Advent in the House

Advent has begun. Another liturgical year begins.

Yesterday, after cleaning the foot-high piles of Anthony junk off my dining room table, I set up the Advent wreath. My grandmother made it. It is clay with little troughs for holding live plants. I used some of my mom's pine. I put some flower food in the water in hopes that the pine will last longer.

Some of my gourds were getting suspiciously soft, so I discarded them. We are in a transition phase as far as decorating goes...to early for Christmas but too late for fall. I used pine and purple candles to create what I hope is a sort of Advent-y look. There is still an arrangement of fall artificial flowers and a gourd on the piano. I will probably leave it there until I do the Christmas decorations.
A generous friend has an Advent devotional book on the way to us, and while we wait we are dong a Chaplet of Divine Mercy around the wreath in the evenings. (We are praying the Chaplet because it is Confession-prescribed penance for Anthony's anger bouts).

Anthony and Maria are feeling better. I am about the same. I'm wheezing, so it may take me longer to shake this. As a young teen, I was diagnosed with Reactive Airway Disease, which is a somewhat ambiguous term meaning that you don't have asthma in a strict sense, but colds settle in your lungs and cause you to have asthma like symptoms. Hopefully I will shake this soon.

We are officially NOT going to Chicago in December *happy dance*. I am so glad. I was worried we'd get sick again and be sick for Christmas. Call me a germ freak, but with careful use of hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes I generally avoid being sick, and this is Maria's second time to be sick in her life. She never rides in the cart in the stores. I wear her in a baby carrier when we shop. All my efforts are blown away by some coughing extended family. It is just not worth it. Now I understand why my mother always had fits over visiting relatives at Christmas time- as kids we unfailingly got sick. I hate the argument people give you "If you went out and got sick more you'd be more resistant". Anthony's mom loves that one. Seriously...causing your immune system to be constantly fighting off stuff does not strenghten it. It wears you out. And there are so many THOUSANDS of cold and flu viruses that you cannot possibly become immune to them all in a lifetime of being sick. I was homeschooled and kept at home whenever possible during cold and flu season as a child. I do not get sick any more easily than anyone else who attended school and was constantly coughing all winter. I get sick less easily than most, I think. I think the only people who advocate the go out and get sick theory are either a) never got sick themselves and don't know how bad it is, b) never took care of sick babies, c)are ignorant of how the immune system works and the sheer numbers of different viruses out there, or d)just got sick and sucked down medicine constantly.

Well, this post certainly does not follow its title any longer. I can't think of a better one, though. I am off to do some dishes. Toodles!

Home Again, Home Again

My planned three posts obviously didn't happen last week. Things got out of hand, and blogging was the first to go. We drove to Chicago on Thanksgiving morning and stayed until Sunday. Packing, housecleaning, and car cleaning were what got out of hand last week. It's always more work than I anticipate.

Thanksgiving was about as we expected. I suppose you will understand what kind of a time we had based on the fact that when we got home last night, we felt like we'd had no 'time off' and were much more stressed and tired than we ever are on a Friday night. Such is life. One must placate one's extended family, at the cost of one's own enjoyment of the holidays.

We took my little brother Isaac with us as he'd never seen a big city before. His presence gave us an excuse to get out and do things. We rode the trains and went to the Museum of Science and Industry. The museum was fun, although a little more child oriented than I had hoped. Less science oriented than I'd hoped, too. What does a circus exhibit have to do with science or industry?

Indiana wind farms

Driving home, we got lost as usual. They are perpetually working on the roads in Chicago. Even the residents get lost. They set up detours that are poorly marked, unexpected and get you lost. As a result of getting detoured back in the direction we came from, it cost us nearly ten dollars in tolls to get out of Chicago.

We are trying to find excuses to not attend Anthony's brothers December graduation.

The Museum of Science and Industry

On Saturday night, the four of us simultaneously started experiencing cold symptoms. Someone must have sneezed on something we all ate at Thanksgiving dinner. We have a nasty, achy, sore throaty cold. Thank you, dear relatives.

Anthony, despite feeling like an extreme dork, wore Maria on his back in downtown Chicago. This made me love him very much.

