Light and Momentary

Seven Quick Takes: Year-End Edition

1. When I closed down my old blog and started this one six years ago, my intent was to create a blog I'd be comfortable mentioning in my Christmas letters. Every year, though, I dither about whether to include the URL. Is it too girlfriend-y? Is it more detail about my life and my thoughts than my crusty old uncle will really want to see? I've had a bump in page views over the past few days, and I don't know if it's Melanie's link or Christmas letter traffic.

2. I've gone around and around about the question of online identity. At this point my big consideration is that I'd prefer my students not discover my blog. There's nothing here that I'm ashamed of, but I think of it as a place to chat with girlfriends (and my brother, and my college pal Steve). I don't have girlfriend chats with my students; I don't intend to have girlfriend chats with my students.

I had planned to share the link to my post at Melanie's with a subset of Facebook friends. Facebook used to make it easier to do customized sharing -- you could go through your friends list and tick boxes next to the names of the people who were supposed to see it. I would occasionally share links to this blog in that way. If it's possible to do that these days, it's not easy to figure out how. It's a little weird that I have a Facebook self and a bloggy self and they don't entirely overlap, but that's the way it is.

3. This week I'm thinking back across the year, reflecting on my 2012 resolutions and trying to decide on goals for 2013. I finished a bunch of knitting in 2012, too many things to fit in a single screenshot. (I think you need a Rav account to view the page.)

(There's also an ugly cowl that didn't make it into the screenshot. I think it is even uglier than the flowered tea cozy in the lower right-hand corner, but I cannot swear to it.) This year I learned how to do entrelac and three-color knitting and true lace knitting, in which the wrong-side rows are also patterned. One of my goals for the year was to finish  all of the projects I had on the needles in January. Assuming I can wrap up the French press cozy that's almost done (which may require me to convince my mother of the joys of felting, since I may not bind it off until we get to her house), I should hit that goal. I did not stay within my self-imposed $30 knitting budget for the year, but...I made some pretty things that brought happiness to their recipients?

4. I am doing some super-last-minute Christmas knitting for the niece I will see after the New Year. She wants Barbie clothes. You must take a peek at this site -- I have linked to the first 50 of 1100 free patterns for Barbie garb. E!lev!en! hun!dred! Almost makes me wish I had some eyelash yarn to make feather boas, but not quite.

5. This year I was going to finish a bunch of backlogged books. I did kick a dent in my book backlog, I suppose. I also (of course?) bought more books. Switching most of my reading to a Kindle has bumped up my total books read by a fair amount: for both of the past two years I've averaged more than a book per week. Most entertaining: Naomi Novik's Napoleonic dragon series. Most gripping: Gates of Fire and Come Rack! Come Rope! Most thought-provoking, in completely different ways: In Praise of Messy Lives and Grace for the Good Girl. Favorite first novels: Bowling Avenue and Shine Shine Shine.

6. I also resolved to take better care of my body. I ran more miles more happily and with less pain than ever before, so that's a win. I also ate more veggies, largely thanks to our summer/fall CSA share. Still hoping to make some changes on that front, about which more in January.

7. I did not spend anything close to 15 minutes per day beautifying my house or working on the picture backlog. I still don't have a new 10-year project and I didn't touch the three Shakespeare plays I wanted to read this year. Our evening routine is improved but not optimal, and my inbox is currently at zero but that's always a precarious state of affairs. Onward we go, I suppose, and let's hope it's upward as well.

More quick takes at Jen's.

Guest post

Melanie kindly asked me to be a part of her series on the Creed. I wrote about "light from light," my favorite phrase.

Conversation

The 13yo comes thumping down the stairs. "Happy Boxing Day, Mom!'

    "Happy feast of St. Stephen!"

"You know, it's traditional to give cash gifts on Boxing Day."

    "To servants. Are you offering to be my servant?"

"No, I'm just offering to accept cash gifts."

Gifts

1. When our oldest son was almost 3, he taught us something about Christmas gifts that we still appreciate. We gave him a set of Duplos that year, and when he opened them he wanted to play with them...and play, and play, and play. I tried to interest him in opening another box, but Elwood said, "There's no rush. Let's let him enjoy them." So we did. Forty-five minutes later, he opened another gift. He wanted to play with that one too.

Our unofficial Christmas motto is "slow and orderly." Sometimes we might go from oldest to youngest to open a round of gifts. Sometimes we might each open a gift in alphabetical order. No one is expected to play with a gift for 45 minutes before the next person opens something, but the cardinal rule is "There's no rush."

