seem frayed around the edges. I love my subject; I love sharing it with students. My department is a good place to be. Those things are true even where there is a pandemic and [gestures wildly at the outside world] and [alludes very vaguely to department stuff].

Thought #2: caffeine is sneaky. I get in a bad cycle sometimes, in which an extra cup of coffee seems like it would help me to feel a little perkier but then it disturbs my sleep, leading to more coffee the next day. I can handle the occasional extra cup of coffee, but a string of extra-cup days inevitably ratchets my anxiety up to 11. There's enough of a lag, though, that I always find myself saying "WHY AM I SO ANXIOUS I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS IS TERRIBLE."

Thought #3: there is something to be said for anticipatory pleasures to offset anticipatory anxiety. I bought a lovely set of washi tape on sale from the Washi Tape Shop, and I enjoyed the whole process immensely: the choosing, and the waiting, and the opening of the pretty little box covered in Japanese characters, and the sticking-down of the first piece.

Thought #4: there is also something to be said for crafting as stress relief. Here is the pandemic blanket in its current state:

It spent the summer and the fall on hiatus because that is a lot of wool to pile in one's lap, but I am moving along on it again now here in the bleak midwinter. I would like it to be as long as I am, more or less, because I can only nap under it in the fetal position right now. I prefer to stretch out a little more and have warm feet when I am napping.

Back in early May I posted that I had just attended my last department meeting until February 2021, and wondered what the world would look like then. I can't answer that question quite yet (this January department meeting was added to the schedule because of all the stuff we have to work through), but I would not have predicted very many of the events that have transpired across the past eight months. So! Who knows what tomorrow brings in a world where few hearts survive?

(This 80s flashback brought to you by our family game of Name That Tune, which inspired much hilarity and nostalgia this evening. What does that line mean, anyway? Lots of dead hearts wandering around in living bodies? Most people die but some can become -- I don't know -- zombies whose hearts do survive? I thought the song was The Best in 1982 but it has lost much of its charm in the intervening 38 years.)

Also if you need a little stress-busting dance around your living room, this song is popular at our house right now. I have not listened closely to the lyrics but I feel that "más queso" is a sentiment most of us can get behind while dancing stress-bustingly: 

#OLQP

I am organizing a rosary novena, invoking the intercession of Our Lady Queen of Peace for our country for nine days. We'll start tomorrow and end on inauguration day. If the rosary isn't your thing, feel free to join us in whatever way works better for you.

Nos morituri

All right, so that's a melodramatic title. But you guys, I was a vibrating stressball last week before the events at the Capitol, and they did not improve either my focus or my peace of mind.

There's a reason they tell you that you have to return to work for a year after your sabbatical or else pay back your sabbatical salary, as I discovered in a visceral way on Monday. I suspect that this year is especially weird -- people at work are frayed around the edges after a tough fall semester, and it shows. I am walking back into a weird and volatile mix of stuff that would be unwise to blog about, so I will be vague and make optimistic noises. Challenges! Challenges help us grow strong! So many challenges to embrace!

If you are an academic still recovering from a tough fall semester, you might want to skip this paragraph, because I am going to talk about some of the ways that sabbatical was harder than expected. I knew that the work would be hard, because science is hard. I knew that I would be working alone all semester, and that I would need to find ways to feel less isolated; COVID complicated those efforts. But it was also hard in ways I did not expect. About 80% of the time I felt like I was not doing enough work, even though this feeling was not borne out by the actual outcomes of my sabbatical. I was worried that the lack of external deadlines might cause me to be too soft on myself, but -- surprise! -- it had the opposite effect. There was a ton of kid stuff to deal with at the same time. Handling the online school hassles was one of the top-ten most unpleasant things I have dealt with in 24 years of parenting. The parenting issues also stirred up some marriage issues, regarding which I will only observe that emotional labor is hard work, but I can assure you it was No Fun At All. All of it together has been wearying.

I think my colleagues are expecting me to be refreshed and rarin' to go after a semester in which I was free to focus on my research, but I am finding myself in a pretty different spot. It would be impolitic for me to be frank with them, because they really did have a tough fall. But oh, my friends in the computer, may I tell you that I also found the fall difficult, and that the winter so far is not an improvement?

Today I've been remembering that the day before my first triathlon I was overwhelmed with worry about the race. The biggest surprise of the next day was how much fun I had -- there was joy where I had only thought about catastrophe. I think I have just been put together as a person who feels cautious about new things, and I have to do a bunch of new things this semester. I am reminding myself that focusing on catastrophe makes it harder to perceive joy. I am taking deep breaths and trying to hope for the best.

Wish me luck.

We own a piece of this

I am thinking about 25 years' worth of messaging to "good Catholics." We were supposed to vote for the Republicans in 1994, because abortion, and never mind about Newt Gingrich's then-shocking decision that it was better to shut down the government than to negotiate with the liberals.

We were supposed to vote for GWB in 2000, because abortion, and never mind that he broke his campaign promise to hold the line on embryonic stem cell research less than seven months into his first term. Never mind the war, because abortion.

We were supposed to vote for Republicans in 2008 and 2012, because abortion, and never you mind about candidates who refused to take a principled stand against torture. The liberals were supporting a worse mortal sin, the logic ran (if torture was even a mortal sin -- they weren't convinced about that), and at least torture didn't kill anybody. Remember when they told us Obama was going to shut down all the Catholic hospitals because he was so committed to advancing the abortion activists' agenda? 

I found myself more and more puzzled and unhappy across these years, as the rhetoric became more and more divisive. These are the Five Non-Negotiables, screamed the pamphlets, with lots of bold-face type and little sourcing.

There are a couple of men I know who would describe themselves as pillars of their churches, but I have had to mute them on Facebook because of the ugliness in their political posts. If Nancy Pelosi is a beloved child of God, redeemed by the death of the Lord, then there are limits on what we as Christians should say about her. But it turns out that if you spend decades telling people that WE are right and THEY are dedicated to promoting evil, it gets a lot harder to see Nancy Pelosi as a beloved child of God, redeemed by the death of the Lord. If you tell people that all good Catholics vote Republican, it pushes people to overlook Republican policies that are problematic for Catholics. 

I thought surely Donald Trump was a bridge too far in 2016, but I was wrong. I thought surely SURELY his 2020 campaign would flounder and fail, but I think he would have won if not for COVID, and the Catholics saying "most pro-life president ever!!!!" would have propelled him toward that victory. 

I am permanently done with any flavor of pro-life activism that looks favorably on the Trump administration. Catholic Vote mailers? Straight into the recycling bin, unopened, forevermore. I called and harangued the Priests for Life office again and again, until they finally took me off their mailing list. I can't even deal with the sight of their envelopes. Because when you tell people to overlook evil in the name of stopping evil, you blunt their moral sense. And when you steer people toward media sources that play fast and loose with the truth (because those sources tend to condemn the evil you oppose most emphatically) you wind up with a nation in which astonishing numbers of people believe that the Most Pro-life President Ever (no) won the election (no) but was thwarted by widespread voter fraud (no) and that there is somehow justice (no) in their refusal to accept the outcome of a free and fair election and in obstructing the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy (so much no ALL THE NO). You wind up with armed insurrectionists smashing windows in the US Capitol, shouting that it's time to hang the vice-president who has been attempting to do his constitutional duty even as the mob erected a gallows on the lawn. 

The church is full of people saying "you can't be a Catholic and a Democrat!" as if it were a self-evident truth. This position has led an appalling number of Catholics to reject biblical truth (family separation at the southern border, anyone?), the Catechism (capital punishment is morally inadmissible, Roma locuta est), and science (climate change deniers, repent and submit to the Pope). If a person rejects the Bible, the Catechism, and science, what's left? 

We have profoundly damaged our Christian witness in the name of rewriting abortion law. And as the nation picks up the pieces (and, please God, removes from office the man who fomented the Wednesday insurrection), we in the church need to have some hard conversations about where we've found ourselves, and where we go from here.

Resolutions 2021, getting the ball rolling

0. In every peer review I complete, I will make a point of writing kindly even if the paper is sub-par. I just got a decision on the paper I resubmitted at the end of November and HOO BOY that was apparently not a thing Reviewer 1 resolved for 2020. My particular worry was that we would revise the heck out of that paper and it would get rejected, which did not happen. Reviewer 2 thinks we're good to go. But Reviewer 1 has a lot to say and the editor is silent, which is not an ideal combination. 

Mostly today I am thinking about health-related resolutions and not about work-related resolutions. They are pretty much the same health-related resolutions I always make but THIS YEAR I MEAN THEM DERNIT:

1. GO TO BED by 9:30 (starting tomorrow; tonight it's looking like 9:40 might be a better bet).
2. Eat more vegetables and don't eat sweets, because it is better for both happiness and productivity.
3. Exercise gently at the student fitness center 3 days per week. I bought a membership for the spring semester today, because they are being more careful about COVID than most of the alternatives. Running in cold or even cool weather has started to irritate my lungs, so a safe indoor option seems like a good plan for the winter. But I don't think I can work out vigorously while wearing a mask. Ergo: exercise gently is the plan.