I am not at my best due to feeling sick. And of course, I could not come home and relax because that is the way things always work out. I got up this morning with visions in my head of snuggling with my cranky, miserable baby, drinking tea, and watching movies. After I bathed the baby and unpacked the car, I unpacked the bags. Then I noticed how dirty my floors were. So I dusted and vacuumed. Then I decorated for Advent. Then I noticed, to my extreme disgust, that my kitchen sink had grown a whole crop of black mold around all the crevices in the faucet, and even gone so far as to grow little brown fungi plants that looked like miniature algae. So I scrubbed the kitchen sink. (I scrub off that mold at least once a week, and Clorox wipe-downs do not prevent it from returning healthy as ever. Anyone else have a problem like this?) Now I think I had better run to the store to restock my fridge and lay in a store of vitamin C rich foods. So pardon me if I am totally lacking in wit and interest.

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving very much.

New

My stove, which came with the house and was probably twice my age, broke over the weekend. I believe it was the oven temperature regulator that went out, because the oven was at least 200 degrees hotter than it should have been. My house was filled with smoke, hellish heat and the smell of burnt brownies. (Which nearly caused me to weep, as I'd made them with Ghirardelli chocolate...) Given that the stove's pilot lights do not work and so the burners must be ignited with a match, and that despite my best efforts its inner recesses are covered with years and years of other people's accumulated filth, we decided it was time to move on.

Yesterday Maria and I scoured the town, checkbook in hand. We bought this beauty at HH Gregg. It has five burners. The middle one has a griddle that can go there instead for our Saturday morning pancakes. I love HH Gregg because they delivered it TODAY. My mom bought a stove a few weeks ago at Sear's and had to wait 2 weeks for it.

I'm so excited-it's just in time for Christmas baking!

7 Quick Takes Friday (8)

1. Lame, lame, lame. As is obvious, I did not post at all this week. I could make pathetic excuses...like 'I am so busy' or 'I really hate the keyboard my husband insists on keeping attached to his laptop and I hesitate to type on it' (which is actually true) or 'I hardly got to use the computer all week'. None of those would strictly be true, however. I had plenty of time to read other folk's blogs. I was simply to lazy to write my own blog post.

Which is odd, because I supposedly enjoy blogging. I do enjoy it. I think I am loosing my ability to make the ordinary seem funny or exciting and therefore have no material for blog posts. Or maybe I am too lazy to put for the effort.

2. A lady at my church had a new baby a few weeks ago. I wanted to bring her a meal. As a middle aged mother of two toddlers and a newborn, I reasoned it is probably harder on her than it is on, say, me. Anyway, I told her Thursday was the day. Then I promptly freaked out. I get soooo nervous when I cook for other people. I frantically read cookbooks while thinking stuff like, What if it's too fancy? What if it's not fancy enough? What if they just had it last week? What if I mess it up? What if they hate it? Is beef stew to greasy? Will cauliflower make the baby gassy? Is chicken to ordinary? I finally decided to be practical and see what kind of meat was on sale at Kroger this week. So I settled for pork loin.

Thursday, the prospect of cooking that meal lingered over my head all day long. I began it, practically trembling. Maria was an angel the whole time. While I stirred and chopped and fried and tore my hair out, she played peacefully in the living room. While hearing one of her toys play "London Bridges" about 5,000 times did not lower my stress level at all (nor did having to say 'HI!' about the same amount of times), it kept her happy. I made orzo cooked like risotto in chicken broth with onions and white wine. On top of it went pan-seared pork chops, sliced and drizzled with a viniagrette of lemon juice, olive oil and herbs. Steamed carrots with butter, lemon juice and parsley, salad, homemade bread, and cookies. *whew* And I made enough for Anthony and I, too.

I delivered it, nearly shaking, and forgot to apologise for the overbaked bread in my haste to leave their house. At home, I kept wondering if maybe they were thinking it was not good or too fancy or......until the phone rang. They called me to tell me it was delicious. I had to sit down for five minutes and recover.

Another one of my church friends is due in January. I wonder if I can bear to go through this again.

3. Speaking of saying 'hi'. Maria says it. She knows it is a word and she is so proud of herself. Conversations with her all follow these lines now.

