Five-year-old James Joyce

Are there always tornadoes in June?
Are there tornadoes every day in June? What about across the Great Atlantic Ocean?
What is a sharpie for? How do you get sharpie off of stuff? Is it called sharpie get-off soap? Would water work to take it off? Why would you want to write something you can't get off?
When will you be done writing? I wish I was God, because then I could do anything I wanted.

How can Meta-Knight turn into a tornado anyway?
How does Mario shoot fireballs out of his hands?
Where is this made in? Why does this kind of look like a stapler? But it doesn't do the same thing? Why does this move back and forth?  Do some things have the thing you press down and the ink comes off things and it makes the label?
What does evangelical mean?

I'm very strong. I bet I could knock a whole window down in one bash.  I bet I could throw that and it could get damaged pretty well.  I'm that strong.
Pikachu. Pikachu. Pikachu. Pikachu.
How come when I pick Pikachu on Super Squash Brothers, my controller goes "Uh-oy"?
The bullets go on the tornado. The light from the moon shines on Pikachu and that means he will save them.

How come there are different ways to label things? Can these labels stay on forever. Can the ink labels stay on forever? What if you use printer ink? How come the stuff on your calendar ink never comes off?

Squirrel noises.
For Amber's next birthday, I'm thinking we should buy her a Sophia dress.  She has all the other supplies but not the dress.
Dad? You know the thing where you sit on at Bible Study? Sometimes we use that and put some preschool clothes on it and that makes a stand because nothing else makes a stand, well I think so, but there might be something else that does, I don't know, there might be and there might not.

Dashi, I'm already on it.  I'm already on it, Captain. I'm already on it, Captain. I'm already on it Captain. I'm already on it, Captain.
Humming "Octonauts" theme.
Dad, is it okay if I erase some of your Bible Study things? I won't erase them all.  I just need a spot to draw a computer.

The lab launch will never end.  It's a good spot on the earth. But there is a spot where I can slide back to earth.

Goodbye, garden

Hello, root cellar?

Okay... I can't take credit for the popcorn. 

Okay, not quite.  First off, this room is much too warm and dry to be a true root cellar.  Furthermore, it wouldn't be prudent to store jars in a damp place.  However, with a few modifications, such as adding a second door, insulating the inside walls, scooting the shelves out a couple of inches, and installing an air-intake pipe for ventilation, this room would be well on it's way to becoming a root cellar.

Funny that I know this kind of stuff.  Seems I've recently become obsessed with root cellars after reading this book: 

 My husband says this obsession makes me weird. My father says I was born three generations too late. I'd probably agree with both of them.  But how cool would it be to fill this basement storage room with bushels of apples, pounds of potatoes, heads of cabbage, and crates of carrots? Or is it just me?

In the time it's taken you to forget about this blog,

I've
  -lost my computer to a virus
  -lost my phone to St. Louis humidity
  -got blocked from my email
  -moved to a new state
  -settled into a new home
  -found three snakes in the house
  -joined a book club
  -watched the dog chase a cow out of the backyard
  -repeatedly bribed my child with gum to get through church services.
  

What I haven't done
  -updated this blog.

 
Consider it done.

For the nursing mother

Or the humor-deprived mother, or the grandmother, or the mother's lactation consultant;  really, it's just a good book for anyone who has tried breastfeeding.  Especially good for those of us who tried it and found it rather daunting.

Seriously.  It's like she had been sitting on my couch with me all those months.

For the Kindle, for the bookshelf or that other bookshelf, for more information.

The American Frugal Housewife on the Education of Daughters

Besides giving some useful advice on how to create the perfect pie crust, clean the feathers in your bed, and keep those eggs fresh for up to three years (it seems all you need is a properly mixed bucket of lime-water!), Lydia Marie Francis Child has some insightful social commentary in her book:

One great cause of vanity, extravagance and idleness that are so fast growing upon our young ladies, is the absence of domestic education.  By domestic education, I do not mean the sending of daughters into the kitchen some half dozen times, to weary the patience of the cook, and to boast of it the next day in the parlor.  I mean tow or three years pent with a mother, assisting her in her duties, instruction brothers and sisters, and taking care of their own clothes.  This is the way to make them happy, as well as good wives; for, being early accustomed to the duties of life, they will sit lightly as well as gracefully upon them.

. . . 

Instead of representing domestic life as the gathering place of the deepest and purest affections; as the sphere of woman's enjoyments as well as of her duties; as, indeed the whole world to her; that one pernicious sentence [Let her enjoy herself all she can, while she is single!] teachers a girl to consider matrimony desirable because 'a good match' is a triumph of vanity, and it is deemed respectable to be 'well settled in the world;' but that it is a necessary sacrifice of her freedom and her gayety . . . they have been taught to look for happiness where it never can be found, viz. in the absence of all occupation, or the unsatisfactory and ruinous excitement of fashionable competition.  

The difficulty is, eduation does not usually point the female heart to its only true resting-place.  That dear English word 'home,' is not half so powerful a talisman as 'the world.' Instead of the salutary truth, that happiness is in  duty, they are taught to consider the two things totally distinct; and that whoever seeks one, must sacrifice the other.

Hunger Games Junkie Looking for a Fix

I had been warned that if I picked up Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games I wouldn't be able to stop.  And it's true.  As gruesome and appalling as the plot sounds, it's incredibly gripping.  (I'm working on a review, but refuse to comment too much until I see how the series concludes.)  I plowed through the first book in two days.  Then I checked out the second, and finished it today.  And now I need the third book in the series, Mockingjay.   But unfortunately, the library is closed, the waiting list for the book is 94 people long, and I've used up my one free book a from the Kindle Lending Library.

So if anyone out there happens to own the Kindle edition, I hear you can lend your copy to someone once, for 14 days.  I promise to return it to you before the 14 days expires.  I'm desperate.

Empty arms

"During this time the thought of her own mother often came to her; she couldn't remember her mother except as an aging and melancholy woman.  But she too had once been young, when she lay and warmed herself with the heat of her own body; her mother's body and soul had also been marked in her youth by carrying and giving birth to her children.  And doubtless she hadn't given it any more thought than Kristin had when she sat with the sweet young life at her breast--that as long as they both should live, each day would take the child farther and farther away from her arms." (Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter)

I'm realizing more and more that I no longer have a baby in my house.  Rather, I have a young boy, who has the ability to imagine and create, who has desires and ideas of his own making, and who can experience a plethora of complex emotions and respond with empathy to another's sadness.  Without even noticing what was happening, my son grew into a boy who can converse with me about the day's events, count to twenty, and supply the appropriate words from the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Evening Prayer that I leave out. 

I find joy at every turn; but ah, to hold a sweet young life at my breast once more!

Ruh-Ro, Raggy!

Having fun is really hard, despite the library card.

Libraries used to be wonderful, exciting places.  I used to go there regularly and pick out books or study.  I enjoyed browsing for a title that sounded unique, cover that looked interesting, an author I recognized, or a genre I enjoyed.  I carried a book with me wherever I went, and often spent Saturday afternoons curled up in a chair with a cup of tea and a novel.

Throughout college, I maintained a wishlist of books on Amazon, and gladly purchased the required texts for my literature courses.  And, unlike many of the other students in my classes, I actually read them!  Twain, Kipling, Defoe, Bronte, Orwell, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, Salinger, whatever a professor threw at me, I read.  Everything, but Mrs. Dalloway.  Try as I might, I couldn't wrap my head around that.  And although I was looking ahead to a series of moves, being engaged to a Pre-Seminarian, I kept every single one of them.  Even Mrs. Dalloway.

During some dizzying years a third-grade teacher, I had little time for books with a reading level higher than 8th grade.  I was always in need of the next great read-aloud, and knew I wouldn't find it hiding on the shelves at home between D.H. Lawrence and Emily Dickinson.  So I grabbed E.B. White and Shel Silverstein; Kate DiCamillo and Beverly Cleary.  Good authors, no doubt.  But certainly not challenging.

I eventually quit that job, moved again, but this time, left most of the books packed away in storage.  Since having a kid, something in me changed.  Certainly I was aware that the majority of the books I would be reading would be at his level (at most, 32 pages, and fully illustrated).  But surely, since I would be staying home, surely I would have time for something more challenging that Eric Carle and Kevin Henkes.  Surely, surely I could find time for something well-written and though-provoking.

But sadly, no.  Most of the library time is spent finding books at his level.  If I ever get a chance to venture to the "Adult Fiction" section, and actually manage to peruse the shelves and select a novel; even if I'm lucky enough to bring it home and start to read, I'm sunk.  Somewhere along the line, everything above an 8th grade reading level became like Mrs. Dalloway.  I find myself rereading entire pages, searching past sections for the plot I missed, even wondering who the main characters are supposed to be.  I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I'm interrupted every fifteen minutes, and that I'm constantly wondering what my child is up to when he's not interrupting me.

