Light and Momentary

I'm in favor of the time change.

There, I said it. Everybody in America, or at least everybody in my Facebook feed, hates the time change. I think it's a reasonable idea.

Part of the problem is that some people are confused about what Daylight Saving Time actually is. You probably already know this, but Daylight Saving Time is what we do in the summer. This is standard time. The switch to DST doesn't cause exacerbation of anybody's seasonal affective disorder, ever, because people get SAD in the late fall and winter and DST is a spring/summer/early fall phenomenon. (The return to standard time is a pain for people with SAD, yes.)

I used to think, in fact, that we should stay on DST all year round. I just don't see that working with school schedules, though. It's safer if kids aren't catching buses in the dark, and there's no way to avoid dark mornings on DST. Standard time means that some kids are coming home in the gloom, but I think more schoolkids are catching buses at 7:30 am than are arriving home on the bus at 4:45 pm. (I have read the arguments that teenagers shouldn't be catching buses at 7:30 am because of their circadian rhythms, but most US school districts have yet to let that idea take hold.)

For years I hated the time changes because the kids' rhythms are so much less malleable than the clocks. I've finally figured out how to deal with that (answer: pretend you're a toddler and switch gradually to the new schedule instead of staying up too late like a SLOW LEARNER WHO NEVER LEARNS). Also, I have kids who can respond appropriately if I mumble, "Maybe you could go watch some PBS Kids while I sleep for 20 more minutes?" instead of kids who neeeeeed a grownup right away. So maybe people will throw rotten tomatoes at this post, and maybe I will deserve them.

I hypothesize that my body is still adjusting to the time change, still thinking it should wake up at 6:30 old time instead of 6:30 new time. I have been having the craziest dreams in my last hour of sleep. I was chased by hippos and crocodiles through the Nile; I discovered a hitherto-unknown piano in my house which is not large enough to hide pianos.

You know, if it weren't NaBloPoMo, I would save this in my drafts folder and look up the proportion of school districts with 7:30 start times, or try to, and never come back to it because what if I was wrong? I also wouldn't have posted that rant-y post about pumps, because I didn't really know how many insurance companies were being that stupid. And then I would have missed out on Arwen's enlightening and infuriating comment. So: discuss. I'm posting without even proofreading.

All thumbs

This morning I saw my liver for the first time. After I got those weird numbers back, family practice referred me to a gastroenterologist. (That is the longest word I have ever typed with my thumbs.) He ordered a bunch of tests, so many that the phlebotomist offered me some juice after she was done drawing all the required vials of blood, and an abdominal ultrasound.

The ultrasound was today. I was a little nervous about it. The only person in my extended family who also has a cardiac arrhythmia has a polycystic liver, and I've been wondering if we might share those genes. The waiting room was teeming with people today. I listened to them checking in and I thought again about what an enormous blessing good health is, how easy it is to take it for granted. The tech called me back and took a whole slew of pictures. It's easier to decipher fetus parts than liver parts, I must say. Afterward I said, "I know you can't say much, but did you see any signs of pending implosion?" In her expert opinion, I look perfectly normal. We'll see if the radiologist agrees, but I think her willingness to express an opinion is a good sign.

I spent the rest of the day feeling grateful-- for my faintly sore muscles after Sunday's Pilates class, for capable hands and for a pleasant run. Then the cold I thought might be lurking attacked. I'm not seriously complaining, but the timing is funny. Health! Strength! Happiness! Thank you, God! ...snot ...fatigue ...ear weirdness... Grateful in all things, right?

Feeling my age in the freezer aisle

Once there were no baked goods in ice cream, and it was very good. Then someone said, "Let's put wads of cookie dough in ice cream," and lots of people thought it was a good idea.

(It was not a good idea.)

Then came the inundation: cookie pieces in ice cream, brownie bits in ice cream, cake batter in ice cream, pretzels in ice cream. Pretzels! I ask you!

(Pretzels do not belong in ice cream.)

I used to think I was pretty flexible about ice cream flavors. I liked fruit flavors, and coffee variations, and anything chocolate or caramel or liqueur-flavored. And then the ice cream powers-that-be started with the baked goods.

We have a cute little neighborhood ice cream shop that sells delicious ice cream with fun-sounding names for the flavors. But without fail, the new and interesting flavors are teeming with baked goods. I just can't do it -- texturally, conceptually, it doesn't work for me.

Once I read a New Yorker article in which the authors looked at age-related reactions to novel stimuli-- maybe it was new styles, new recreational activities, and new foods. If you didn't have a tattoo by the time you were x age, they concluded, you were never going to get a tattoo. If you didn't start rock-climbing by the time you were y age, you wouldn't be a rock-climber (maybe). And if you didn't try sushi before age 32 or something, you were unlikely to enjoy sushi at age 35 or 40. 