She crawls to the kitchen gate while I am doing dishes and rattles it to get my attention.

Maria: Hi!

Me: Hi!

Maria:Hi.

Me: Hi, you silly baby.

Maria:Hi.

Me:Hi, Little Pig.

Maria:Hiyidadadada!

Babbling, she scurries back to her toys. When I peek around the corner to check on her a minute later...

"HI!"

And so it begins again.

4. No one showed her how to do this.

5. For those interested parties, I am about this _ close to finishing my stays. I am finishing the shoulder straps. I promise I will take and post pictures in a few days.

In fact, I will rashly promise to post three times in the next week.

6. I am (still) trying to loose a few pounds and I am (still) unsuccessful. I complained to my husband, who was totally unsympathetic. "Oh, just get pregnant and then you have an excuse to be fat", he told me dismissively.

7. I think one reason I am not loosing weight is because I am still making-and eating-cookies. Because Advent is coming. No cookies for four weeks. I have to make my cookies while I can. Does anyone blame me for thinking like this? Wouldn't you stock your system up on cookies if you knew you had a cooky fast coming up? Or are these just the deranged ravings of a hopeless cooky addict?

7 Quick Takes Friday (#7)

1.

I am a money hoarder. Sometimes I have to remind myself that that is why I sometimes do things I really hate, otherwise I will blame them on something or someone who is not at fault. Today I was out in the driveway, scrubbing a really dirty carseat given to us by one of Anthony's co-workers. Maria needs a bigger seat-she has long outgrown the baby one but she likes it so I didn't switch until now. This carseat was covered with food, sticky, nasty, and doesn't have much wear left in it. I was all full of self pity and thought to myself, "Here I am, getting all wet and cold and nasty scrubbing a second hand carseat for my poor baby. Such is the lot of a poor man's wife." Then I thought about that. We have plenty of money for a new carseat. They are not that expensive, really. The reason we are using this one is because I am cheap and I will not buy a new one if someone gave me an old one. So I rephrased my thought: "Here I am getting all wet and cold and nasty scrubbing this seat for my poor daughter who is the victim of my penny-pinching self. And I have no one to blame but me. Such is the lot of a money hoarder."

2.

What do I do with the money I hoard? Spend it. That's what money is for, anyway. All my life I've had to tell myself that. Fifty dollars you are not going to spend, ever, is as good as zero dollars. Money's not an end in itself. You use it to get stuff. Despite the fact that I have been telling myself that since about second grade, I still hoard money. I think I'm a hopeless case.

3.

Advent is coming. The new liturgical year is beginning. Every year at this time, I start thinking about what I want to do differently, better, in the coming year. I also think about how best to prepare myself and my family so that we can celebrate Christ's coming to us at Christmas with truly open and joyful hearts, not bogged down by the mess of consumerism that is the secular world's Christmas. This Advent, I plan to:

• in a spirit of penance and fasting, eat vegetarian at least twice a week, preferably 3 times since we often go without meat twice.
• not eat or bake any treats until Christmas actually comes
• add morning prayers to my day
• have a daily reading/prayer/song around the Advent wreath, something we often missed last year. I am still looking for material to use for that. If anyone has a particular book you use, I'm interested in recommendations. As far as I see, the church does not have any definitive material for use for Advent daily devotions.
• read a spiritual book

Hopefully the extra prayers and reading will continue through the coming year.

Are you planning any special ways of keeping Advent this year?

4.

ALDI is onto this Italian thing now. They have a brand of supposedly gourmet Italian foods. Unfortunately, the fact they seem to be missing is that they are ALDI. Their thing is to sell cheap foods at cheap prices. Cheap does not always equal good, though in the hands of a good cook it often can. Tomatoes in a can are just not something that works that way, though. I bought a can and used it to make the sauce for my chicken parmagiana last night. It was most disappointing. The tomatoes were acidic, overcooked and tasted more like a can than anything else. I say, spend an extra ten or twenty cents a can and get something better. If you don't enjoy eating it than it is not worth anything anyway.

5.

