Now I Have Book Envy

...not that it's a hard thing to give me book envy. I mean, I like 'em all, cookbooks, tiny little mouldering paperbacks from the 60s, clothbound schoolbooks from the 20s, modern editions, everything. But I finally watched 84 Charing Cross Road today, which I told the Husband was a romance part way through. I was right, it just wasn't a romance between two people. It was a romance between Helene, the main character, and English Lit. Put it on your Netflix. I am a bit mad that the bookstore in the movie is fictional. If I ever go to England, they'll probably only have the same things that Barnes & Noble have, anyway.

No baby pictures today, mostly because I have to charge the camera battery, but I assure you they're both doing great. Brother is getting fatter by the hour, thank the Lord, and Miss Boo has red "pant" on her toenails today and feels Gorgeous because of it. The Lead Mitigation Lady from the county came by to check our walls and windowsills today and Miss Boo took that moment to make the couch Gorgeous too, albeit with a (thanks again, Lord) washable yellow crayon instead of nail polish. Of course, I couldn't become Mama the Wrathful because the Lead Mitigation Lady was here. Miss Boo is no fool.

We are enjoying a few tiny thunderstorms before it's time for me to go out and harvest the army of green beans invading the northeast corner of my garden.

With that short update, I think I'll get back to my squad of GIs who have been patiently waiting for me since last night (in a short story). I left them standing in the Black Forest, and now I have to figure out how they're going to get out again.

Cheers,

Breanna

We've Been Having This Sort of Weekend...

Miss Boo and the Husband have been snatching sleep when they can.

...And Brother has been exercising, exercising, exercising, and then, for a change, kicking Mama with both feet.

I have some exciting news, for those of you who know that I write fiction. I've had a short story accepted for publication at The Absent Willow Review. (No, I didn't link it, because I think most of you won't want to read the stories about werewolves and Mars that are in the current issue.) I'll link to the story once it's published, which will be on December 16. It doesn't pay anything unless I win the "Editor's Choice" contest for the month, in which case it'll win $50. However, it's not about the money at the moment, just getting my work out there. I'm very excited, despite the suddenly staid tone my writing seems to have assumed. Oh well. Champagne anyone? ;)

Cheers,

Breanna

We're Alive...

...I just need to get the camera charged so I can post our pictures. I'll try to get them up tomorrow.

Cheers!

Breanna

18 Quarts of Apple Butter Later...

Here is a video for my sibs that Miss Boo and I found on our "I've been making apple butter all week so I'm going to take a day off" day:



Enjoy!

Cheers,

Breanna

It's Autumn (Because Autumn is a Prettier Word Than Fall)

We have been doing autumn-y things like get our firewood stacked, culling (and making into apple butter) the tiny apples and canning. Opa came up this weekend
...and Brother resented his mother for intruding on his Opa time with a camera.

Miss Boo is learning to make faces.

Brother is learning about the joys of the bouncy seat while Mama makes apple butter and wishes her children to be out of scalding range...

3 quarts of apple butter and 2 half-pints of raspberry cordial (alcoholic!) so far...

The apple butter "cooking until there is a sheen on top and it mounds slightly on the spoon". (Canning recipies are always so specific they're confusing.)

The pre-buttered apples. We had a lot of culls this year.

Another Miss Boo face, this time because she's proud of her belly button.

I'm off to can the next batch.

Cheers!

Breanna

What We've Been Doing...

We have been... ...running a scientific experiment to see what makes a better fruit-fly trap: wine, beer, or vinegar + dishsoap. So far the fruit flies are very plebian and prefer beer.

This is Brother's new favorite sleeping position. He's figured out how to flip from his stomach to his back AND his back to his stomach. It's only a matter of time before he thinks it through enough to realize he can roll over and over and actually transport himself. Right now he is trying to dig his toes into the carpet and shove, and gets mad when his face scrapes along the floor.

Miss Boo's very first pigtails and a ladybug barette that she insisted upon.

"Onges puh-lees?" (Lambie, sponging off others at mealtime as usual.)

Cheers,

Breanna

And So It Begins--

--football season, I mean.

Brett Favre is coming back, yet again, to play for (ba-dump-ba-dum!) the Vikings. Which is sort of like if Sam decided that instead of throwing Gollum into the volcano, he'd throw Frodo instead. What a world, what a world.

But a warning: have more than one interest in life, because inevitably you will either outgrow or outlive your interest, and then where will you be?

That's right, classless in Viking-town, baby.

Cheers,

Breanna

In Case You Need a Laugh Today...

...watch this. (Embedding is disabled on this one.)

I had to recount this scene the other day to Uncle Deve, who hasn't seen this movie, and was disturbed how perfectly I could do it.

In case you need a rant today-- you're welcome.

Cheers,

Breanna

Just Babies!

...So all of you who come back, again and again, for my theological and philosophical insights will be disappointed today.

(Anyone? Anyone? I thought that might only be me.)

The babies have been severely cute lately.

She insisted on THREE barettes in her hair today--not one, not two, but three--and had to go look at her reflection in the glass on the front of the oven to make sure I got it right.

Decent job, Mama, but you could have gotten the color coordination to match better.

Brother has figured out how to flop his hips sideways until he can turn 90 degrees. He finds this vastly entertaining. I find myself a bit disgruntled I can no longer leave him alone on a bed while I grab a wipe.

Cameras are silly, so you make a silly face when you see one, natch.

See Mama? I'm helping him!

Cheers,

Breanna

Jephthah's Daughter

So I was going to put this really pretty picture of Jephthah's daughter at the top of the post, but for some reason Blogger won't let me, so no picture today.

Anyway, I was reading today in Judges about Jephthah--you know, the guy who judged Israel and, while chasing the Ammonites, says "God, if You let me defeat the Ammonites, I'll sacrifice whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I get home as a burnt offering", and then it turns out to be his daughter--and a couple of things struck me.

One was that the enemies of Israel aren't terribly creative; when Jephthah asks the king of Ammon why Ammon is fighting a war with Israel, the Ammonite king says, "Because you stole my land." Jephthah points out that Israel never did conquer any land that could be considered Ammonite, and that anyway it's been 300 years since the conquest, so why hasn't Ammon done anything in all that time? To which the Ammonite king replies, more or less, "Well, I'm still going to kick your butt."

The second thing I noticed was the whole notorious vow-to-sacrifice-the-daughter thing. This is usually cited as included in Scripture to point out "Don't make rash vows" which, indeed, the Lord Himself reinforces in the New Testament when He tells us not to swear oaths at all, but something else about it hit me today: Jephthah was ignoring a path of action that God laid out, and taking his own path.

You see, this wasn't happening back in the pre-Mosaic era when folks could be understood for not knowing the kinds of sacrifices that God wanted. The Lord had spent forty years in the wilderness, and who knows how many more in the land, hammering into the heads of the Israelites exactly what kinds of sacrifices He wanted for exactly which occasions, what they were supposed to be comprised of, and when and where they were supposed to be offered. There was already a "Wow, I'm grateful, God" sacrifice, and a "I just feel like praising God" sacrifice. That Jephthah was circumventing all this might be understandable (like the guy from my home town who promised God that he'd build a giant statue of the Virgin Mary if his wife didn't die of cancer) but it was not right.

The thing is, all the sacrifices that God ordered were so exact because they were a physical picture of a spiritual reality, a foreshadowing of the ultimate Sacrifice on the Cross. God wasn't interested in sacrifice per se; it's not as though He needs to eat. He just knows us well enough to know that only a picture as vivid as a lamb or bull getting its throat cut and then being totally consumed on an altar will teach us the seriousness and costliness of sin.

When we ignore the provision of God and make up our own way of doing things, we're being just as foolish as Jephthah was. Death may not result from our foolishness--but it's not out of the question. There's a reason why the Book of Proverbs over and over again condemns a fool. A fool behaves in ways that are not consistent with reality, and sooner or later reality (occasionally in the shape of the law of gravity or a hungry bear) will fall on the fool's pointy head.

Perhaps the death we're talking about is the death of a relationship, because I ignore God's commands to speak lovingly and forgive my friend, with the excuse "I'm just a blunt person." Maybe it's the death of a freedom, because I ignore God's commands to pray for those in authority, excusing it because "We've tried that and nobody comes to those meetings." (Who said there had to be meetings?) And just maybe I ignore God's commands to bring my children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, because it's easier to let them sass me, have their own way, and throw fits about having to go to church--and the death is really the premature death of a disobedient child that is the flip side of the promise in the fifth commandment.

The encouraging thing? God is the Lord of Life, not death, and He honors repentence. Just because we may have engaged in foolish Jephthah-type behavior before doesn't mean we have to keep doing it. We can confess it to the Lord, Who says He will forgive us, and we can stop doing those crazy, foolish things, and start doing the simple things He asks of us.

Granted, having your pastor lay his hands on you and ask God to heal you isn't as impressive as putting up a fifty-foot statue of the Virgin Mary, but it has the advantage of actually being obedient.

Now if Icould just stop fussing at the kids long enough for this to sink in...

Cheers,

Breanna

You All Knew It

I'm crazy.

At least, that's what the Today show tells me. Why else would I want more of these?

And these:

And this:

Yup. Crazy.

I usually turn some morning show on in order to catch the news brief so I know if anything exploded overnight and who got elected, that sort of thing. Their "lifestyle" pieces, having nothing whatever to do with my life, I generally ignore.

This morning, however, I happened to catch the teaser question "Why are couples choosing to have more kids?" I was mildly interested and left the TV on for the segment, expecting the answer to be, more or less, "because they can!" The answer they gave?

Because women are crazy.

They couched it in slightly nicer (only slightly) language, of course; they talked about how society values pregnancy and how women enjoy the "adulation" they get while they're pregnant. They talked about women being "bumpaholics" - addicted to pregnancy - and one (presumably childless and sane) psychologist compared women who want more children to the black-widow alien she-devil in the movie Species. (This is the alien who, upon finding out that the guy she chose to father her alien children was a diabetic, thrust a spike through his skull and walked on, unconcerned, to the next bar to find another guy.)

And the kicker? Guess how many children it takes for a woman to be nuts?

Two is apparently ok, but if you want three or four kids, your husband better just watch out that he doesn't develop diabetes.

The interviewer feebly tried to suggest that surely, this sort of mad pregnancy-desire psychosis was rare?

"I don't know how rare it is," replied the psychologist. "Women need to understand why they're getting pregnant before they get pregnant."

Gosh, maybe the reason a woman is getting pregnant is because she wants a baby?

I was more shocked and appalled than I should be, I suppose; it just struck me as odd to hear four children described as a "big" family. After all, I peresonally know families that have five, seven, and eight kids respectively; through the internet, I'm familiar with famlies that have ten or more children. To my mind, a family starts being big when you have to buy the nine-passenger van to get to church. Three or four kids are just...well, average.

But that wasn't what appalled me. I shouldn't be surprised, in a country that murders thousands of unborn babies every month, that we devalue children to the extent that people who happen to like a lot of them must necessarily be less sane than people who spend their money on, say, Van Goghs or Lexuses. (Lexi?) It is appalling, however, to see the distain for children so blatantly displayed on national television--to see that it doesn't expect to be rebuked or even noticed very much.

I'm not one to say that, in the Catholic phrase, a Christian has to be "open to life in all instances". I think limiting your family, with non-abortificant contraceptives, is perfectly acceptable Biblically. (That's another blog.) However, if a couple is convicted that they should never use contraceptives, God forbid that I should tell them they need to. God will choose to bless some folks and not others with lots of kids; some folks are called to have lots of kids and some aren't. But since I don't know everything and can't read anybody's mind, I can never say with certainty whether someone is having kids in response to a call from God, because they just like babies, or because they are a "bumpaholic". Frankly, I don't think it's any of my business.

However, when we as a society define "more than two kids" as "crazy", even if we're not actively imposing limits on the number of children a couple may have, like China, we're imposing significant social sanctions on people who have three or more children. Nobody wants to be treated as though they're crazy.

As for the supposed adulation of women who are pregnant, I never experienced that during my pregnancies. Pregnancy for me is a means, not an end; anyone who thinks that the occasional stranger saying "Boy, you must be ready to pop!" is attention enough to compensate for swollen feet, having to pee every half hour, and throwing up each morning has never been pregnant. The reason women put up with being pregnant is that we want a baby. What's so pathological about that?

The psychologist ended the interview by saying, "Of course, I would never tell anyone what the right number of children is for a family to have. Whether to have another baby should be a family decision."

Well, madam, it always HAS BEEN. And since I'm crazy (I want two more kids, eventually), maybe you ought to refrain from telling me what to do.

Vive la crazies,

Breanna

Tralalalalala

Miss Boo and I found this song:

Does it sound to anyone else like Manneheim Steamroller is doing the accompaniment?

Finally, we are hoping, the Clappy People (the Slovenian a capella group I posted about a while ago) have lost their bedtime/naptime ascendancy. This is a good thing, because Mama was getting ready to urge the State Department to declare war on Slovenia. Lately Miss Boo has been asking for "fwogs" - Kermit and his buddies. I'll take anything not Slovenian.

Baby Pics tomorrow if things go according to plan.

Cheers,

Breanna

The Vocation of Motherhood

Tackle every task as a direct response to God, just as if He were asking you "Will you go do your laundry now?" Just say, "Yes, I will." And smile at Him. Then you'll be moving ever closer to the heart of your Mother's Rule.

--Holly Pierlot, A Mother's Rule of Life

Oof.

Sort of puts things in perspective, don't it?

This quote struck me last night, and a blog I've been looking at lately, Conversion Diary, had another quote today:

Duty before holiness.

This sounds like an oxymoron at first, but it might be more clear if we said Duty before "holiness". In other words, God has clearly called you to something, and that something usually has its boring days or its days when everybody is whining and pooping at once and the hamburger isn't defrosted. (Clearly, I'm called to motherhood.) It can be tempting to neglect the duty God has placed before us--like washing dishes or doing the laundry--for something "holier" like spiritual reading, church work, or...ahem, writing blog posts.

I think this is because, quite simply, we like to define holiness. Doing what God has asked you to do is always more holy and important than doing something that fits our own definition of holiness. If we get to define holiness, we'll always achieve it; and Isaiah says that all our goodness is like filthy rags. If we do something "holy" instead of the actual task God has placed before us, no matter how routine or small, then we are not being holy, we are being disobedient.

Sort of puts a whole new spin on doing laundry and dishes, and helps me understand how everything can be done for the glory of God. Not that I argue with that Scripture, because after all it is Scripture, but sometimes it's hard to see how, practically, I can wash up the counter for the glory of God. If, in actual fact, He has asked me to wash up the counter, than washing up the counter as if He was watching me is doing it to the glory of God. And, incidentally, He is watching me.

I think this might also be something like the "practice of the presence of God" that Brother Andrew talks about.

Anyhow, worth thinking about today as you deal with your own versions of laundry, dishes, and poopy diapers.

Cheers,

Breanna

Back on the Wagon

TB Player: In your patience possess ye your souls.

Lenny: Huh? What? When will the record be ready?

Uncle Bob: A week from Thursday.

--That Thing You Do!

So you'll remember that a while ago I asked you all to yell at me if I fell off my "Stop Looking Four Months Pregnant" diet/exercise plan. You couldn't, because I cleverly didn't tell you that I basically stopped exercising (except for a lot of extra housework) for like three weeks, between company and general "I'm-having-a-busy-day-so-I-think-laundry-counts-as-exercise" days. I ALSO felt the need to partake of goodies I made for said company. I'd have gained a bunch of weight if it wasn't for this guy

who fortunately decided to have a couple of growth spurts that at least held me steady. However, I stopped losing weight and I broke my newly-formed habit of exercise, which is not acceptable. Let the yelling commence.

Anyhow, after contemplating the pan of cinnamon rolls I made on Sunday, of which Miss Boo and I consumed at least half (and look at her, she's not that big, how much could she have possibly eaten?)

I decided to get back on track. So yesterday we went for a brisk walk with Miss Boo in the stroller, Brother in the sling, and myself schlepping as fast as was comfortable on my foot. Today I think I'll need to do an exercise DVD, since it's forest-fire smoky out. (By the way, notice what she's sleeping with? A book. Most kids like to sleep with cuddly animals. It must be genetic... I remember finding The Wishsong of Shannara tangled in my covers at about age 12.)

I also told myself that I could have as much as I wanted of anything healthy, but of unhealthy stuff I could have One. So in other words, One cinnamon roll, One cup of coffee with half & half, One...fill in the blank. Amazing how much more you savor something when you only get one! I let myself have as much black coffee as I wanted however.

I think it might have made my hands a bit shaky. Perhaps I'll have to cut back on that as well, once I've got my other cravings under control.

This is the book I've been reading lately, and it's very good. (It's not spiral bound, there's a notebook underneath it.) It's a Catholic book, hence the Rosary on the cover, but there's a lot of good stuff in there for Protestants as well. It basically suggests you start out by figuring out God's revealed purposes for you, just like people in religious vocations do, because, after all, motherhood IS a religious vocation. Then, once you know what He wants you to do, shape your time around that, down to when to wipe up that gross area behind the toilet. (Do all things to the glory of God, you know. It may sound silly, but He can so be glorified by keeping that gross area wiped up. Somebody's got to wipe it up. Maybe you're the person who can do it with the cheerfulest attitude, eh?)

I like that the book suggests you first decide where in your schedule you're going to have time for daily prayer, even if it's only five minutes. And I like that it takes more into account when planning the use of time than just whether you get the laundry washed and put away on the same day.

So maybe, with the help of this book, I'll be able to exercise every day this week, like I want to. We'll see, and I'll try to keep you informed.

Cheers,

Breanna


P.S.
Happy Birthday, Baba!