It's Finally Juning Up

That is, it's finally getting warmer. Hooray! May around here was a wild swing between heat we weren't ready for and then, just when you start wondering if you have a pair of shorts that still fit you, WHAM! The old blizzard-in-the-night trick.

(By the way, sorry no picture. Things are complicated when you have to move children and haul your sorry postpartum broken-footed self into a wheelchair and roll across the room to get the camera. I'll get you a picture after I've had to be in the vicinity of the camera anyway.)

The garden continues to come up well, and we haven't had a hail/wind storm to damage the fruit trees like we did last year, so it may be I'll be even busier in August and September this year than I was last year. Also hooray.

In very weird news, David Carradine has died under mysterious circumstances. I know someone (see? I'm not mentioning your name) who keeps a list of which celebrities die in a given year. In alphabetical order. I bet some of my readers can guess who I'm talking about. (It's not the Husband-- if he did such a thing, he'd keep an Excel spreadsheet with a graph to enable you to track which month is most celeb-deadly.) The odd thing is that it rubs off; a bunch of us now watch the celebrity-death news to make sure he doesn't miss anyone.

In even weirder news, PBO gave a speech in Cairo today which contained the very silly line:

"There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples."

While that truth does transcend nations and peoples, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not at the heart of every religion. What about Kali worship, Druidism, or Baal worship, for instance, which involve sacrifice of a particular group of humans? Just on a hunch, I'm betting that the priests of Baal did not want to be burned alive on a metal statue, and the Druids did not want to be strangled and thrown into a bog.

(Note: I know posers claiming to be Christians, such as the Crusaders, have done things that nobody in their senses would want done to them. You'll note I called them posers? As well, I'm talking about what is accepted and recommended in the doctrines of the religion, not what the followers actually do. See the difference?)

But perhaps PBO meant all modern religions. Or perhaps, which is most likely, he just meant Islam. Well, what are the Five Pillars of Islam?

1. There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet.
2. Pray 5 times per day facing Mecca.
3. Give alms.
4. Fast during Ramadan.
5. Go to Mecca.

Do you see Do As You Would Be Done By in there anywhere? No?

(No, alms doesn't count. It's a specific action, not a guiding principle--you can give alms while doing all sorts of things that you wouldn't want done to you.)

It's not respectful in any case to be vague about religions that do have deep and fundamental differences. Putting the Golden Rule, which is a Christian doctrine, onto Islam is disrespectful both to Christianity and to Islam, and people who take either religion seriously are bothered by it.

We won't even go into the other modern religions--the Golden Rule doesn't enter Hinduism either, because karma is not the same thing--because it would take too long.

Religions make competing claims. To take only two of them: Islam says there is no god but Allah, and Christianity says there is no God but the triune Jehovah. Islam says Jesus Christ was a great prophet (though not the greatest), but nothing more, and Christianity says He was the second Person of the Trinity and therefore God. (Please don't make me explain the Trinity at the tail of a blog post.) In each case, both claims cannot be true at the same time. If we are interested in understanding the religions, it serves no purpose to pretend they are the same. 2+2 is not 7, and acting like it is only makes us misbalance our checkbooks.

So next time someone asks you if you think all religions are basically the same and just tell people to be good and love others, you may say NO--that's sloppy, condescending thinking, and only people who don't think religion matters can accept it. I'm not, at this moment, arguing for the truth of Christianity--you'll note that the fact religions are different holds true whether you are a Christian or a Muslim or a Wiccan. I am saying that telling a devout Wiccan that she holds basically the same doctrines as a devout Muslim is ignorant at best, and insulting at worst.

After which little diatribe, I shall leave you and try to go to the bathroom while both babies are asleep.

Cheers,

Breanna

Inspiration

So if this guy can lose 80+ pounds in 19 weeks, why haven't I lost any baby weight, already?

(Oh yeah. The foot thing. And the curse of estrogen--my body figures I might need to nurse a dozen babies in a famine, and then how would I feel about having lost those pounds it worked so hard to put on? Hmm?)

Anyway, when I join the two-footed world, I intend to keep looking at his blog, to make myself keep with the Denise Austin DVDs. Check out his Progress Chart and recent entries for inspiration.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S. Dang his being so sensible. Magic bullets are funner.

Miss Boo Montage

I just want to look at it, not really untie it, per se...

Just looking...

What do you mean, we don't chew on shoelaces? Why not?

What do you mean, we don't climb on the coffee table? Why not?

Thank the Lord, He starts them out on the "Easy" setting.

Cheers,

Breanna

For the Ladies

I suppose the gents might be interested, too, if they have lots of zits or worry about "fine lines and wrinkles", as the commercials always say.

The Oil Cleansing Method, here, is my new favorite way to get my face to quit breaking out. Might I add that I don't even have the castor oil yet, as I think it would make the Husband a bit cranky to be sent to buy castor oil out in public and all, and have just basically been slathering olive oil on my face and being okay with the fact that I briefly smell like salad. The website recommends sunflower oil, but I don't even know where you buy that 'round these parts except the hippie-dippie health food store where the Husband refuses to venture alone. So, I had olive oil, and olive oil is what I've been using.

You'd think cleaning your face with oil would make your face oily, but on the contrary it feels quite good. I run a washcloth under hot, hot water and then lay it on my face until the washcloth starts to cool off, then I do the aforementioned slathering with about a tablespoon of olive oil, rubbing it into my face, and then I re-wet the washcloth with hot water and steam my face again, and when it starts to cool off I gently wipe the oil off my face. That's it--no soap, no scrubbing, no "toning", no extra moisturizer, nada. Feels wonderful. You only have to do it at night, not in the morning. Takes makeup off, even eye makeup. My skin looks awesome and the two zits I had when I started have cleared up almost instantaneously. Amazing.

Did I mention it costs $16 for a great big bottle of olive oil (you can use the cheaper kind and save the extra virgin kind for eating), vs. $10-$15 for a teensy bottle of Facial Care Product?

I love it when things work out like that.

Happy Facialing,

Breanna

Working Out

Brother, not me-- my workouts consist of getting one leg really toned and the other leg getting really flabby.
When your head is 1/3 of your body weight, it's really hard to hold it up on a pencil neck.

Something surprising must have been happening in the vicinity of my nose.

Can't tell if he was fascinated with me, here, or with the shiny camera, or with the ceiling. After all, it was probably the first time he could really see the ceiling. It's hard to focus your eyes on something that far away, you know.

While watching me navigate a particularly challenging diaper change in my wheelchair the other day, the Husband asked "Do you ever almost fall out of that thing?"

To which I replied no, I didn't, because I didn't pop wheelies backward. I only lean forward precariously toward the changing surface and catch myself with my good foot. Luckily it is impossible to catch myself with my bad foot, as it is up on an annoying pedal dealie that bangs into everything as you try to turn around. It's just fortunate that my foot doesn't particularly hurt, even if you bang it against the garbage can.

We were watching a vintage Looney Tunes cartoon yesterday that came in the special features of my DVD of Bringing Up Baby, in which one chicken slapped another chicken in true Looney Tunes fashion. Miss Boo was heartbroken that the chickens could be so cruel, and it took fully five minutes and some adept invention on my part about how the chickens were being silly, and not real, and then I had to make up a story about them going to bed before tears stopped. An empathetic soul, that one.

The only other news I have is that my potatoes are up (reportedly), my tomatoes are still alive (reportedly), and my herb garden is doing well (I can verify this visually through the bedroom window if I stand on the tiptoes of my good foot and mash my nose against the screen). There have been light skirmishes all morning between the robins nesting in front of my window and a magpie who seemed to think he could muscle into the neighborhood. The chickadees allied with the robins and the magpie has been beat back twice now.

And that's all the home news. I have a few social/theological/(boring?) posts brewing in my head, but never fear, I won't subject you to them for a little while. They need to gel.

(Jell?)

Anyway, Cheers,

Breanna

In Other News

Donkey: "Shrek says he thinks the Prince is compensating for something. I don't know what that means, but what I think it means
is--"

Shrek: "Donkey!"

--Shrek

A missle called the Taep-o-dong was launched today in North Korea.

(Really! That's what it's called!)

Hum.

Breanna

P.S. Suddenly want a pantry?

You Know You're a Mom of Littles When...

5. You can recite 5 Dr. Seuss books and Goodnight Moon flawlessly, but have to stop and think to remember your own phone number.

4. You constantly walk around in damp clothes and it's not your fault.

3. You talk about yourself in the third person ("Mama doesn't want you to...") all the time.

2. You start saying things like, "You know, that Hannah Montana is just too grownup-looking for a girl her age."

1. You look down at a yellow stain on your trousers and think, "I hope that's mustard."

Cheers,

Breanna