I Was Going To...

...take a picture of my two feet to show you that I'm wearing (drum roll) two shoes again, but it's really hot and we're in the basement and I don't want to go all the way upstairs to get the camera. So.

I DON'T HAVE TO WEAR THE BOOT ANYMORE!

This is what the Quebecois doctor told me today, although he sternly forbade me running any marathons for the next two weeks.

(!!!!)

It's just lucky I have self-restraint, that's all.

Anyhoo, for the first time in 7 weeks I'm wearing two shoes instead of a shoe and a boot, and my shin is positively basking in the amount of air it suddenly gets.

So yippee, hallelujah, and all other variations on Praise the Lord.

Cheers,

Breanna

Pics & The Ninja Threat

No, not the same ninjas that broke my foot. Different ninjas. I'll tell you about them later.

It's been too hot here this week. I know, you people in hotter climates snicker at us wimping out at 90 F, but c'mon, give us a break. The only places here that have air conditioning are restaurants, movie theaters, and grocery stores. There's only so much walking up and down the ice cream aisle at Albertson's you can do without attracting attention.

So Brother enjoyed his floor time last night on the "mankie" (Boovian for "blankie") that Grandma made him...

And Miss Boo got into the action...

And the Husband had to break up some intense hug action.

Meanwhile, back to the ninjas.

Do you have a death wish but are too chicken to go the suicide route? If so, move to my neighborhood. Buy fireworks. Not the sparkly, pretty kind--the kind that only pop and shriek annoyingly. Start shooting them off in the afternoon, right around the time children go down for their naps, and continue to shoot them off until about midnight. I promise you, that given TWO WHOLE WEEKS of this, the mothers of the neighborhood will hire ninjas to come and kick you in the face until you die from it. Heck, if it doesn't stop after Independence Day, I'LL go to ninja school and come kick you to death myself.

Really, I love America, but I do think that ONE weekend of blowing things to patriotic bits should be enough, don't you?

Cheers,

Breanna

We're Plugged Up

No, not that way.

The "baby sleeps too long at night and mama needs him to wake up and eat" kind of way. I have a plugged duct that I am praying (you can pray too!) doesn't turn into mastitis. So today we are pumping and recovering. I'll get you some more pictures soon.

Cheers,

Breanna

Random Pictures From Our Day

Someone's (someone who managed to gain 2 whole pounds and 1/2 an inch last month) big boy toes...

Why I never thought to use this on carpet spots before I don't know. And it doesn't even leave a distressingly clean spot where the stain was, showing the world how long it's been since you shampooed your carpet. :D (With two little ones and a dog and a husband who works in a cement plant, the poor carpet needs a lot of TLC.)

Miss Boo's first completely original piece of art. It is, predictably enough, "Mama and Baby." I think I'm the purple one.

The beautiful princess and her "scaf" and her "pin-pin" (scarf and clothespin, respectively.

Pin-pins are awesome.

Cheers,

Breanna

It's Been a Celeb-Deadly June

As if you hadn't heard:

And, lastly, with a drum roll and a cymbal and bright flashy lights and sparkle gloves:

So, um, wow. Bad month to be famous.

(Can't really say 'cheers', can I?)

Breanna

I'll Get You a Picture Later

...but I've got a wiggly little boy on my lap that I'm trying to keep from being so noisy he wakes up his sister. It takes Brother a while to get riled, but when he does get riled he lets you know about it. I wonder if this bodes well for his two-year-old time?

Anyway, I was going to start this post with a picture of dinner last night, except I didn't take one, but since I owe you a Lose the Baby Weight update I thought I'd tell you about it anyway, and you can imagine that it was served beautifully on prettier plates than I actually have.

I've exercised every day since I started (last Wednesday) except for Saturday and Sunday, which I'm giving myself off both as a reward and because I don't want to exercise in front of the Husband until my technique is better because I take direction worse than a bad actor trying to play Hamlet. (Because I have a problem with the deadly sin of Pride, I guess.)

For dinner we had:

Cube steak with pan sauce and mushrooms
Leftover bow-tie pasta and white sauce (under the pan sauce; the white sauce was pretty much all gone as this was the pasta from the bottom of the bowl)
Steamed carrots
Mixed green salad

And for dessert....
Mystery Church Lady Jello

No, that last wasn't the title of a recipie, though it should be; and no, I don't think the jello met my qualifications for "real food" but there was a reason I said "mostly" real food in that other post. I've been thinking about it, and I think it's something important that I need to be aware of during my healthy-eating quest.

The jello was given to us by a church lady, bless her heart, who felt we needed help what with my broken foot and the new baby and all. It is very sweet and it took me three tries of eating it before I could figure out what was in it. (I think it's tapioca pudding mix, peach jello, and canned peaches.) But the point is that it's food that won't harm me, as long as I don't eat the whole bowlful by myself, and it was provided by God, so I shouldn't toss it out just because it's full of sugar.

This is a point that I don't think most diet books recognize. There is generally a passage that recommends going through your cupboards and fridge and throwing out everything "unhealthy", so you can't possibly mess up and eat the whole bag of Cheese Doodles. Aside from the fact that I know I'm perfectly capable of driving to the store to buy another bag of Cheese Doodles if I want them that bad, there are bigger problems with this strategy.

Not to sound too much like a mother, but there are starving people all over the world, and throwing food out is just plain wasteful. These foods aren't going to go away from your world, so I suggest instead of throwing them out, you 1) stop buying more of them and 2) practice learning to eat them moderately. In other words, eat up the 15 pounds of white pasta (slowly) before you go buy some fancy whole-wheat pasta. (Which I recommend against--tastes like glue--but just eat your regular pasta in sensible amounts.) It's not going to hurt you, if you eat "bad" foods in moderation and replace them slowly with "good" foods.

Secondly, I think it's easy for us to despise what we've already got and think that something that the Lord hasn't given us would make us happy/thin/pretty/good-natured. The Israelites in the desert were given manna, but they whined because they didn't have leeks and cucumbers like in Egypt, and wanted meat. God gives them quails and judges them with a terrible plague, to show them how serious it is to despise a gift from Him. They still whine. And so forth. It's easy to feel superior to the Israelites, because we think we're not nearly so centered on getting what we want as they were. But that is, I'm afraid, merely because we want different things.

It's not right for me to despise what I have--be it clothes, fabric, food, or whatever--and waste or overspend to get something else. The Lord has seen fit to put me where I am and give me the budget I've got. This means that I'm not going to be able to afford fancy organic milk.* To despise the milk I can afford, when God has given me the incredible gift of being in a country with a cheap, safe supply of milk and other foods that have historically been expensive, is simply the sin of covetousness. To despise the Cheese Doodles God has seen fit to bring to my pantry, instead of enjoying them slowly and then not buying them again, is also covetousness. If I'm faithful in what God has asked me to do (eat and exercise for His glory, not mine), then I'll get thinner at the rate He wants me to get thinner. Until then, I've got no business wasting resources He might want me to use someplace else just because I think I need to get thin in a certain way.** There are a scary lot of things this way of thinking can be applied to, aren't there?

And anyway, I couldn't hurt the Church Lady's feelings about her Mystery Jello. And Miss Boo likes to squish the tapioca pearls.

Cheers,

Breanna

*I don't actually think organic milk is any better than regular milk, but while wheeling around Costco last weekend I happened to be at eye-level with the milk price sticker and was staggered that organic milk is THREE TIMES the price of regular milk. Dang.

**And, to those who think I'm overly cheap (you know who you are) may I point out we do ourselves well in beds and recliners and beer at this house. :) We know what's important.

The Goose-girl

I was thinking about why it is, exactly, that I don't think humans can wreck the earth. It isn't solely that the people who think we can tend to try to manipulate science, or that they claim to put humans in a class with all the other animals but don't want to allow humans to do what they do (in other words, beavers build dams, men build houses, if they are each animals, how can you say the dam is okay but not the house?). It isn't even the Jurassic Park catchphrase "Life finds a way."

I think the reason that I'm skeptical about man's apocalyptic abilities is how well everything works. From the water cycle to the human pancreas, nature really works remarkably well. Of course, it sometimes gets screwed up--that's our fault--but things are designed to work perfectly, absent sin and its whole rotten inheritance.

Which is what you'd expect from a perfect Designer, after all. God looked at His creation and said it was good. And so mighty was this goodness that even after the people God had put in charge of nature decided to wreck themselves, nature followed her human masters but kept hints of her former character, like the princess who is forced to be a goose girl temporarily.

I don't think man has the power, or for that matter the time, to tilt things so far that the world becomes uninhabitable.

We can be foolish, of course, and waste and wreck and damage her, or obsess over and worship and fear her, but the world is older than we are. She has seen us swing back and forth between treating her like a goddess and like a whore--we're in a goddess phase at the moment--when in actuality she's neither. We've been given dominion over her in the same way that a good man has dominion over a dog or indeed, that Christ has dominion over us: not to exploit us, but as C.S. Lewis puts it, to make us "more ourselves than ever".

In other words our proper occupation is to garden the world, which means neither leaving huge slag heaps nor fencing off large portions of the outdoors lest any human footstep soil the virgin forest. Being sinners we want to do one or the other. If we're redeemed, we know we must repent of both and set about gardening.

So Nature, in her goose-girl rags at the moment, waits like the rest of us for Christ to come and make all things new. I think she'll last until then. God has seen to it that she will.

Cheers,

Breanna