My husband is going to go play the Great White Hunter of deer this weekend. In my opinion, he is over the top with his 'must hide from the deer' ideas. He made me put the clothes he is going to wear outside so they will not smell like people. However, the way the wind is blowing today, it is more likely that they will smell like Long John Silver's than the forest in autumn. Somehow I do not think that is going to do much in the way of concealment from deer.

6.

My daughter spends at least one hour in each of her days-no joke-crawling around under the dining room table and chairs, falling, hitting herself, and howling. I am still trying to figure out why she goes under there to begin with. (She is under there right now, sobbing dismally. But I guarantee you, if I pull her out and comfort her, once I let her go she will be right back where she started).

7.

Maria is a very popular figure in public. Her cheery smiles and silly faces have won many hearts. I'm almost jealous. At the bank, all the tellers coo over her. At the little fresh produce market I shop at, the cashiers all leave their places to come over and greet Maria when I walk in with her strapped on my back. When we are ready to check out, they fight over who gets to wait on me. At Kroger last week, one cashier was waving me over to her lane because she wanted to see my daughter. Even the ALDI lady remembers her and talks to her. Now, why am I not that popular? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I do not pant like a dog at people? Or that I don't bare my teeth and snort at them?

visit Conversion Diary for more (hopefully more exciting than these) Quick Takes.

November Thoughts

I love watching the rhythm of the liturgical year ebb and flow with the seasons. In particular, I love how November is the month where we remember the Holy Souls in Purgatory, all those faithful who have proceeded us in death. As all around us vegetation is dying and turning to dust, we reflect on our own mortality.

Watching the leaves flutter down from the branches of the maple in my backyard, I thought about how the span of our lives when compared with eternity is as short as a leaf’s life is to us. From a fragile curl to a vibrant green, yellow or red to faded and brown, and then they flutter down to the earth where they decay to dust. So shall we fade and die someday.

The ‘someday’ thing is another thought well worth pondering. It is tempting, at least for me, and I suspect for many young persons, to think of death in terms of ‘someday.’ Someday we shall die. But what day? We know neither the day nor the hour of our death. I could die today, or next week, or in five years, or I could live to be ninety years old. I do not know. Some nights I am tempted to neglect my prayers in favour of saying them ‘tomorrow’. Someday I will live a day which will not have a tomorrow. I do not know when that day will be.

I cannot imagine the pain of loosing my daughter at this age. This poor woman had three other children buried beside this one, all having died before reaching the age of six years.

Every day in my life is a gift. Do I see them as such? If I could know that I was to die tomorrow, would I be ready? If I honestly answer that question, the answer is no. I doubt I will ever feel ready to die, but I know that there are many ways in which I am not ready now. I have flaws, I am negligent in things I am capable of doing. They should not be put off.

Besides thinking about my own death, November is the month where we are supposed to pay extra attention to one of my favourite things to pray for- the dead. I have always held a particular affection for the Holy Souls in Purgatory since my childhood. During the month of November, I try to visit cemeteries more often to pray. There is a tiny cemetery up the street from our house, an oasis of peace and calm on the side of the busiest street in our little city. I imagine there is no one left praying for these people since they all died so long ago. Hopefully they don’t need prayers any more…but I pray for them in case they do.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et

lux perpetua luceat eis.

Requiescant in pace. Amen.

A Purse

I was getting a little tired of sewing runners in my corded stays and needed something small and quick to sew. (And speaking of small and quick, check out what Sarah Jane made. These pears are adorable!

I have been wanting a new purse for a while, but Goodwill has never presented the perfect one. Then, while waiting for Maria to finish taking 2 hours (or what felt like 2 hours) to nurse to sleep for a nap on Wednesday, I saw this purse in my online travels. While this bag is not me, it inspired me.

So I dug out a chocolate brown suede-look skirt that I no longer like or fit into. For accent, I used a blouse that is very dear to my heart. It's a sheer cotton print that I feel deeply in love with at first sight, which was at a rummage sale years ago. I bought it even though it would not button across the bust and wore it as a jacket over a sleeveless top. Post Maria, it gapes so much over the bust that I cannot even fool people into thinking that it might button if I wanted it to, which is kind of the look you are going for when you do the blouse-as-jacket thing. So now it will live on as a purse.