I read this article when I was 27 or 28, approaching their cutoff ages. I remember thinking about foods I had encountered that were completely unfamiliar to me. We just didn't have Ethiopian food in my West Virginia town, but wow is it delicious. The first time I ate Thai food I found the flavor combinations so unfamiliar and exciting that I couldn't get enough. I thought it would be sad to taste something equally different later in life and be unable to appreciate it. 

I never suspected the issue would rear its head at the ice cream shop.

Clearly I am in the minority on this question, because ice cream with baked goods is proliferating. Do you have an opinion on baked goods in your ice cream? And how old are you?

PinFP

Yesterday our Family Foundations arrived in the mail and Pinterest was mentioned on the front cover. I thought, "I don't even want to know what that's about." And then my brain couldn't help itself. And also it's NFP Awareness Week, so hey-- let's be aware.

What if you added numbers to the left side of your smocked nightgown so it could double as a temperature chart? I'm still figuring out the details. Do you pin a fuzzy pompon in place every morning? Probably the truly dedicated Pinterester will sew on another mini-button each day. Or maybe she will make a series of little handcrafted cartoon-face ceramic pins, in which that frown turns upside down as the numbers climb. (With a few extra eyes-bugged-out pins in case they fail to un-climb.)

I've never been a sticker person myself, but surely there is a market for more interesting stickers. Keep the colors the same and add faces. Late Phase III: crabby. Early Phase I: crampy. Late Phase I/Early Phase III: blissed out. Phase II: resolved --> resigned --> biting nails --> the merest wisp of steam leaking from the ears.

Or what about recipes for teachers? For the kinesthetic learners in your class, mix Elmer's glue with how much water? Can you test pasteurized egg whites to see if they have the same viscosity as their unpasteurized counterparts, so that hapless grooms-to-be will go home with just the heebie-jeebies and not the heebie-jeebies plus salmonella? Are you looking for something besides that tired old nose vs. lip comparison for teaching the cervix sign? I can hardly wait to see what pink squishy alternatives PInterest comes up with.

(The actual FF article is a piece by Margaret Berns on smiting perfectionism. It's about birthday cakes, not charts, and it is not remotely crazy. But the crazy is kind of fun, isn't it?)

Triduum Quiz

You read the news about Pope Francis washing detainees' feet and you think:

a. First he declines the mozzetta, and now he washes female feet. Antipope!

b. I find this troubling, but I bet Jimmy Akin has a good explanation.

c. Unexpected but beautiful. In the interest of charity, I'd better stay away from the WDTPRS comboxes until this drops off the front page.

d. The pope does not need my instructions on how to celebrate Holy Thursday Mass.

e. This year, clean feet; next year, ordination, baby!

You are filling the kids' Easter baskets on Good Friday and you are so hungry. A square of Dove chocolate makes its way into your hands. You:

a. Resist temptation steadfastly, so busy fixing your eyes on Jesus that you can't even see to unwrap that sucker

b. Find this scenario totally implausible, because your kids' Easter baskets only include chocolates handcrafted by nuns.

c. Unwrap it and sniff it. Wonder if you can coax a priest into hearing your confession today because whoa, the concupiscence!

d. Eat it, figuring it can be one of your two small meals. That's why the wrapper's purple, right? For Lent? Or wait! Hold it in your mouth until it melts. Then it's a liquid and totally okay. So okay that perhaps you should have another. Wouldn't want to get dehydrated, you know.

e. Eat it.

Item #1: Your calendar tells you it's Good Friday. Item #2: Your chart tells you it's Peak + 4. You:

a. Wait until after after you've attended the Vigil with your whole family. You've been abstaining since Mardi Gras anyway.

b. Wait until Saturday morning, offering it up for the sanctification of the world, because Fridays in Lent call for many kinds of fasting.

c. Go for it on Friday night, but make sure to wear the violet nightgown for that penitential touch.

d. Have a William S. Burroughs-influenced* "lunch" date on Friday. (*This refers only to matters sartorial, not pharmaceutical.)

e. Peak + 4? Is that a brand of mountaineering equipment?

You wake up early on Holy Saturday. You:

a. Kneel beside your bed and use your hour of quiet to pray 20 decades of the rosary, remembering the Blessed Mother's pierced heart. If you have extra time, you'll review the vigil readings in preparation for the big event.

b. Bundle up the food you'll be cooking for Easter dinner and take it to the church to be blessed.

c. Go to the kitchen and set up a fun Holy Saturday baking project for the kids to enjoy when they wake up.

d. Go for a long run, intermittently contemplating the sufferings of Christ as you huff and puff.

e. Roll over and go back to sleep like a sensible person.