And so, I try to keep out of the Adult Fiction section.  The books I have managed to find and read (excepting Michael Perry) have been sorely disappointing.  But I keep being drawn back, in search of that elusive well-written, thoughtful text, authored by someone kind enough to keep everything simple enough that I don't have to think too hard about the meanings of the words on the page.  After all, I may only get a few minutes before my son wakes up, or empties a gallon of water on my kitchen floor, but I still want to read!

Of Family Dinner

Writes Caitlin Flanagan (told you I loved her!):

"Their [writers of family dinner advice] notions about the meal and its importance in family life are rooted in middle-class American assumptions about how and when parents and children ought to interact.  What they are loath to admit is that the great missing element of that kind of existence is not dinner gongs or lists of conversations starters.  It's a kind of family life in which expectations have not been raised, but radically lowered.

"It requires a mother who considers putting dinner on the table neither an exalted nor a menial task, and also a collection of family members whose worldly ambitions are low enough that they all happen to be hanging around the house at six-thirty.  For family life to mimic the postwar ideal that is our current fixation, we would need to revive the cultural traditions that created it: the one-income family, the middle-class tendency toward frugality, and the understanding that one's children's prospects won't include elite private colleges and stratospheric professional success, both of which may hinge on tremendous achievements in the world of extracurricular activities.

"If children are to have unstructured time, they need a mother at home; no one would advocate a new generation of latchkey children.  But she must be a certain kind of mother--one willing to divest her sense of purpose from her children's achievement.  She must be a woman willing to forgo the prestige of professional life in order to sit at home while her kids dream up new games out in the tree house and wait for her to call them in for a nourishing dinner.  She must be willing to endure the humiliation of forgoing a career and of raising tots bound for state college."


Taken from To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing our Inner Housewife, "The Executive Child."

A Strong Woman

I came across this beautiful description of a strong woman while reading Michael Perry's Truck: A Love Story.  Notice her strength comes not from her ability to strap a man's shoes and win the bread- rather, it comes from making the bread and feeding it to her children.  A bit lengthy, but bear with me.

"I was raised by strong women.  Of course they could only do so much.

"I use the term raised  in the perpetual sense, because the work continues.  There is my mother, of course, sentenced to nature's most blessed curse, in which the female is expected to give of her body and blood in the rearing of a creature bound to bring trouble on the house.  Not to mention the heart.  A child is prayer and worry wrapped in a blanket.  Tax deductible, yes, but oh, the hidden costs.  You might describe my mom as the valedictorian homecoming queen who wound up a God-fearing homemade granola-slingling Florence Nightingale in a maxiskirt and construction boots stuck on a cow farm. 

"Over the years she has taken responsibility for for the care and feeding of legions of children--some conceived, some adopted, some fostered, some delivered by the county for the weekend, others for a lifetime.  She is slight of build, and (to use her phrase) just mortified by public attention (thus I write of her in the broadest terms), but I have watched three firefighters rush to her with an unconscious baby and then enclose her in a semicircle of hulking apprehension while she calmly gets the kid breathing again.  I have also seen her up to her elbow in the rear end of a sheep and giving rescue breaths to a newborn Holstein calf. (Mind you, not simultaneously.) 

"For forty years she has raised a constantly fluctuating passel of tots, drawing on her wits, fifty-pound bags of oatmeal, and a fistful of coupons the size of a bad UNO hand.  There were undoubtedly sleepless nights, but she never betrayed them."

Fear not, the next paragraph goes on to describe her inefficiencies and weirdness, including a strange hand tic and her inability to fold a basket of clothes without getting distracted.

I have reread that passage several times now, and the only thought I have is this: Would that I could be like her.

Advice from Miss Reed

"Let me give you this advice. It is the first and last I shall offer you. If you divide each day into sections and perform some useful task to timetable, the day will be over before you know it. You will be dependent on your own senses and not have to be flattered and admired in order to know that you exist." 

I knew I had read Jane Eyre multiple times for a reason.  And here it is, the useful tasks I aim to perform each day.

Monday: Load of laundry, scrub bathrooms (including floors)
Tuesday:  Load of laundry, scrub kitchen floor
Wednesday: Load of laundry, dust and vacuum living and dining room
Thursday: Load of laundry, dust and vacuum bedrooms
Friday:  Load of laundry, sew
Saturday: Read, Relax, Rest
Sunday: Church, make something fantastic for Sunday dinner
Everyday: Wash dishes, declutter rooms of toys, shoes, books, and mail, make lunch and dinner