The pocket on this side is for my keys.

This was my first time to make and use piping. Though the experience has not lessened my love for how piping looks, it has lessened my plans to use it in future projects. I think I am only going to use it if I really really want it.

I ran out of blouse and had to piece the calico part of the straps. I used the very last scraps, along with an old chapel veil, to make the rose.

For curious folk, the inside is lined with the brown on the flat parts and the print on the gathered portion. There are three pockets and two pen holder slots. The idea is that I will not loose stuff in it, so Anthony will stop calling my purse The Shameful Bag of Horrors, which is honestly what he calls it.

Oh, and I believe I said "small and quick". As in two hours or less. Though that is probably about the total time I spent working on it, I made it in short spurts beginning at noon and ending at eleven that night. This was thanks to Maria, who would NOT sit in her playpen and, when let loose in the office, wreaked great amounts of havoc.
The button is shaped like a flower.

And if Maria could talk, she would tell you that the ends of the ties taste uncommonly delicious. She chewed on them the whole time I was grocery shopping yesterday.

In Which I Blog About Blog Posts that Didn't Happen

I suppose everyone who has a blog thinks of it now and then throughout the day. You're always looking for material, you know. And if you see something that might be worthy, you take note. If you're me, you pretty much write the whole post in your head hours before you might have time to actually type it up.

This past week has been full of lost opportunities for blog posts. That's why you haven't seen any.

There was Hallowe'en, for instance. I'd be a sorry mother indeed if I didn't immediately think of my blog as a good way to show off my baby in her sweet daisy costume. But I forgot to take any pictures. Well, I took one, but she was wrapped in a blanket. Asleep. She slept through half of the trick-or-treating. We went with my family and my aunt and cousins. It's becoming a yearly tradition to go begging candy in my aunt and uncle's neighbourhood. It's a fairly wholesome time. The trick-or-treaters are mostly under twelve years old, the driveways are full of cheery adults handing out goodies. Some families have campfires in their yards. Some even give out hotdogs. I walked around with the kids, my mom and aunt and collected a modest amount of candy for us after Maria woke up. Anthony stayed back at my aunt's house drinking beer with my uncle and, I am told, consuming at least as much candy as he dished out.

So...no post dedicated to Hallowe'en, because it just wouldn't have been the same without pictures.

Then there was the rose. My rosebush has been leafless for over a month now, bare except for a few plump red rosehips. Wonder of wonders, last week a rose bloomed. One single, small but perfect, rose. On a leafless stem. I was enchanted. Softly, so no one but the rose could hear, I sang "The Last Rose of Summer" to it. I had plans to pick it and treat it like the rose in the song. But before I did that, I needed to take a picture for the blog post I was going to write about it. So I lugged about 75 pounds of groceries I'd just bought, 22 pounds of Maria and my own self (whose weight I am not sharing) upstairs. I found the camera. I put away the groceries, and then it was time to cook dinner. I figured I'd go out after dinner and get a picture of the rose.

Four-thirty rolled around accompanied by the sound of the Buick pulling into the garage. I opened the door to my beautiful husband. With a romantic flourish, he handed me...the Last Rose. Picked. I can't tell you I wasn't happy amidst my disappointment that I hadn't got a picture of it. I love when he thinks of me like that. So I put it in my hair. It rode there for the evening and my bedtime was so wilted it was not worth photographing. So I threw it out the window and lamented another blog post that wouldn't happen.

As an aside, I love throwing things out the windows. It's exciting. It makes me feel naughty, like if my mom saw me she'd scold. That's a good feeling in case you wondered. Last week we threw a watermelon that turned out to be white inside when we opened it out the window. Anthony and I each threw one half. It made our day.

I leave you to ponder the question: And I just read a blog post about other blog posts that don't even exist?

9 Months Old

A baby's nine month birthday has always seemed significant to me. Maria has now officially spent as much time out in the wide world as she did in the womb.

Here's the truly enormous pumpkin I got for my mom. Before surrendering to her, I used it as a prop (along with a helpfully droopy sassafrass tree) to take fall pictures. I had plans to post them long before I posted the other pumpkin pic, so forgive all the pumpkins. The other one just happened because she saw the camera trained on the pumpkin and had to be a part of it. She loves having her picture taken, though whether she understands what is going on is doubtful.