You love to use a fine paintbrush for decorating eggs. Your Holy Saturday efforts include:

a. Some of the best snippets from that awesome ancient homily* 

b. No egg-painting, because your pysanky have been ready for a week already

c. A black egg emblazoned, "Don't rejoice today -- it's still Lent. Also, back away from the Peeps."

d. Eggs with slightly catawampus exhortations to " Shout Alleluia" and "Praise the Lord, all you nations"

e. Bunny decals with captions that say "Hippity Hoppity."

 

*I am mostly being silly with the (a) options, but I am very fond of that homily.

Color Me Weird

Am I the only person who liked the Downton Abbey season finale? 

Many people seemed to think the episode went like this: boring boring boring boring ACK! Not me. I don't know what this says about me, but I was relieved that the catastrophe was what it was. I thought the house was going to burn down while they were all at the fair. Maybe it would be Branson's fault somehow, because he hasn't had enough in-law friction yet. Or pre-eclampsia has a genetic link, you know. Maybe we'd see more death throes, this time wiping out the heir too. 

Aside from my preparatory (and misguided) flinching, I enjoyed the episode so much I didn't even knit while it was playing. And I always knit. I loved the preparations for the trip to Scotland-- imagine a life in which you might need your tiara on vacation! I loved the scene at the railway station, with the gleaming steam engine taking all of them (and their luggage! loved the luggage!) away to the north. Perhaps it's because I just read To Say Nothing Of The Dog, but I found the luggage especially evocative, a marker of how much the world has changed. How much would it cost you to travel with that much baggage these days? It'd be cheaper to take a black cab to Inverness, I bet.

Oh, Inverness! I loved watching the Crawleys on holiday. Part of it was the scenery-- the people like miniatures against the highland landscape, the towering clouds scudding in. Part of it was the interaction. We haven't seen much of the Crawleys relaxing with their friends, have we? Lots of upstairs-downstairs interaction, lots of hospitality extended to various acquaintances, but nothing quite like this, with people from the same milieu spending time together. I found the grass-is-always-greener moments effective, and Matthew's vindication (by way of Shrimpie's admission) especially satisfying.

Really, the plot could have consisted of "the Crawleys watch paint dry in the Highlands" and I would have gone along with it happily. There's nothing so glorious as a Scottish summer.

I wanted to know about Mary's labor, but no luck there. Was she as reserved as ever? Did she perhaps emit a tiny (but dignified) howl when the going got tough? How does a person come to have such tidy hair so soon after giving birth? My post-birth pictures all show clear evidence of my lack of a lady's maid.

Here's the thing about Matthew: what a way to go! Seeing his long-hoped-for son, brimming over with joy, returning to the estate he preserved from ruin despite significant opposition -- and boom. No lingering suffering, no long ugly illness peppered with false hope. He did good things with the time he had. He brought out the very best in a woman in whom it used to be hard to see much good, and what a valediction he gave her! Life is short and unpredictable, and we none of us know what lies around the next bend. 

So do good work, and enjoy the sunshine, and be ready for the milk truck to strike! [she said cheerily] Can't wait for season 4.

Related articles

Lifestyles of the Rich and Eclamptic

Lifestyles of the Rich and Eclamptic

For a long time I was completely out of the loop on TV shows. We gave away our TV in 1998, and while this had many happy effects it also meant that I was hopelessly lost when TV came up in conversation. It's surprising how often TV comes up in conversation.

Only recently have I taken to watching TV shows online. Now I know that Glee is not a show in which the happy muppets (like Elmo and Ernie) have voted the grumpy muppets (like Bert and Oscar) off the island and thus can effervesce to their fuzzy hearts' content. But Glee didn't suck me in like Downton Abbey.

I never thought I'd blog about TV, but I can't resist. Birth! Death! Drama! Spoilers ahoy--

1. Whenever I see a woman on the screen suffering through a contraction in bed I have to advise her through the monitor: Get UP! It hurts more BECAUSE you're lying down. Stand UP! Lean FORWARD! You'll feel BETTER! Don't complain that it hurts if you're HORIZONTAL!

I might not be a very patient doula. Although-- I would totally have felt bad about shouting "get UP!" at a woman with fulminant pre-eclampsia if she hadn't been fictional.

2. Is it really true that there was no treatment whatsoever? I am remembering a James Herriot story in which he blows off a man worried about his pregnant dog. He jolts awake in the middle of the night, saying, "Myrtle's got eclampsia!" He speeds over to the man's house and administers...something. I thought it was calcium but maybe that was for cows down with milk fever. Would it have been magnesium in that era? Speaking of things that make a person want to shout, how about those two august doctors standing agog?

3. Isn't Cora's ire misplaced? If Sybil's condition didn't resolve after delivery, a marginally faster C-section wouldn't have improved matters, would it?

4. Can you imagine if this had gone down in Dublin? They'd have assumed it was all Tom's fault for taking her to live among barbarians.

5. This was the first time I've ever shed a tear for a TV character. Sybil was so sweet and earnest and well-meaning.

I have been interrupted approximately 70 times to arrange ponies' manes and tails into pompadours. In my previous experiences of mothering 4-year-olds, the required skill set included things like "draw a skid steer loader that is clearly different from the mini-excavator you drew yesterday" and "identify a scelidosarus accurately while feigning interest in same." Not so much with the pompadours. I am interrupting my musings about Downton Abbey to tend to my ordinary life, which features no Mrs. Patmore and no O'Brien (though thank goodness for that, really), but I'd love to hear what you think about this development.

Old School

Are you ready to blog like it's 2004? November is upon us, and that means NaBloPoMo. I was going to write a kickoff post about the dead squirrel we saw today, artfully weaving in themes of Death and Loss and Autumnal Fading, but it is not happening tonight. I fell asleep in wiggly Stella's bed (awake since 5 = un-peppy version of myself) and artful is beyond me. Gross, however, I can do: its eyes had been plucked out. Crows, do you figure?

You know you want 29 more posts from me after an awesome start like this!

Probably Truncated

All right, you guys, I am just going to spew out words until I am summoned upstairs, or until Stella falls asleep without me. Don't bet on the latter.

My Petely says the sweetest things. Yesterday: "Nobody appreciates me, except you." Today I picked him up at CCD, feeling a little self-conscious that I'd had a run but not a shower. I wasn't really smelly but my hair goes crazy when I run. It's like the exertion causes it to fling itself, piece by piece, out of whatever is binding it and thence towards heaven. "I'm coming, Jesus!" it exclaims as it approaches the vertical. Or perhaps it is just indulging its inner Lindsay Buckingham. Anyway, I went walking down the hall with this crazy halo and Pete came running toward me. "I knew it was you because of your beautiful nice hair," he told me. I can't even tell you how much that makes me smile.

I was out on the trail recently, flagging after 4.5 miles, when I heard a voice behind me call out, "Jamie, is that you?" I turned and waved -- it was one of the leaders from my summer running group. She said, "I'd know that ponytail from a mile away." One of the unexpected perks of running with the group all summer is seeing other women from the group frequently out on the trail. Always encouraging to see a friendly face or a familiar ponytail.

I keep meaning to write a knitting post, but I am never sure how many people are interested in knitting posts. Do you remember that I was doing a mystery knit-along, in which I was making a shawl (even though I don't wear shawls) by a designer whose previous work has never really grabbed me? It was a weird impulse but it wound up being the most fun I've had knitting in years. There's lots to love about the rise of online patterns and Ravelry, but knitting patterns are so...curated these days. The cardigan is flung artfully over the shoulder, disguising the fact that the raglan increases leave you with an underarm that would only fit someone who had breasts growing out both sides of her torso. Or you can find 16 close-ups of the lace pattern in Ravelry, allowing you to decide whether you want to stick with that k3tog or substitute an S2KP. (I love S2KP. If you had told me that I would one day be a person with emphatic ideas about double decreases, I would have thought I should set down the knitting needles and back away slowly, but there you go: S2KP all the way.)

Anyway, with this project I was knitting blind. I had a set of clearly written instructions, with a comfortable amount of knitting for each of the first three weeks, and off I went to see what I wound up with. It was not a pattern I would have purchased if I'd seen a picture of it first, because I don't do ruffles and I really don't do ruffles with simultaneous vertical and horizontal stripes, but it was totally fun making that ruffle despite my anti-ruffle bias. For the fourth week we had to knit up manymanymany yards of sock yarn in garter stitch stripes, and it turned out that the yardage estimates were low (meaning even more yards of garter stitch stripes), but I'm still glad I did it. You can see pictures here whether or not you have a Rav account, or you can admire my oldest son being Emperor Palpatine. He said I should make a solid black one as an Emperor Palpatine costume, but I will need a little persuading that His Imperial Highness was a ruffle kind of guy.

Also this summer: Space Invaders socks and funky macrame bags. Joe decided when I was making a Monteagle bag that if I could make one for him in beige it would allow him to look like Indiana Jones. I am not any more convinced that Indiana Jones hauled around a macrame-looking hand-knit than I am convinced that Emperor Palpatine hankered secretly for ruffles, but I am an obliging sort when it comes to kid knitting requests (except for the kid who asked if I'd make these socks, which -- no) so I cranked out one for him and then another green one for Pete.

One of the things I wanted to do this year was finish all of the stuff I had on the needles in January, which was a lot of stuff. All that remains is a tea cozy and a French press cozy, now that I've finished up this scarf.

Eek, it got late! The End. More soon.

Alas, earwigs

Sunday night I spotted an earwig on the living room floor. I said to my husband, "Are you feeling chivalrous enough to deal with that bug? Or are you just going to remind me that I've been through childbirth five times and I can handle it?"

I smote the earwig myself.

I wouldn't have thought anything more of it, except that this morning I was scrubbing up under the rim of the upstairs toilet and I dislodged...AN EARWIG.

Why, internet, why was there an earwig lurking under the toilet rim? If I wanted pests to pester me while I was seeking quiet and privacy, I would move to the Amazon. How did it get upstairs in the first place? Did it march itself up the steps, perhaps with the aid of a tiny carabiner? Did it scale the outside wall and sneak in through cracks in the caulking? Did one of us carry it up there, unnoticed, on a piece of clothing? SHUDDER.

Did you know that the bite of an earwig can draw blood? Isn't that a cheery thought to start your day: you sit down sleepily to take care of your morning business and arise with bleeding nethers?

That's too much to cope with before coffee. No. That's too much to cope with after coffee. That's too much to cope with after vodka, for crying out loud.

The title of the post comes from Albert Dumbledore's line at the end of the first Harry Potter book, when he accidentally eats an earwax-flavored jellybean. I would eat six dozen earwax-flavored jellybeans rather than have earwigs skulking in the toilet. If you need me, I'll be obsessively scrubbing.

I flushed the one I found this morning, but he was pretty resistant to being flushed. Do you suppose they can crawl back up the pipes?

Flummoxed by Fashion

The inbox is zeroed and the desk is clear, a feat which so pleased me that I thought briefly about posting a picture. The idea of posting an empty desk picture causes my Self-Indulge-O-Meter to emit loud aah-ooo-gahs, though, so I will spare you.

Next on my list is dealing with kids' clothing (along with the overstuffed "action required" cubby in my newly tidy desk, but little girl clothes are more fun than mysterious notices about retirement funds). Stella is lucky enough to have two cousins who are a bit older than she is: my brother's daughter will be 7 in the fall, and Elwood's sister's little girl is 5. They send cute outgrown clothes our way, which is much appreciated. But today I made a discovery that has me perplexed.

Stella has been wearing a sweet little sundress, a floral print with gingham trim. In the bag of clothes to be sorted, I just discovered a triangle of fabric, with strings attached, in the very same floral print. On my first pass through the bag I had thought it was a halter top, but that can't be right. My first idea tonight, on getting a better look at it, was that it might be a mantilla, but I realized quickly that there's not a ton of overlap between the set of people who tie mantillas on their 3yo daughters' heads and the set of people who dress their 3yo daughters in bare-shouldered sundresses.

Next I wondered if it was a bandana kind of a thing (a secular mantilla, perhaps), or a superhero cape (Floral Print Girl, able to leap tall rickrack in a single bound), or a matching bandage for those regrettable skinned knee occasions that seem to follow kids around all summer long.

But now I think I have it figured out: it is obviously a disguise for the well-dressed bank-robbing 3yo.

Spouses Have Words About Words With Spouses

Okay, everyone, I promise not to keep blogging about Words With Friends but it deserves one more post.

First, I need to post about it because my husband feels he has been slandered. He feels I do not actually understand his secret heart. He just likes to play Scrabble, is all. No inner bloodthirstiness, no drive to obliterate. He would like you to know that I win at least half of our games (which is totally true if half means <0.33 in your dialect). He would like you to know that he is at a disadvantage, because he is a math major up against someone with an undergrad literature degree. He contends that most of his high scores have happened in games that he wound up losing (to, um, me). He thinks, in short, that he got a bad rap.

However, I also need to post about it because I am still reassembling the fragments of my exploded head from last night. Brad commented about my hypothetical and actual racks, and I had a moment of feeling pleased with myself because Brad is the King of Scrabble, or at least the Archduke of Scrabble, and his recommendation was exactly what I played. (I should have seen CIVIC too, but Vs are my least favorite Scrabble letter and two of them on my rack at one time = guarantee of Scrabble panic.) Good, I thought. Maybe I couldn't play UNENUREE (but what else, I ask you, would one call a person who was re-sensitized?), but at least I had come up with a Brad-approved word all on my own. I was a little grumpy because you just can't wring many points out of ENURE, but I was moving on with my life.

Until. Oh, until. I checked my iPod and discovered that Elwood had played OXLIP with the X on the triple letter and the P on the triple word. For 98 points. Ninety! eight! points! OXLIP, I ask you.

...I think my threat to take this game back might have been a leetle premature.

Words with Spouses

My husband loves to beat me at Scrabble. If you ask him, he will say that he just loves to play Scrabble, but I know his secret heart and in that secret heart he loves nothing better than for me to play a 400-point game of Scrabble in which he just happens to score 425 points. "Good game," he will say graciously. I am, sad to say, usually not very gracious in return because my recognition that I need to be a good sport is invariably locked in a death match with my competitive streak. Generally at that moment Competitive is sitting on Sportsmanlike's head, engaged in a maneuver that would get it drummed right out of the WWF, so I flash a reluctant rictus in his direction and vow to practice anagramming before our next match.

I just started playing Words with Friends (I am a late adopter), and I mentioned to Elwood that he should give it a whirl. We never get to play Scrabble, because we play slowly and the kids interrupt us, and because I hate to lose with the fire of a thousand supernovas am often very busy in the evenings. I said, This way no one can bump the board and wreck our game. I said, This way I'll never push you to move faster when you're figuring out a bingo. I said, It'll be fun!

What was I smoking, internet?

He is kicking my butt, one seven-letter word at a time. I lost the first game, by [redacted] to 7,267,360,082 (but who's counting?), and I am on track to do even worse this time. In my first few games I never had one of those soul-sucking racks that make you want to eat the Scrabble tiles in hopes that you might be able to draw new ones without anyone noticing (C C V I I I V is awesome for making Roman numerals but not so much for actual English words), and I speculated that there might be some sort of algorithm that minimized soul-suckage in Words With Friends.

"I hope not," said Elwood in the lofty tones of someone who can anagram B P R Q V L C to spell "700 points for me ha ha sucker" and make it be in the dictionary too. "That's part of the game."

Well, it appears to be part of my game, says the person whose rack currently sports two Us and three Es, but not his. He laid down another bingo while I was upstairs putting Stella to sleep, but when I came harrumphingly downstairs (who was that person who was just blogging about being Wise and Mature and St. Francis-Like? because something is whispering in my ear that St. Francis might have been a little less bent out of shape about a Facebook game) -- anyway, setting aside my shortcomings for the moment -- Elwood announced that I had stolen his space. He was going to play "sedation" across the triple word and the double word so he could sextuple his score, but instead he'd had to make do with "donates" across the piddly double word.

Usually when he announces that I have stolen his space I say, "Here, I will play a very sad song on a very small violin for you." Tonight I said, "That doesn't even merit a microscopic violin." Because I am wifely like that.

Somewhere inside me, internet, lie the vestiges of Jamie Who Used To Try To Be A  Good Sport, looking rather like a defenseless camptosaurus savaged by a particularly vicious and hungry carnivore. If you're looking for me, I'll be trying to anagram R N U U E E E into "I am totally coming back to win this game, so watch your back."

Desultory notes from the garden

Hi, internet, it's been a while! I have been busy losing my mind and then finding it again. It's been a good thing. It's been an unexpected answer to a longtime prayer, actually, but I'm not sure how much of it I should blog. The trouble with keeping an anonymous blog is wanting to tell your real-life friends about it and never knowing if you should. The trouble with telling all your friends about your previously anonymous blog is that pouring out your heart becomes awkward.

For everybody who used to hang out in the infertility blogosphere ca. 2004, do you ever wonder what happened to Getupgrrl? I wonder too what her blog would be like these days: would she have gone public and lost her edge?

I will have to keep thinking about the bloggable/unbloggable distinctions. But I took a piece of advice that people have been offering me for about the past seven years, and it turned out to be really good advice. It made me think of that old joke about the person sitting on the roof in the flood. A guy in a boat came by and said, "Want to come with me?" "Oh, no," said the roof-sitter, "God is going to rescue me." Another guy in a boat came by and said, "Wow, I'm glad I found you! The water's really rising!" "Oh, no," said the roof-sitter, "God is going to rescue me." Finally a helicopter choppa-chopped overhead and dropped a ladder down to the man, now standing in water up to his neck. "Oh, no," said the roof-sitter, "God is going to rescue me." Then he drowned. He went to heaven, where he said, "God, I thought you were going to rescue me!" "What do you want?" God replied. "I sent you two boats and a helicopter!"

And now I will stop being cryptic.

I spent some time gardening today, yanking weeds and putting in flowers and herbs. I put pansies in all along the south side of the house, purple and lavender and cream and gold ones, and petunias along the east side. The petunias are all deep velvety purple, because that is the superlative petunia color. Petely didn't know what I was doing until he came out of the house to go on an errand with Elwood. "OH!" he exclaimed. (You have to imagine a supernova of delight and surprise bursting out of that lowly "oh.) "You're gardening!" He decided on the spot that a change of plans was in order, and spent the next hour helping me. We discussed the relative merits of our two pairs of shears, the ethics of slug salting (we started to exterminate a miniature specimen and then thought better of it, a decision I may regret if he and his descendants find my chard patch), and the anatomy of asparagus.

Last year we put in ten asparagus crowns, and so far seven of them have sent up stalks like spring's ensigns. (Do slugs eat asparagus crowns? Is there an underground slug cabal that perhaps fathered the slug we didn't salt today, and the even tinier specimen that I accidentally brought in on my hand after we finished? I did not freak out about having a slug on my hand, because I am Wise and Mature and St. Francis-Like and also because he was very very very tiny and even unexpectedly cute with his little waving slug horns. Cute is something I never thought I'd say about a slug. My previous comments about slugs have tended to be of the "we hates it forever" variety, accompanied by twitches of revulsion and despair, so I felt very pleased with myself for looking calmly at an actual slug on my actual body. But if they ate my other three asparagus crowns, this is totally war.) That is the worst parenthetical construction I have ever constructed, but let us move on. Anyway, did you know this? The scales on a stalk of asparagus are the spots where the little ferny fronds emerge if you don't cut it. The scales are not strictly decorative, like patch pockets for the Jolly Green Giant; they seem to support the baby stalks. Pete pointed it out to me, on the stalk we cut today that should really have been cut yesterday instead because it was juuuuuust beginning to fern out today. Very cool.

I was reluctant to plant asparagus and rhubarb because they require patience. But I think that patience gets easier as I get older, because I know that a year will whoosh by in no time flat. I planted bare-root rhubarb two years ago, which means that this year we should be able to harvest all it gives us. And this year we can pick some of our asparagus, even though we don't get to go hogwild until next year. Pete and I eat it one stalk at a time, admiring its superior flavor. I am tempted to feel like a genius when I see a new stalk peeking up through the ground. I think, "I planted that!" But then I think about 1 Corinthians 3: I planted it; Pete watered it. But God made it grow.

Paging Elastigirl

Hello out there -- it's been a long time. I have been working a lot of hours. Just a speedy update from the Gladly house:

1. I have pinkeye. I also have on hand a great remedy for pinkeye, the fast free non-irritating age-old remedy also known as human milk, but this is the first time I've ever tried to treat my own pinkeye. I need a lesson from Elastigirl on how to get the source closer to the target.
2. I often think it'd be useful to have Elastigirl's talents. I'll have to keep practicing.
3. I've been having this weird Christmas letter anxiety. I've mentioned the blog in my Christmas letter for the past few years, but I never know who's actually thinking, "Hm, maybe I'll check out Jamie's blog." This year I've been having this weird impulse to make my blog more like my Christmas letter, full of good cheer and funny kid stories and a slightly sanitized version of my real life (nothing dishonest, just with some of the rough spots airbrushed out), but there is a reason I only write one Christmas letter a year vs. a hundred-ish blog posts. Anyway, if any random uncles or pastors have stopped by the blog today to be greeted with the image of Jamie squirting herself in the eye with a freakishly elastic appendage containing warm body fluid -- um, welcome? Nice to see you here?
4. If it were up to me I would be horizontal right now, with a nighttime dose of pinkeye remedy doing its mighty mighty microbe-smiting, but I have to pick up my oldest from a school dance at 11. I am entertaining thoughts of making the trip in my hot pink fleece pajamas and my green fleece robe, but I think I'll tough it out and stay dressed.
5. My oldest? Has a learner's permit. And shaved today. I took him driving around the school parking lot one evening and he said it was a lot like a video game. Which alarms me.
6. The grammar police are going to string me up by my thumbs for producing that previous paragraph, which contains four sentence fragments and only one actual sentence.
7. Hey, maybe that will advance my Elastigirl skills!
8. The Behold conference is four weeks from today and I am so looking forward to it. Who else is going?

Lift up your split peas, too

I'll blame it on sleep deprivation: I was up past midnight getting ready for my morning class. When the lector at noon Mass said, "Lift up your lentils, O ye gates," I was flummoxed. Immediately the vowels started trying to rearrange themselves in my foggy brain. What's that word? Not mantel. Another thing that goes on top of the other thing that ends in -tel. Lintel! Lift up your lintels!

Unfortunately I missed half of the psalm trying to figure that one out. (It was a short psalm, but still.) A few years ago I wrote a passionate post about not dumbing down the language of the liturgy. Clearly, I was overestimating myself at the time.

In Praise of Snow

1. It sparkles!
2. It reflects the limited sunlight so that life seems less bleak and dreary.
3. It creates all kinds of opportunities for fun: sledding, skiing, snow angels. (I have consoled too many teary little boys who've just taken a snowball in the face for me to include snowballs on this list, but I'll allow as to how some people think that's fun.)
4. It blankets the drab garden and encourages the wilted remains of last year's veggies to turn into new soil for next year's.
5. Every seemingly homogenous snowbank is made up of uncountable tiny individual elements, each distinctively beautiful and improbably unique. It would be pretty Hallmark-y for me to say "Kind of like life," but that's what I'm thinking anyway.

It's always magical when the first flakes start falling. Somebody remind me of this post in March, when I'm well and truly sick of the stuff, all right?

A very silly video post

The best thing about NaBloPoMo was that it reminded me how much fun it can be to fling up a quick unpolished post instead of leaving it to molder in the drafts folder. So here I go, flinging up a quick unpolished post. This is take 2, which is why the 12yo asked me if I was ranting again; take 1 was recorded by a different boy, whose aim with the viewfinder was even more erratic. (The dizzy-making part settles down about 20 seconds in, I think.

Here's the song that prompted my idea for a growly altos Pandora station (that link skips over the long soundtrack-y beginning); here's the KT Tunstall song I was in the mood for last night. And here I am being a goof:

 

In case you would like to sing along these are the lyrics: "I like your avocado dryer, / and your fridge of harvest gold. And your bell bottoms -- they are wide enough / to shelter us when we get old."

Department of First World Problems

Each week we have a box of organic produce and two dozen local free-range eggs delivered to our door. It makes me happy. The business is run by a good friend of ours, and it's a more affordable way to obtain organic produce than paying grocery store prices. But a couple of weeks ago I noticed something weird about the eggs. I called him and said, "For about half of them, it's like they've been hit briefly with an inside-the-eggshell scrambler. I'm wondering if they're fertile eggs that are starting to develop or something." He said, "Yeah, these small farmers aren't candling their eggs."

Now I don't mind eating an occasional fertile egg. But this morning I cracked an egg into a little dish instead of directly into the skillet, so I could get a good look at it. Alas, it looked back. There was a little embryo in my dish, apparently about 4 days along. It had a tiny beak.

I don't want any beaks in my breakfast, thanks.

I like supporting small local farmers, and I've mostly been delighted with the quality of their products. When we do occasionally buy mass-produced eggs, the difference is clear. But something has gone wrong with their quality control in the past few weeks, and I am feeling very squeamish. If the embryos are incubating for four days before the eggs are collected, what about the bacteria on the shell?

Part of the issue is food safety-- one reason I've been willing to pay the price for these eggs is that I thought they were less likely to be contaminated with salmonella and other nasties. Now I'm not so sure. Part of the issue, though, is first-world detachment from the reality of food production. Guess what, Jamie? Eggs come out of chicken butts. (You can call it a cloaca if you want, but we all know it's really a butt.) The chicken you eat so blithely and so often originated in an egg, with a tiny beak and an outsized eye just like the ones that put in an unwelcome appearance this morning.

When I was 15 I met a Native American man who commented on our unwillingness to see the story behind meat. "In my culture," he said, "at the table we say 'Pass the dead cow, please.' It's our way of acknowledging that the cow gave its life for us to have food." It made me so uncomfortable that I burst out laughing. I thought I'd grown up a bit since then, but maybe not.

We might have tofu for dinner. With some nice oat milk on the side.

Things I learned in my garden last summer

1. It's not rocket science. Last year I thought it was a little weird when my parents and two of their friends stood around and admired the dirt in my newly dug garden. "Look at that black dirt!" they said with enthusiasm. They all grew up on farms, and they knew what they were talking about. Midwestern soil is good stuff. You could almost plant a brick and wait for it to sprout, bearing baby bricklets in dusty little pods.
2. Vegetables don't have to have full sun. For years I thought, "I'd like to have a garden but I have too much shade." Last year I learned that shade can be good. I planted chard and lettuce in the bit of my garden that's shaded by the houses for part of the day, and they bore beautifully all summer. Lettuce will bolt in full sun, so it's nice to have a cooler spot for it. I also put in beans, peas, and some herbs in that bed, and they throve.
3. Pay attention to the spacing instructions. I found it impossible to believe that my spindly tomato seedlings would really need to be feet apart. It's hard to imagine the July jungle when you're holding a little three-pack, but this year I am more trusting.
4. There's more joy in gardening than I expected to find. I love to watch those baby shoots reaching for the sunlight. I posted last year about finding myself talking to my seedlings, and I am looking forward to greeting a new batch in a couple of weeks. There's something deeply satisfying in feeding my family with food I grew from seed. Although I thought it was unlikely that gardening would become a family project, my older kids assassinated Japanese beetles (for a small bounty) and my youngest son pitched in all summer long. Last week he was instructed to draw a picture of something he especially liked to do with me, and he brought home a picture of the two of us in the garden. Today he came home in a foul mood, irritated with the whole world. "The tomatoes are looking pretty wilty," I said. "Want to help me water?" Poof -- his unhappiness evaporated as he lugged his little watering can from spigot to seedlings, busy and hopeful.