I thought we had taken this from Elwood's family, where I remember being surprised to see them take turns. (My family took the free-for-all approach.) But one of his sisters was here with us today and she got impatient with the whole slow and orderly thing. While I was assembling dessert she started directing traffic, having the kids open multiple gifts in a row. Pieces were getting lost; there were stamp pads in use on the upholstery; I couldn't see what the kids had been given because I was up to my elbows in whipped cream. It was the most stressful ten minutes of the day, until Elwood said, "This isn't the way we do things here."

2. I mentioned that Elwood does the shopping for the kids, but he does it in a way that's a little unusual, I think. The kids don't make wish lists unless the grandparents request one. They know that Elwood will find a number of small and interesting presents for them. They know the gifts are frequently quirky -- often things they've never heard of. And they've learned that a gift that looks a little weird at first may become a gift they come back to again and again.

I was getting a haircut early in December and the stylist asked me what my kids were hoping to get for Christmas. I felt a little weird saying I didn't really know, but that's the reality: I couldn't recite a list of hoped-for gifts. And you know, I don't mean this in a judgy way at all -- I'm more interested in affirming my husband here than in telling other families how they ought to do things -- but there's much to be said for fostering a kid's willingness to be open to surprises. A Christian who says to God, "Surprise me with your goodness today!" is likely to be a more contented Christian than one who says, "Give me X, Y, and Z today!"

3. Speaking of surprises from God: wow. If you have been reading this blog for years and years and  years, you might remember a long-ago struggle with tithing when my husband was unemployed and its surprising aftermath. Last week I sat down to catch up on our giving. I'd let our non-parish gifts slide since JUNE, and so I was pretty behind. (Once my friend Anneleisa had such a great experience at confession that she wanted to tell everyone about it. She felt a little awkward saying "I just went to confession!" again and again, and finally she told me, "I feel like I should go pray in a closet!" I feel like I should go write checks in a closet now, instead of telling the internet that I wrote them.) I transferred money out of savings so I didn't have to worry about whether the checks would would clear, and I felt the happiness I've grown accustomed to feeling when I dropped them in the mailbox. I had no expectation -- I mean, truly, zero expectation -- that anything out of the ordinary would happen financially. I was just catching up, feeling a little embarrassed about getting behind.

This morning -- Christmas morning -- I got a notification from Mint that we'd received a sizable tax refund. This was so improbable that I assumed it was a phishing email. But no: our state revenue department deposited a big chunk of money in our checking account on Friday -- more than half of the amount I sent out to various charities last week. I have no idea why this happened (and it's possible that they made an error), but I suspect it's an expression of a lovely truth that I find too easy to forget: you can never out-give God. On this day, of all days, you'd think I could remember that. Merry Christmas, friends. :-)

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Seven Quick Takes: You're A Mean One, Mrs. Grinch Edition

Money Where My Mouth Is

Seven Quick Takes: You're A Mean One, Mrs. Grinch Edition

1. Harrumph.

2. I am grumpy. I have not yet been to the PO, which means that I can offend my frugal self by paying extra postage to get the niece/nephew/godchild gifts to their destinations on time, or I can offend my avuncular (what is the feminine form of avuncular? amital?) self by sending them cheaply. I had Amazon send the actual gift-gifts, but every year I send an ornament with the idea that they'll have 20 or so to take along when they leave home and set up their own Christmas trees. I bought the ornaments on time and then let them languish in the basement. (While shopping I stumbled on this ornament. Is is not a riot? Even in my current harrumphing state it makes me chuckle.) A Christmas ornament that arrives after Christmas is not a particularly useful Christmas ornament.

3. ALAS, ALAS, the PO on 12/21 is a dismal place.

4. I think that's what we call a first-world problem.

5. Somewhere in the Catholic blogosphere earlier this month, someone wrote, "What's the big deal about Advent? It's just four candles." To which I say: harrumph. I had been feeling lucky (my friends certainly think I'm lucky) because Elwood buys (!) and wraps (!!) the kids' gifts. I am in charge of gifts for everybody outside the family. And Christmas cards are my job too. Elwood is happy to cook part or even all of Christmas dinner, but cleaning is pretty much my job. For the past day or two I have been feeling more overwhelmed than lucky.

6. I have been nibbling away at the long list of things to do, but I would rather take a great savage bite out of it. The paper stack is much smaller, but I want it G-O-N-E. I have 13 emails in my inbox instead of 90, but I would like to have zero. I am about halfway there on Christmas cards (that might be optimistic, actually), but I would have much preferred to send them out two weeks ago.

Strangely, none of these tasks are getting any smaller while I sit at the computer and lament their incompleteness.

7. I will leave you with something to nibble on, or to take great savage bites of if you are so inclined -- something much more pleasant than a to-do list. I began by printing out a copy of this recipe, but I wound up with something pretty different. After I had begun making the crust, with a limited time in which to get the finished product out of the oven, I discovered that my 9x13 pan was full of lasagna and that the recipe didn't actually call for fresh cranberries. Oops! Luckily, I was able to wing it with pleasing results. (ETA: Miriel says they should be called Gladly Harrumphing Bars, since they are so different from the source. I hope they boost your gladly and decrease your harrumphing.)

Cream 2 sticks of butter with 1 c. brown sugar. Blend in 2 c. rolled oats and 1.5 c. flour along with a pinch of salt. Reserve 1 c. of this mixture. Pat the rest into an 11x15 pan and bake at 350 for 8 minutes. In a food processor, combine 2 c. dried cherries, 1 c. fresh cranberries, 1.5 c. sour cream, 1 scant cup sugar, 1 t. vanilla, 1/2 t. almond extract, 1 egg, and another pinch of salt. (Taste for sweetness, because I like things more tart than most people.) Let it rip until the cherries and cranberries are chopped to your liking. Pour over the crust. On top scatter walnuts, chocolate chips, and blobs of the remaining crust mixture. Bake until the middle is set, which will probably be about 40-45 minutes. It will be easier to slice if you let it cool for a bit first. Serves many, unless one of the people in your house is having a harrumphing kind of day and keeps cutting herself consoling slices.

More quick takes at Jen's.

To its knees

When the Columbine shooting happened I read the news coverage obsessively. We were living in the UK at the time, but the London Times covered the event at length. I would read and sob and read and wipe my nose and read and wonder why on earth something like this had happened. I remember talking to my friend Carlene, another American mother living in Edinburgh. Carlene had married into a Scottish family and she brought up the 1996 Dunblane massacre. She said, her eyes wide, "It brought the country to its knees."

The killing of 5- and 6-year-old children in Scotland brought about big changes. Schools became more secure -- schools here will doubtless be encouraged to do likewise -- but the commission that investigated the massacre recommended changes to UK gun laws. As a result, more than 160,000 weapons were surrendered in the couple of years following Dunblane.

Of course it's not just about guns; it's also about mental illness. The NHS is not what you'd call an exemplary system for those with mental health problems, but it provides a safety net that is simply unavailable here in the US. It's possible to get phenomenal mental health services here if you have deep pockets. It's equally possible for someone with treatable mental illness to go off the rails because he wasn't wealthy, because he didn't have insurance, because he feared the "pre-existing condition" label up until he wasn't really capable of thinking rationally about his condition.

It is baffling to me that these ideas provoke as much antipathy as they do in the US-- baffling that the assault weapons ban expired in 2004 and has never made it to the floor for a vote since then, baffling that the idea of a public option to provide basic health care to mentally ill individuals inspires such wrath and doomsaying.

The next school shooting -- and it is not a matter of whether, only of when -- will doubtless inspire even more calls to Do Something. Surely it is not so very hard to see what we need to do. One of the things that still chills me from the Columbine reporting was the reaction of the killers to the destruction they had wrought. "Look at that kid's brains!" they said enthusiastically, according to one of the survivors. The thought of a kid so far gone into darkness that the sight of a fellow student's exposed brain tissue aroused only excitement -- it's horrifying. And yet for a wide swath of America the idea that we should separate the mentally ill and the assault weapons is apparently viewed as an unconscionable assault on freedom.

I am not proposing a UK-style ban on handguns. Still, the reality is sobering. We have had too many school shootings for me to count here in the US.

There has only been one Dunblane.

The navy blue tights can live.

On-campus interview scheduled for next month. Hurray! And eek!

Untitled

"They" say you should dress up for a phone interview just as you would dress for a real interview. I put a tweedy blazer over a black dress and pulled out my new boots. As I was zipping them up, I noticed that my tights were actually navy blue and not black. I decided that the risks of having the phone ring while I had a pair of tights halfway between on and off outweighed the benefits of wearing matching tights for an invisible audience.

Still, every time I fumbled my words I thought, "Should have dug out the black tights!" If I don't get a second interview we'll have a ceremonial burning of the navy blue tights.

I have graded the undergrads' exams. I just have to post the grades -- and wait for the grade-grubbing to begin. I am going to tell them that my office is being painted so I won't be able to answer questions about their exams until I have access to it again (true, but I had the option of bringing the exams home). My hope is that this will cut down on the "But but but--" emails. This may be optimistic, however. The class is almost all seniors, hoping to get one more A on the transcript before it goes out with the grad school applications.

This leaves me with 36 grad student exams to grade and 10 letters of recommendation to write. And then! It's break! Wonder how quickly I can get my work done? I think I'm going to take off my interview clothes and go for a long de-stressing run, and then I will shift into Super-Speedy (But Just And Accurate) Grader mode.

Obituary cheesecake, for real

One day in 1996 I was surprised to see a recipe in the middle of a New York Times obituary. Harry Rosen, founder of Junior's Restaurant, had died. The Times included his famous cheesecake recipe in the obit. Totally delicious and couldn't be easier. I must have dozens of cheesecake recipes but obituary cheesecake is the one I always make.

Preheat your oven to 350 and butter an 8-inch springform pan generously. (I only have a 9-inch springform pan, so I just adjust the cooking time downward slightly.) Scatter 1/4 c. graham cracker crumbs over the butter. Stir together 3/4 c. + 2 T. sugar with 3 T. sifted cornstarch. Beat in 30 oz. softened cream cheese (3.75 of the half-pound packages), 1 egg, 1/2 c. heavy cream. and 3/4 t. vanilla. Bake 40-45 minutes, until the top is golden brown. Cool in the pan on a rack for 3 hours.

Seven Quick Takes: Late-Night(-ish) Edition

1. Remember my 9-8-7 plan? It's been going pretty well. I'm eating lots of produce (though not four servings of fruit per day) and running at least 7 miles a week most of the time. Getting myself to bed at 10:00, though, is proving much harder. Why do I stay up late when I know I will be happier if I go to bed? Who will rescue me from this body of death?

2. My idea was that I could diminish the seasonal affective crud that smites me every year by taking better care of myself physically. It seems to be helping. I am not weepy, mostly, although I cried when I read Matthew's death scene in Anne of Green Gables tonight. I've been having more trouble with Angry Jamie than Weepy Jamie.

3. Angry Jamie is not a frequent visitor in these parts. Remember last week, that thing I said about threatening plagiarists? For me to say aloud "I will kick your ass" -- let alone post it on the web -- is about as weird as the Incredible Hulk saying, "Jolly good fun! Have a crumpet!"

Not that I am usually a crumpet-passer, you understand.

4. So you guys, I have a job interview on Thursday. Prayers appreciated. I'm applying for a tenure-track job here and another one a couple of hours away. Oh, I have typed out and deleted the rest of this paragraph a preposterous number of times. I guess I'm feeling too cautious to blog about the whole deal, so I'll just say that I'd be grateful for your prayers.

5. I found a lovely surprise in my office today: a package all wrapped up with a bow. It was from the second-year students, who are leaving campus for their internships. There was a framed picture, and a pile of cards. Thank you, Dr. Gladly. I'll miss you, Dr. Gladly. I hope we can stay in touch for a long time, Dr. Gladly. It brought tears to my eyes to read them. (Wait, what was I just saying about Weepy Jamie?)

6. Three of the cards surprised me: they were from students with whom I'd had awkward grade conversations. That is one of my least favorite parts of my least favorite part of the job, you guys, when a student says, "I don't think I deserved this grade," and I have to say, "Actually, yes, you did." I guess I assumed they'd be perma-vexed with me for saying that an unhappy grade stood. I guess I was wrong.

7. This is my husband's 45th birthday. 45! Hard to believe. I made him an obituary cheesecake. Maybe I'll post the recipe tomorrow but I'm out of minutes tonight.

More quick takes at Jen's.

Henry's Funeral

People were chattering in the empty minutes before the Mass began. But when they brought in his casket, so small that most of his pallbearers were children, silence fell abruptly. Even the babies seemed to know that something important was happening. In the quiet before the priest began that beautiful opening ritual, there was only one sound: Carla was sobbing quietly. I listened to her ragged breathing and it sounded to me like the noises of a woman in labor.

We all sat down in the church together and I felt an unexpected relief. Tears have been sneaking up on me over the past few days, but here I was in a place where tears were perfectly normal. What a sensible thing a funeral is -- a place where it's right and appropriate to grieve together.

I didn't recognize anyone at first, but a woman in the next pew whispered my name. It was Amy, another breastfeeding counselor. Carla and I had made a road trip to her house together in 2002. I remembered all the things I was worried about on that trip, and I thought about all the gifts that the intervening ten years have brought, and even in the middle of a funeral I could only think "God is good."

The recessional will stay with me for a long time: Carla walked out behind the casket and the priests, flanked by her family and holding two of her little ones' hands. She was smiling, and singing "Lead me, Lord" with the choir. Mostly when we ask God to lead us, I think, we are imagining happy paths. Prosperous paths, maybe, or at least level and scenic paths. Most of us don't envision God asking us to follow a child-sized casket, holding a little body we have loved.

It wasn't until I was driving home that I realized why it was so fitting for Carla to sound like she was giving birth in that moment before Mass. Women in labor are being pushed beyond what they can endure; they're being asked to keep giving when they're not sure they have anything left to offer. It is no wonder that when a child is born into eternal life, his mother wails in just the same way. And in her song and her smile when the Mass was over, I saw an echo of the joy that comes when the work of birth is finished.

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Carla and Henry