Happy birthday, Piglet! :)

7 Quick Takes Friday

1. The first three are things that made me happy this week.

My big pumpkin...$3! My little pumpkin saw me taking a picture of it and had to get in on the fun. Next week, I am going to cook up the pumpkin. I got an even bigger one for the same price for my mom...you'll see that one later.
2. Leftover from Sweetest Day at the Kroger florist. We don't 'celebrate' Sweetest Day, but I am not one to turn down a dozen roses with greens and baby's breath for $5. They are so beautiful. Maria and I watch them while we eat. I am trying to show her how to smell a rose, but she just laughs while I sniff and refuses to sniff herself.

The roses are actually a little deeper red, but I couldn't get the camera to capture it.
3. The weather has been amazing this week. Indian Summer. Warm temperatures, clear blue skies, gentle breezes. The trees are perfect. The red one there is really an amazing red-again my camera isn't doing it justice. To-day, the rain finally caught up with us. :(
4. I somehow managed to gain about 3 pounds. ??? I think it's because I was snacking too much. I can't go in the pantry without snitching a few raisins. I can't go into the fridge without sneaking a slice of brie. If I was snacking on things like celery sticks, I doubt it would have affected my weight. But raisins are good right out of the bag and celery sticks require too much prep to qualify as a 'quick mouthful'. In an effort to part with these extra pounds, I have ditched all snacking and am trying to eat lots of raw veggies for lunch and avoid cheese and chips and buttery bread (my favourite). Also, I am walking every day. The walk has required some reorganization of my time, since it takes about an hour, but hopefully it will be worth it. I need exercise regardless of weight loss. I want to go skiing once this winter and if I am to make the most of it, I should be in shape. Maria enjoys the stroller rides. Sometimes if I find a particularly lovely fall leaf, I will give it to her to carry home. It cracks me up how she holds it by the stem like a bouquet. She never attempts to eat them, oddly.

5. Maria's top incisors are in. She keeps gritting them against her bottom ones. I am hoping it's just because they are unfamiliar-it had better not become a habit. She has also started saying "ma-ma" and "da-da". She doesn't understand that is her parents, though. She just babbles, but it's still cute. Every time she says "da-da", if Anthony is not home I tell her he's at work, and if he's home I point and say "That's Da-da!" Someday she'll figure it out.

Oh, and the touch lamp! Our beside lamp is a 3-way bulb activated by human touch. Maria figured that out. Now she stands by the table smacking the lamp. Dim-brighter-brightest-off-dim-brighter-brightest-off. Over and over again, and giggling with mischievous delight all the while.

6. My favourite aunt is an obsessive cookbook collector. She, too, caught the dejunking bug somewhere and decided to trim down her collection. Before she took the rejects to Half-Price books, I got to go through them and choose what I wanted. I am now rich in cookbooks. I have part of the Williams-Sonoma set (they have one where there's a separate small book for each category). A baking book, a chocolate book (a girl can never have too many of those!), an older Betty Crocker edition, and License to Grill- my dad's fave which I've always wanted. A cookbook meant for professional chefs which is like a cooking school in a book. And various Wilton cake decorating books, and some other small specialty books. I have been trying new recipes or at least gleaning inspiration from them all week. I'm having such fun.

7. If anyone else's hubby is waiting with bated breath to see the second Transformers movie (released on DVD Oct 20th) but hasn't yet, please stop him. We saw it Wednesday night. I was not expecting much since I did not think much of the first one, but this film was downright offensive. Every single attempt at humour through the whole film involved sex or genitals. I'm not kidding. The scantily clad girlfriend in the first film? Even worse this time. And the female students at the college the kid goes to all dress, act and look like porn stars. I don't know where they found them all. Anthony and I kept looking at each other as we watched the movie saying "What?" "Did I just hear that?" "You've got to be kidding!" and "Gross!" The plot and acting were not so hot, as the final insult. Definitely not worth 2 hours of anyone's time.

Edited to add: I forgot the 7 Quick takes button, but it's too late now. Visit Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes!