Stand in the Trenches

Actually, I wrote this last Sunday... but never got around to posting it, what with the last minute Christmas preparations and all. So, I'll just put it out here today, with an update at the end. Merry Christmas, everyone!

What I Learned This Advent

1) Don't procrastinate. You never know if your wide-open, nothing-going-on-but-Christmas-prep "Tomorrow" is going to stay that way. All of last week's "Tomorrows" certainly weren't what I'd expected, with Mom in the hospital from Sunday to Thursday. Now, I really wish I'd done a little more cookie baking and shopping and card-writing back in November. Oh, wait, that's when Dad was in the hospital. Never mind.

2) Be grateful. Always and in all things. There's always something to be grateful for, like having more time to spend with your folks (even if it's while they're stuck in the hospital). And of course, I'm very grateful that Dad is recovering from his triple-bypass, and Mom is home and OK without any surgery at all. I'm also grateful that my family can always find something to laugh about, even during stressful times.

3) I have the world's greatest brothers. They are so fantastic that I'm really very sorry that you don't have them for brothers. Your brothers may be nice, but trust me, they are not as nice as mine. I mean, would your brothers stay overnight with Dad, and not just expect their sister to do it? Would your brothers take turns in giving Dad rides to the dentist and to the hospital? Would your brothers blow away the myth that it's always the daughters who have all the responsibility of care for aging parents? Would they? I didn't think so.

4) I also have good kids. Not perfect, but pretty darn good. (I can brag a bit more about my brothers because they aren't my responsibility; I don't dare be so boastful about my own kids. For one thing, there are too many people with evidence to contradict me.) Anyway, it occurred to me on my fourth day of spending hours away from home at the hospital that I wasn't the least bit worried about my kids causing mayhem or generally getting into trouble at home. I'd come home each day to find that breakfasts and lunches had been made, and cleaned up after, and the child with a cold had been cared for and attended to, and some school work and piano practicing had been done. What more could I ask? I'll have to remember that the next time they're driving me insane with something or other.

5) St. Nick is the patron saint of harried Moms just before Christmas. I prayed for his intercession this season, because if I was going to get everything done, it would have to be with some help from above. So far, so good. I think we'll make it, with presents and stockings and Christmas dinner and all. I even had some help from a wonderful phone person at Back to Basics Toys... can you say "two-day shipping at the regular ground shipping rate?" God bless her! Most important, we had our traditional pre-Christmas confession: We make a trek as a family to Gesu Parish for confession, and then afterwards go out for dinner. That's the most important thing we do to get ready for Christmas.

6) Never say things can't be worse. Trust me, they can. I actually learned this one a few years back, but was reminded again this week. At about the same time Mom was getting checked into the hospital, a vicious cold virus began infiltrating my house. Our 15-yo daughter was the first to succumb. Tom was next, and then 8-yo daughter fell victim. The symptoms are splitting headache, sore throat, congestion, and a killer cough. Duration is about one week, if the 15-yo is typical. Yesterday, our 10-yo son came down with it. So far, our 17-yo daughter and I are the only ones standing. But wait, there's more: Tom twisted his back yesterday, so now whenever he coughs, he gets a knife stab in the back. See? Things can always get worse.

UPDATE:

As if to prove the point above, things have indeed gotten worse. Dad ended up back in the hospital on Christmas Day and is still there, though he's doing OK now. And, to top it off, I fell victim to the raging cold virus. My fashion statement now is a piece of red flannel peeking out above my neckline, covering up the thick layer of Vicks underneath. At least the red is festive, right?

Enjoy the Christmas season, my dear friends. I wish you all the blessings of health and happiness, and, failing that, then all the blessings of learning valuable life lessons!

"This is like deja vu all over again."

My mom is now in the same hospital that my dad was in last month, with the same doctors and nurses, in the same ICU, just two rooms down from where he was.

It started on Sunday when she collapsed at home. They called 911, and very quickly found she had extremely low blood pressure. The hospital did a couple of EKG's, both abnormal. Further testing indicated a possible mitral valve problem (leaky valve).

So, as of yesterday morning, we were facing the scary possibility that Mom might have open heart surgery, just weeks after Dad got home from his triple bypass.

However, as of this morning, we are hopeful that we might dodge that bullet. The heart surgeon -- God bless him -- is taking a very conservative approach. Mom did so well yesterday that he suspected she might have had a heart "shock" rather than a full-blown heart attack, and that the valve may be returning to normal.

Today they'll do another echocardiogram and make the decision after that.

This is not quite the week-before-Christmas that I'd planned. My to-do lists had things like "bake cookies", "wrap gifts", "decorate the tree", instead of "drive to hospital", "talk to doctors", "take care of Dad".

But as they say, "Want to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans." Well, I told Him, and he laughed... and somehow, I know, He'll help me get everything done that really needs to be done.

For years I've wanted to include a celebration of St. Lucy's Day in our Advent activities.

The Swedish tradition is to have the oldest daughter (some say youngest) in the house put on a white gown before dawn, walk around with a crown of burning candles on her head, and wake the other members of the family by presenting them with a tray of freshly baked sweet yeast bread and cups of coffee and hot chocolate.

This has always presented the following problems for me:

1) Before dawn?

2) A crown of burning candles?

3) Freshly baked yeast rolls?

4) Before dawn?

The only thing that really appealed was the coffee, but we have that every morning, not just on St. Lucy's Day, so it's hardly unique and festive. More like a required daily allowance of caffeine to jump start the brain.

Besides, most years, I'd just plain forget, only to realize sometime during the day that, rats, I once again missed St. Lucy's Day.

But not this year!

I'd asked my Guardian Angel to wake me for 6:45 a.m. Mass. He did, at 5:30. Too early, I said. How about something a little later? The second wake-up was at 6:15; plenty of time to get to Mass by the entrance antiphon. Good thing I did, because I was immediately reminded that it was St. Lucy's Day.

Hear us, O God, our salvation, as we rejoice on the feast of Saint Lucy, Thy virgin and Martyr, and grant us to learn the spirit of pious devotion.

I began spinning a plan to adapt the old Swedish custom to my American family.

First, the timing: Tom was taking the day off, so I could let everyone in my night-owl family sleep in a bit (avoiding that whole pre-dawn thing) and still have a little celebration.

Next, the treats. Freshly baked yeast rolls? I don't think so. But as long as I had to stop for gas at the Speedway on the way home, I could also grab some doughnuts. Close enough.

A crown of candles? Uh, no. I'm not fond of the smell of burning hair.

So, I bought six glazed doughnuts, set them on a round tray, wreath-like, put a tall white candle in the center of each one, went upstairs, lit the candles, and then proceeded into each bedroom to wake everyone, hopefully without setting the house on fire.

It all worked out just fine. There's nothing quite like the drama of flaming candles in a darkened bedroom to pop everyone's eyes open. And then nothing like the promise of doughnuts to get them downstairs for breakfast.

Too bad St. Lucy's Day is just once a year.

Time to 'fess up about yesterday. Did my idyllic version of the day come to pass? The snuggling up and reading, the baking of Christmas cookies, the playing in the snow?

Well, yes and no.

Playing in the snow? That's a HUGE yes. The two younger ones spent hours outside and had a blast. Fortunately, we weren't hit by that purple icestorm monster (it kept to the south), so the kids never had to come inside to hide from sleet and hail.

Snuggling up and reading? Well, mostly no, sad to say. The two younger ones were so busy playing outside that they never really were in a mood for sitting and reading, except for when they came inside to have hot chocolate at the kitchen table. They did some reading then. Still, I have to say that's mostly a "no" for them.

However, for the teens and me, there was quite a lot of reading -- sans snuggling. We took advantage of the quiet in the house, which of course was a direct result of all the outside time for the younger two.

[Note: the next part is being written mainly for my good friend in Bayfield who loves to hear about homeschool curricula; if you're not interested, avert your eyes.]

I wrote up study guides for my high schoolers for The Iliad and for the encyclical Humanae Vitae, as they need to write papers on both. I also googled for sites to help our Senior with her Advanced Biology (anatomy) course. We all three had some good discussions on various topics, and just generally got caught up on a few things.

[End of curriculum discussion; back to our normal boring blogging.]

OK, how about Christmas cookies? That's a big no. We baked not one single thing yesterday. Too bad, as I love baking gingerbread cookies, especially, on a snowy day. Oh well.

Dinner? As planned -- almost. Meatloaf, baked potatoes, but forgot about the leftover green beans almondine. We had corn instead.

So that was it.

Today is a gorgeous winter day; blue sky and sunshine making the snow sparkle. If I wasn't so lazy I'd go get the camera and post a few photos.

Weather-wise, we're in the middle of a wintry mix, as the meteorologists love to say. It was snow-raining a minute ago, and now there are big, beautiful, fluffy snowflakes coming down, en masse. The satellite map shows solid white over us right now, but a huge purple zone is rapidly approaching: ice storm.

Every school, day care, and senior center in a four-county area is closed. Piano lessons for my younger ones were cancelled. So, it's a Snow Day in the Swart Homeschool!

We have a whole day ahead of us dedicated to playing in the snow (until the ice storm comes, anyway), snuggling up with books, maybe baking some Christmas cookies. Amazingly, I don't have to run to the grocery store for anything, and dinner is planned: a meatloaf I pulled out of the freezer, baked potatoes with sour cream, green beans almondine. (OK, in all honesty, the green beans are leftover from a little dinner party on Sunday night. I don't usually get very fancy on week nights, and green beans almondine is fancy, by my standards.)

The snow is coming down faster now and the purple ice monster is edging closer. We haven't had an ice storm in years. There is nothing as beautiful as the sun shining on an ice-coated world -- but it's a terrible beauty, as it destroys trees and anything they happen to fall on, causes car crashes, brings down power lines.

I hope everyone in the path of the storm stays warm and cozy today. And to all my homeschool friends: I hope you declare a snow day, too! :-)

I just *have to* clarify something.

Remember when I wrote about having teenage girls in the house? I said that there were "boys, and crushes, and good friends". Well, the "boys and crushes" were in theory only. That is, there was talk about boys, and there were the occasional crushes, but we weren't actually dealing with real live boys coming to the house to date our daughters.

That's because we are so very 18th century. (According to one of our daughters, anyway.) Years ago, we'd set a rule: no dating until you're 18. We said it would be OK to go out with groups of boys and girls together after age 16 or so, but that was it.

In addition to setting that rule, we also did some reading and thinking and talking about the concept of "courting", as described in a couple of books (Arms of Love and Surrender) written by a Catholic homeschool mom. (The books aren't exactly great literature, but they are engaging reads - ha! a pun! - and they were particularly of interest to the teen girls in the house.)

"Courtship" sounds pretty old-fashioned. To some extent it is, since it's not much like the current concept of "dating" (which today often ends up being some version of "best friends with benefits", to use that unfortunate phrase). But I think courting isn't so much old-fashioned as just smart, and much less angst-ridden.

The point is for a young couple to spend time together by not just hanging out alone, but in a variety of situations, usually with other people. For example, having dinner with the family (with those potentially embarrassing little brothers and sisters, and worse, potentially embarrassing parents!), playing cards with friends (or those little brothers and sisters again), working on a project together (I know! let's have them wallpaper a room together; if they still like each other when it's done, they should get a free pass on the Pre-Cana classes), going bowling or ice skating -- anything other than just spending hours and hours alone together.

And that, as you've probably guessed, has a dual purpose: Helping the couple figure out whether they might, potentially, be a marriage match made in heaven, and also helping them avoid some dicey situations, physically speaking. That last part isn't about "not trusting them" (what parent hasn't heard "Don't you TRUST me?!?"), it's all about recognizing fallen human nature for what it is, and being smart about it, in order to save both of them a whole lot of grief.

Here's an interesting article about courtship, written by a young woman who attended Franciscan University, and here's another, a critique of an article written by Ginny Seuffert. If you read them both, I think you'll get a pretty good idea of the various philosophical approaches to courtship.

But I say: philosophy, schmilosophy. We're facing real life here, my friends. We have an almost 18-yo daughter.

I so wish we'd made that age limit 30.

Saw this quiz on Robert Gotcher's blog (and I think previously, maybe on Love2Learn Mom's??), and today couldn't resist taking the quiz:

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

I meant to write something about that weeks ago, when I first put it up on the blog.

It's called My Lemonade Stand, and it was featured on the Today Show one morning. I tried to access it, but of course their server was freaking out because of the rush of traffic from the Today Show plug. A few days later, I got an email from them, saying, basically, "we're sorry, we weren't prepared, please try us again!" Who can resist that kind of humble plea?

So, I tried again, and it worked fine.

And the only reason I decided to put it on my blog was to let people know about that one little product, Shout Color Catchers.

Fellow Moms: If you ever do laundry -- I'm talking only to those of you who don't have private laundresses or who don't have your personal assistant take all the laundry to the cleaners -- you really, really want to have these things. They're little sheets that go in the washer, white as snow, and they come out completely black or red or blue or whatever the excess dye happens to be in that load.

Thus, your clothing stays the actual color it's supposed to.

I cannot tell you how many times a shirt or pair of shorts or whatever came out ruined because it picked up streaks or blotches of color from something else... even something I thought was safe because it wasn't brand new.

But no more! Honestly, this is a great product. I throw these sheets in with every single load, whether I think there will be dye loss or not, because you never know if somehow, someway, a bright red sock will have been accidentally tossed in with the whites. Pink undies, anyone?

Now I live in mortal fear that this product will be discontinued, perhaps because not enough people know how great it is.

So, I'm begging you, if you ever do laundry, please, please buy this, so that it never is discontinued.

And so that you, too, can know the joy that I know, two or three times a day, 6 days a week, when it's laundry time.

Yes, I'm being somewhat exaggeratory, as the kids say. But it does make doing the laundry a little bit nicer.

And I really don't care if you buy it from my Lemonade Stand, because I'm pretty sure I'd only get about 1/3 cent per box. Just buy it from your grocery store or whatever.

My sincerest thanks.

I'm not always as punchy as I appear to be from some of these posts.

So, to show more of my serious side, here's something I found very inspiring, from the catholic eye newsletter:

Another wisely holy Theresa, Blessed Theresa of Calcutta, often referred to difficult or unpleasant people as "Christ in distressing disguise". The unwanted things that happen to us, the hardships we face, the disappointments we encounter are potentially concealed blessings, "Christ in distressing disguise". (catholic eye, October 31, 2007, #261)

With Thanksgiving just a few days behind us, I'm going to try to remember "in all things, give thanks" (1 Thess. 5:18). Not just the good things, not just the easy things, but all things, including the bickering kids, the mountains of laundry, the people who annoy me through no fault of their own, the traffic snarls. Christ in distressing disguise.

This, too, was inspiring and appropos today, from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis. From Chapter 44, "On Not Drawing To Ourselves Exterior Things":

It is also more profitable for you to look the other way from things that displease you, leaving to everyone to hold the opinion that seems best, rather than enter into heated disputes. If you are concerned only with God's view in the matter and are pleasing in His sight, you will consider it a small thing to be worsted in an argument.

There's been some discussion lately about fights in the blogosphere. I'm not sure I'm familiar with all the dust-ups that sparked those posts (though I know about some of them), but perhaps we just need to follow the advice above, and "leave everyone to hold the opinion that seems best", in order to avoid those heated disputes.

The problem, of course, is that one person's "heated dispute" is another person's "fraternal correction".

In that case, refer to the first quote above, and remember that those other people, the wrongheaded ones, the uncharitable, mean, loud, disputing ones, are actually Christ in distressing disguise.

Perhaps that will make it easier to smile at them. UPDATE: Or me, of course, should I be distressing to you!

Q. Did all those things really happen yesterday?

A. Yes, of course! With one small exception: I realized this morning that the call from the neighbor didn't actually happen during practice time; it happened during school time shortly before that. We live in a wonderful neighborhood where we all feel free to borrow things (the list of previously-borrowed items includes eggs, milk, sugar, molasses, zucchini, garden hoses, wheelbarrows, spades, and now keyboards) and they're always returned or replaced. The nicest neighbors in the world, really. We're blessed. (And I'm not just saying this in case the keyboard-borrowing-and-returning neighbor reads my blog, which he used to do sometimes.)

Q. Did you ever get another chance to practice last night, you poor thing?

A. Why, you are so sweet to be concerned, thank you! And yes, I was able to sit down at the piano after dinner. And guess what? I played the whole piece, start to finish, memorized. This may not seem like a big deal to you (OK, it's not a big deal, period), but I like to be able to prove to myself that I'm still capable of something like that, once in awhile.

Q. Do you really suffer from multiple personality syndrome, a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder, as these goofy Q&A's would seem to indicate?

A. No. Yes! No! Yes!! No!!! OK, enough already. Um, the correct answer is no. But I do like to prove that I know the meaning of the above terms, as it's currently my only means of showing off using my M.A. in Psychology. I hope that all my former Psych 101 students never forgot that schizophrenia is not the same thing as multiple personality disorder (which may or may not be a real phenomenon, by the way). < / digression > But maybe I do have two different personalities: My real-life one, and this one, which is a little bit goofier. Sort of.

Q. But why are you so .... goofy?

A. Because I believe that laughing at yourself is the first line of defense against insanity. And since I have kids, and since insanity is inherited from your kids, I need all the lines of defense I can scrounge up. 'Nuff said.

Q. You are a sad, strange little blogger, and you have my pity.

A. Yes, well, thanks for reading today's Q&A. Be sure to come back tomorrow for the long-promised, long-ignored Q&A about the name of this blog.

Bet you can't wait.

So, today, after school was over and before the carpooling started, I sat down at the piano to practice "White Christmas".

Why, you ask? Because a few years ago I decided I wanted to learn a new Christmas song every Advent that I could play to entertain my family and friends. HA! More likely that I drive them nuts while I practice it, over and over and over and over again...

But I digress.

Anyway, I sit down at the piano. I've looked forward to this all day. I really enjoy playing, and I almost have it memorized.

I'm dreaming.... of a White... Christma --

"Hey Mom! Do you know where the needle nose pliers is?"

"Why?"

"I need it to make some earrings for my friends for Christmas."

"OK, let's go look." Go to the basement, open husband's tool box, find the needle nose. The 15 yo daughter is happy; I'm happy.

Back to the piano...

I'm dreaming... of a White... Christma --

"MOM! THE TOILET'S PLUGGED!"

"AGAIN!??!?!"

Run grab the plunger, unplug the toilet, put plunger away, wash hands.

Back to the piano....

I'mdreamingofaWhiteChristma --

Ring-ring ... the telephone... it's a neighbor who needs to borrow something. A cup of sugar? An egg?

No. He needs to borrow a computer keyboard. No, I am not kidding.

OK. No problem. Arrange to get it to him shortly.

Back to the piano...

I'mdreamingofa --

"Mom, time to go!"

Sure enough, it's time for the carpooling and errands... guitar lesson, Tae Kwon Do lesson and work, the dry cleaner, the gas station....

Sigh. At this rate, maybe I'll have it memorized by next Christmas.

One of my favorite holidays. There are no cards to be written. No gifts to be bought and wrapped. No menu planning or anxiety about what to serve. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is on in the morning. Stuffing (or dressing, if you call it that). Sweet potatoes. Pumpkin pie. What could be better?

I do love this day. It's a chance to enjoy our extended families, repeat traditions that grow richer and sweeter with the passing of time, and reflect on the many blessings God gives us.

Funny story -- wait, I shouldn't over-hype this. It's mildly amusing, to me, and has a certain personal embarrassment factor that might make it funny to you. Let's start over...

True story: This morning I got up early and started prepping the green beans that I'm bringing to my sister-in-law's house, and then left for 8:00 Mass. I even double-checked the bulletin on the parish website. Yep, 8:00 a.m., Thanksgiving Day.

On the way there, I reflected on how it seems that whenever you make the effort to get to daily Mass, God always somehow gives you that time back, no matter how busy you think you are.

I arrived at church just on time -- to discover that the bulletin was wrong. Mass had started at 7:30 and was just ending.

Several other people had been fooled, too. Turns out there was a separate note in the bulletin that had the correct schedule.

But, you see? I made the effort, and look how much time God gave me in return! Time enough to write this post.

So what am I thankful for this year?

• My dad is home from the hospital, after 24 days there.
• The wonderful people who work in hospitals and rehab centers.
• Of course, my husband and children and the myriad of blessings associated with having this wonderful family.
• The times of sadness and stress in my life which make me more aware of God's mercy, and which make the easy, happy times so much sweeter.
• Friends and relatives near and far (hello, Bayfield and Bay View and "Lake Country", WI, and Illinois, and South Dakota and Maryland and Pennsylvania and Texas.... )
• Immigrants, including my great-grandparents, the Scottish nurse and Indian doctors who cared for my dad, the young woman from Bosnia who helped me at Lenscrafters yesterday, the older woman from Argentina in the dress shop, my sister-in-law from Paraguay, my good friend from Argentina, all the young men and women from Eastern Europe who work in the Wisconsin Dells, the people from Mexico who work in our favorite pizza place, the Grand Master of our Tae Kwon Do school from Korea, all the immigrants who work hard to learn English at the literacy center where my aunt volunteers.... everyone who ever came to this beautiful country for freedom and opportunity.

May God bless all of us today and always. Happy Thanksgiving!

Q: Is your life really that dull?

A: Oh yes, and then some. But, I love it. My favorite days are those when I can be home with my kids, teaching them, learning with them, playing games and laughing with them. The day I live-blogged was unusual because there was a trip to the copy shop and grocery store in the morning, and then the Bible class in the afternoon (it's only on Fridays).

Q: Do you always forget to say your prayers in the morning, you heathen?

A: No, really and truly, I usually kneel down on the steps, facing the big wall crucifix we inherited from my dear mother-in-law, to say my morning prayers. But I posted that day as it happened, for better or worse, and that included waking up with my brain so tangled with ideas and plans and concerns and worries that I walked right downstairs without evening thinking to stop and kneel down for prayers. Obviously, I really could have used the prayer time, too. Sigh.

Q: Aren't you embarrassed posting the minutiae of your daily life to the world?

A: Well... as my daughters have pointed out, by the time you get to my age, you lose all sense of personal humiliation. I'm even thinking about posting a very silly YouTube video that my niece took of me last summer. Hmmmm.... maybe not.

Q. Are you going to live blog today? What's happened so far?

A. No, I'm not. But if I were, I'd write how I asked my Guardian Angel to wake me up in time for 6:45 a.m. Mass, but he was an over-achiever and woke me up at 4:30. Needless to say, I made it to Mass on time, and even had a chance to get some of my homeschool work done beforehand. Then I'd write about how I came home, poured myself a cup of coffee, got back to work on school prep, and now am taking a break to do this. But does anyone really need this many thrills per minute on this blog? I think not.

Q. Are any of these questions real questions from real people?

A. What do you think?

Q. No.

A. You would be correct, then. And that's all for this fascinating Q&A session with Stand in the Trenches. Tomorrow: "Just why is this blog called 'Stand in the Trenches', anyway?"

Well.

Made Dad a sandwich and drove down to the hospital with the two youngest. Ran into one brother as he was leaving, and another brother as he ran for the elevator we were on. Spent some time with Dad. Drove home, stopped at the grocery store on the way -- yes, I know I was there this morning, but now I knew I wanted to make this wonderful shrimp dish for dinner for Tom and me [Note: that's the only link I could find that was really accurate, and he says it's his "adaptation" of the dish, but honestly, it's word for word what I have from the Chicago Tribune!] --, ran into a neighbor and chatted for awhile, came home, made dinners for the kids (tuna melts and soup), made the shrimp dish for us, Tom poured a drink for each of us. Ate dinner. Cleaned up after dinner. Greeted 17 yo as she arrived from work (Tae Kwon Do instructor); Tom and I chatted with her during dinner [that should have read "her" dinner!]. Wonderful conversation about religion and how many people are out there who don't know Jesus. Or God the Father. At all. We need missionaries! (And I know, that means us.)

That brings us to right now. It's 9:40 p.m. Our 14 [Oops, that should have been 15!] yo is at her friend's house (next door); the younger kids will get ready for bed soon.

And so ends a typical day in my life.

And I have NO idea why I wanted to post this.

7:00 Wake up, shower, get dressed.

7:30 Answer a few emails, tidy up the computer desk, put away a half dozen items.

7:50 Grab overflowing laundry basket and head downstairs. Tom's already emptied the dishwasher and made the coffee: woo-hoo!

7:55 Throw a load of laundry in the washer.

8:00 Youngest is already up, watching Curious George. Get 10 yo son up; make breakfast for him and 8 yo daughter. (Yesterday was French Toast; today is just bagels.) Consider making a smoothie, but there's no juice and no fresh fruit in the house. Realization: Need to go to the grocery store before lunch.

8:10 Have a cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal while catching up on a few blogs.

8:30 Gather "Mapping the World by Heart" materials to run to the copy shop.

8:35 Remember that I didn't pray this morning; try to pray even with very distracted mind. (Question for self: What is wrong with me that I would actually forget to say my morning prayers, other than a few thoughts directed toward God while waking up?? Muslims pray formally five times a day; shouldn't I aspire to that??)

8:40 Remind little kids to put their breakfast dishes in the sink and get ready for the day.

8:45 Start little kids on piano practice and school assignments.

8:46 Start dusting the family room, tidying up. Friends are coming today at 1:00 p.m. for the Jeff Cavins "Great Adventure" Bible Study.

8:50 Remember about grocery store; add items to the list. Polish the fingerprints off the end tables. Pick up afghans, pillows, and books from the floor. Make sure teens are up and getting ready for the day upstairs. (They are.)

9:00 Reply to an email from Mom about when I would visit Dad in the hospital. Help 1o yo son with piano. Get the idea for this silly blog post and start on it. Organize a few more school materials for the day. Get everyone on-task; write assignment lists.

9:10 Answer phone when the screening seems to indicate it's a legitimate call for Tom; alas, it's not. Spend a minute trying to politely disengage. Back to other tasks.

9:29 Make sure everyone is on-task with their stuff; leave for the copy shop and grocery store while all four kids get busy with their assignments.

10:30 Return from copy shop with 54 copies of maps and handouts (Note: these are NOT copyrighted materials! The program specifically allow for copies, just so ya know!), and a huge cart of groceries. Saved almost $50 on a net total of $132 -- another woo hoo for the day!

10:35 Get the kids to bring the 10 bags of groceries in from the car; unpack groceries, load fridge and basement freezer. Deal with one particular child who is being uncooperative and, shall we say, mouthy to me. Clean out fridge a bit. Finish putting away groceries.

10:50 Check on progress made on assignments while I was gone.

11:00 Everyone's hungry (note: this could explain attitude problem noted above!); start lunch prep while kids get out milk, chocolate syrup, cups, water, etc.

11:02 Wipe up coffee spill on counter (my fault; I left my half-full mug out on the counter next to the fridge).

11:05 Say grace together; have lunch together.

11:30 Start lunch cleanup; get kids to sweep and wash counters.

11:35 Reboot the laundry with another load.

11:38 Answer doorbell; it's the lawn mower guys. We're done for the year; "see you in spring!"

11:40 Get kids to sweep kitchen floor, put away food, wash counters.

11:41 Take phone call from friend about plans for tomorrow night; a double date, woo hoo!

11:45 Make sure kitchen table is clean and dry (check!); set up colored pencils and maps and globes and atlas for "Mapping the World by Heart" exercise (United States borders, states, rivers, mountains, lakes).

11:50 Settle outbreak of squabbles. Discuss charity, forgiveness, the power of good and bad examples.

12:10 Everybody's quietly working on the maps, absorbed in their work.

12:11 But this doesn't last long... "Mom, where is the Pee Dee River?" Golly, how should I know? I never heard of the Pee Dee River! Let's look it up Google it. Wikipedia to the rescue.

12:14 Moderate lively discussion of Thanksgiving plans. Discuss how you don't choose your family; they are God's gift to you, for better or for worse. Discuss humility, charity, patience. Tell kids they can offer up missing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

12:22 Son discovers I'm live-blogging our day!! Much hilarity. "Mom, you're such a dork!" Said with a smile and affection. Yep. I can accept that. Dorkiness R Us.

12:23 Kids start singing "Oh wee O, O weeee O", from Wizard of Oz. OK then.

12:24 Answer questions about the Great Lakes. Explain meaning of "Adios". ("Dios means God, so it's like saying, "Go with or toward God". "Really? Cool!")

12:26 Tell little kids to wrap up the map exercise for today. The teens keep working, quietly talking and laughing together. (May I say again, "Woo-hoo!")

12:30 Google a question about the OK Corral during on-going map work and various conversations. "Was it in Oklahoma?" Nope, Arizona. 1881. Cool historical tidbit.

12:40 Go finish the tidying / dusting / vacuuming of the first floor.

12:55 Take call from friend; they'll be a little late for Bible study. Whew! Not quite ready here.

1:00 Finish tidying up from map exercise with older girls. Get a big glass of water for everyone. (Hydration is the key to domestic tranquility, husband believes. He's right.)

1:05 Give the powder room a quick once-over. Check on the laundry; toss clothes into dryer.

1:15 Friends arrive; the younger ones all play basketball outside while the teen girls and moms watch the Jeff Cavins DVD. Today's lesson: Exodus, the 10 Commandments, the Golden Calf ("Aaron, what were you thinking?!"), the Levites. Have a discussion about the lessons and then chat about Thanksgiving plans.

2:45 Friends leave. Teen girls scoot upstairs to get ready for Tae Kwon Do. I cut up an apple for the youngest. Me: Coffee break. Heat up a mug of coffee from this morning and sit doing this and catching up on some blogs for a few minutes. Email Mom about the plans for bringing Dad home from rehab tomorrow, after 25 days in the hospital. Whew.

3:00 15 yo daughter practices guitar; 17 yo practices piano. It's like music to my ears. Wait! Duh! It is music to my ears!

3:00 Make a list of what needs to be done yet today:

• Clean dining room (tidy up, dust, dry mop).
• Call to find out about drivers' ed for 15 yo.
• Call piano tuner; set up a date.
• Research steam cleaners for carpet.
• Make up a chore list for the kids for tomorrow, including bathrooms, bedrooms, and basement lodge.
• Figure out who needs to go where tomorrow: 15 yo has Demo Team practice; I need to be there when Dad and Mom arrive home from the hospital; date night with friends.
• Clean our bathroom
• Dust / vac our bedroom.
• Tackle the last of the laundry for today. Put away the approximately five loads that are folded and in a basket upstairs.
• Get after youngest ones to clean up their stuff this afternoon.
• Call sister-in-law to confirm what I'm bringing for Thanksgiving dinner.
• Make a run to Goodwill on the way to visit Dad.
• Visit Dad with the little kids for the dinner hour; make him a tuna fish sandwich for dinner as he said he was only going to order soup off the hospital menu.
• Add 10 yo's basketball schedule to my planner calendar.

Yeah, right. Like all that's going to happen.

3:17 Teens are picked up by their friend for a ride to Tae Kwon Do. "Bye! Love you! Do you have your key?? Run get it! Bye! See you later!"

3:18 Play dolls with 8 yo. Sweet! She got out my old Francie and Skipper dolls; we have a lot of fun playing with them together.

3:40 Play time's over for me. Back to work on that daunting list. First a little prayer break: Divine Mercy Chaplet.

So, that's my day so far.

Woo.

Hoo.

I just spent about an hour in the garden, doing the last of the fall clean-up on this last beautiful day before the cold wind arrives tomorrow.

Now I could use a long soak in the tub, a massage, and a manicure.

On second thought, it might be cheaper to just hire a gardener.

HA! We all know none of those things are going to happen. Guess I'll have to settle for one of these tonight:

Purely medicinal purposes, you understand.

We just spotted a sleeping squirrel in our pear tree.

He was on a big lower branch, with his tail drawn up over his back to the top of his head, like this, but with his eyes completely closed, like this.

Said I to teen daughter, "You know what this means?"

Said she, "You're going to take a picture of it?"

"Uh-huh."

"And blog about it?"

"Yep."

But alas. By the time I got the camera, he was gone. I still got a post out of it, though.

And who knew there were so many pictures, videos, and jokes about sleeping squirrels? Google knew. Google knows everything. In 0.17 seconds flat.

Linking to another blog on this blog does not imply endorsement of the linked blogger's content. There may be some things I like on the other blog, but some things I don't like.

I'm just sayin'.

In honor of all Veterans, including my dad.

Blog poster courtesy of Long Live the Republic; h/t Rich Glasgow.

When I was a "young mother" with my first two little ones, I used to feel sorry for moms whose children seemed so grown up to me. That is, anything older than six. I thought, surely, I was in the best season of life, and felt an almost smug sadness for those whose children were those big, gangly pre-teens, or, horrors, teens, or beyond.

Which was complete and utter nonsense, of course, because what was I thinking? Did I really think mine would stay little forever?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I was in the irrational throes of early motherhood, when I was pretty sure my life would stay the same, always and always.

I've learned a few things since then.

Back in those days, my life was filled with little children, toddlers, babies. My days were spent nursing, changing, and bathing little ones, preparing all the meals for everyone, cutting up meat at dinner, lifting sippy cups to little mouths, reading stories, playing board games, coloring and painting and making crafts. There was lots of laundry -- but all the outfits were little, and cute, and barely took up space in the laundry baskets.

Those were good days, and I loved them. I loved packing up the diaper bag and the babies and going for walks, or to the park, or to visit Grandma and Grandpa or friends for a play date. I loved the occasional time when I would lie down with them for a nap, all warm and snuggly and happy. I loved drying tears, doling out kisses for boo-boos, telling fairy tales and singing songs, back before anybody told me, "Mo-0om, Stop It!"

When I left for an errand, I was sent off with dozens of hugs and kisses good-bye and waves from the windows. When I returned, four small bodies hurled themselves at me as though I'd been gone for days -- even if it was just 20 minutes. Bedtime was sweet and mornings were sweeter. Many days I remember waking up feeling as though it was Christmas morning; what wonderful gifts of joy and cuddles and laughter would I receive from my children that day?

Of course, that doesn't last forever. I remember very distinctly the last time anyone waved good-bye to me from the upstairs window. I was driving away one Sunday night for my hour of Adoration at church, and I saw my two little ones waving good bye, silhouetted in the light of the upstairs hallway. I wondered, as I drove off, when would be the last time they did that, and would I know it?

Well -- that was it. They grew up in that very moment and ever since have been "too big" to wave good-bye to mom.

For the past couple of years, everyone has been old enough to make their own sandwiches, cut their own meat, pour their own milk. There are still mountains of laundry, but the clothes run more to jeans and sweatshirts and sports uniforms. They're bigger, and they require more care: the teenage girls' delicate sweaters that need gentle cycle and laying flat to dry, the soccer shorts that must be line dried.

Instead of spending my afternoons playing board games, helping with dress-up, or pushing little ones on the swing, I spend them carpooling, which makes me sometimes feel as though I'm living out of my van. But there's also uninterrupted time to talk, and the joy of hearing all about their lives outside the cozy world of our home.

Having teenage girls in the house brings a certain energy and excitement. They are on the cusp of adulthood, life is before them with all its uncertainty and anticipation and hopefulness. There are boys, and crushes, and good friends. There is the huge task of applying to colleges and then the harder task of waiting. There are hours spent writing in journals and just as many spent talking to each other -- talk which mysteriously and abruptly ends when I walk in the room. But I don't mind; I'm just so very happy they are good friends to each other. And besides, I know that there are plenty of nights when they pull me into their little circle and share with me all the latest news and problems and chatter.

Having pre-teens in the house is fun, too, with our boy growing taller and more athletic every day, with one sports season running right into the next; we no longer have summer, fall, and winter, we have baseball, soccer, and basketball. Our youngest daughter fills her days, and ours, with craft projects, stories, and poems, with sweet little letters that she types up in Word in a cacophony of fonts and then delivers to our pillows at bedtime. She leaves a paper trail everywhere she goes: little schnibbles of paper, big pieces of construction paper, plus capped or uncapped markers, crayons, and scissors. It drives me insane... but I know that there will be a day that I'll miss that paper trail that showed she was here.

So yes, my kids are growing up, but so am I. Finally, I know that each season of life with children brings its own joys and sorrows, all of which make one feel more alive, more grateful, more trusting in God's plan for us. Once in awhile, I indulge in mourning what is no longer here -- those little fuzzy footed sleepers, baby teeth, preciously mangled syntax and pronunciations, sticky kisses, baby toys -- but I don't do that very often.

Because if I did, I'd miss everything I have now, which is so much more wonderful than I ever thought it would be.

I tell the kids it's my Super Smoothie because it's soooooo good.

But my real motive is to get some fruits into my meat-and-potatoes boy. Really, it's ridiculous. He'll eat the tiniest bites of anything green only under protest, and any fruit other than apples is pretty much off his list.

But, thank goodness, he likes these smoothies! And so do the other kids. Even The Husband will ask for a go-cup of Smoothie for the commute.

Mom's Super Smoothie

Frozen strawberries (about a cupful or two)
Frozen banana (1 or 2)
V-8 Fusion Strawberry-Banana juice (if you're a food purist, I'm sure you can find something organic, but this works for me, and I love that it sneaks some veggies in there)
1 large scoop whey protein powder
2 tsps. natural psillium fiber (I use orange flavored)
Sneaky addition: 2 Tbsp. flax oil

Put in the blender and whirl away.

The flax oil was great when I started adding it last winter; the kids never noticed, and it was great for them to get those Omega oils. But then, I started to suspect that my son was allergic to it. His lips would get fiercely chapped and raw, which was counter-intuitive since I figured the oil would actually help with dry skin. Oh well. I'd try cod-liver oil but I'm pretty sure they'd notice the taste... ugh.

And the fiber... another sneaky addition! Can't hurt.

I buy big bags of frozen fruit (Nature's Blessed) from my local orchard but I've seen a few of their products at the grocery store, too. They are SO good, and not too expensive. I buy bananas on sale when they're just a little too ripe and they get bundled together and marked down, then stick them in the freezer as is. When I want to make a smoothie, I just slice off the frozen peel and cut them into chunks.

This morning we had a Peach-Mango smoothie, with the V8 juice of the same name, frozen peaches, and a few strawberries. Pretty darn good!

I've often wondered if it would be worth it to get a real juicer (all I have is a blender). A friend of mine insists they're great, but they're also big and bulky and expensive! So for now I stick with my trusty old blender.

"Pops", as my middle brother calls him, is finally out of ICU. After 12 days. Yikes.

So now he's up on the rehab floor, and NOT loving it. He's sick of the food (though if someone brought me food that I didn't have to plan for, shop for, prepare, cook, or clean up after, I would say nothing other than, "Thank you ma'am, may I have some more gruel, please?")

He's sick of the therapists, already. On the morning of the second day, I called. "So, Dad, what was therapy today?" "Oh, the same old stuff." Really, Dad? Second day on the ward and it's same old same old already? OK.

But, I take this for the good. The sooner he gets sick of them and they of him, the sooner he'll be motivated to do his doggone therapy and get out of Dodge.

He's doing pretty well, I'd say. Sharp as a tack, and moving like greased lightning with his cane, even faster with his wheeled walker. They're waiting on a culture from his cath site (and we're hoping against hope that it's NOT staph). I guess they're also still waiting to figure out if they need to do a permanent pacemaker or not.

So, each day when I visit, I look for signs that he's doing better, and so far, I've been getting them. The future is still a big unknown -- but then, it pretty much always is, right?

Kind of a blurry picture... and very belated... but I just had to load this pic of our little jack-0-lanterns.

Don't you love the ultra tall "handles"? That's what you get at the Swart Pumpkin Farm.

And isn't the pumpkin in the middle the happiest jack-o-lantern you ever saw in your life? He was designed and carved by our 2nd daughter.

The starry-eyed unibrow guy on the right was designed by The Boy, carved by yours truly, and the x-eyed one on the left was designed and carved by our youngest. (Using a very safe child's knife, don't worry.)

They look a whole lot more pathetic today. They're still sitting on the porch. Tomorrow, they go into the compost heap. Next year, they'll be fertile soil to feed the next crop of pumpkins.

Seems almost cannibalistic to me.

This is why I love reading Sand in the Gears. Mr. Woodlief writes so movingly and powerfully about faith, love, life, loss. Here's the line from today's post that really got to me:

There is some mystery here, I think, about trusting, but I can't put my finger on it, not this finger that has traced my child's name on her gravestone.

Here is his daughter's story; she would be 11 years old now.

A few things that I've picked up at the hospital (other than probably a few germs), where my Dad is still in the ICU:

• It's entirely possible to trust in God for everything, but still to have a big knot in your stomach as you walk into the hospital.
• Some of the greatest people in the world are nurses.
• It's a huge relief to see someone you love getting a little cranky about hospital food; that's a sure sign he's feeling better.
• Sometimes there are delightful surprises in the midst of worry, like when you find out that your favorite nurse, Don, was your favorite volunteer baseball coach for your son's team last year. Funny thing is that neither Don nor I made the connection ... but when said son came to visit Grandpa, he knew right away.
• Never, ever, EVER, let someone over the age of 70 be given an Ambien sleeping pill. Unless you want them to have hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and a really, really horrible night with virutally NO sleep at all.

OK, that's what I've learned so far. If I learn anything else, I'll be happy to "share".

I did such a crafty thing! And trust me, this is unusual. I'm just not one of those creative, artsy, crafty moms.


But, this time, I was! I had picked some lavender from my herb garden earlier this summer, and hung it up to dry in my kitchen.


Now, by my standards, just that alone qualifies as something incredibly cool. I've grown lavender for years and just never got around to actually, you know, picking it and using it or anything.


But this year I did. And then last week, I went to WalMart (go ahead and tell me I'm bad, but I actually like WalMart, because they always have whatever I need, and cheap. If that makes me bad, well, I'm sorry... but I'm still going to shop there unless the Pope tells me it's against faith or morals to do so.)

Anyway, I went to WalMart and bought some pink netting, and some pale violet ribbon, and came home and made these cute little sachets for my three daughters to put in their dresser drawers.

I wish I'd picked more lavendar. Maybe next year.

That's what doctors and nurses are.

My dad was, by all rights, a dead man walking. He had blockages of 100%, 95%, and 90%. He had atrial fibrillation which put him at great risk for a stroke. He had a very weak, slow heart rate. Really, it was amazing that he was alive, much less going to the grocery store, blowing leaves off the lawn, and volunteering at St. Joseph's Hospital across town from where they live -- all of which he'd done in the previous few days.

If he hadn't gone in last week with the mild chest pain he was having, he very well might have had a massive heart attack or stroke and died. But, he's alive and getting better today because of the cardiologists and heart rhythm doctors and cardio surgeons and the nurses and therapists and respiratory technicians and lab techs and all the rest of St. Francis Hospital.

They cheated Death out of his next victim, and we are all very grateful.

My dad is doing pretty well. Every day he has fewer lines and IV's and things attached to him, which is how I measure progress. I could tell today that he was a little bit stronger and looked a bit healthier than even just yesterday. So that's good.

He does have a little bit of ICU syndrome: seeing things that aren't there and sometimes being a little loopy. My favorite was when he asked, "Say, what's with those chickens and roosters dancing across the wall over there?" Whoa, dude, that's quite a hallucination!

Anyway, I explained to him about his eyes playing tricks on him due to the surgery and the meds, and he was OK with that. So the next time, he said, "Well, this may be my eyes playing tricks on me, but what's with that big black animal up on the top shelf over there?" "Well, Dad, let's hope that's your eyes playing tricks on you!"

Of course, it's not really his eyes playing tricks on him; it's his brain playing tricks on him. What an incredibly amazing and complicated thing the brain is. A little extra pressure from the heart-lung bypass machine during surgery, and the nerves in the brain start doing all kinds of wacky things. They call it "pump brain".

After spending so much time in the ICU, and seeing all the miraculous things they can do for really sick people, I started thinking, gee, maybe I would have enjoyed a career in medicine.

HA! Who am I kidding? I would alternately freak out and then be grossed out. I could never, never handle it.

But thank God that there are so many wonderful people who can handle it.

My dad's mother was 100% Irish: Regina Ennis. Her husband was 100% German: Julius Mueller.

When they married, both sides were scandalized. A mixed marriage! German! Irish! Horrors!

They got over it. My grandparents had a good life together, and had three sons. All of their sons, of course, were half Irish and half German.

Then my dad married my mom, who is almost 100% German, though she claims a few ancestors from the Alsace-Lorraine region, which would add a little French blood into the mix.

So here I am, 25% Irish and 75% German.

What does that mean, that particular blend of nationalities? It means that I'm just Irish enough to enjoy a good cry, even to the point of going on a crying bender and getting completely sentimental and sappy over just about anything -- but German enough to feel utterly disgusted by it afterwards.

All of this is by way of explaining the weird thing that happened with this blog, which I know some of you noticed. I wrote that post on Friday about my dad in an Irish mood. A few minutes later, my German self emerged to say, "Ach! Such sentimental sop! For shame!" And I deleted the post.

Too late! Google, faster than light, nosier than a spying neighbor, and able to blab the news to the entire world in the blink of a pixel, had already grabbed that post and put it out onto the feeds.

This is why some of you were puzzled to see the post on your RSS feed or Google reader or whatever, but then when you clicked through to the blog, it wasn't there.

So I gave up and put it back out there on the blog.

But whatever you do, if you know me and my folks, please do not read that to my parents. They both are pretty darn German, you know.

Dad came through the surgery with flying colors, according to the doc and the nurses.

He still is on the ventilator but doing all the breathing on his own; they are just waiting to make sure all the indicators are "go" for taking the tube out.

Today was more peaceful than I'd guessed it would be (probably because of all the prayers being sent up by everyone we know). We were concerned, but not overly anxious, and fortunately everything went very smoothly.

So we'll take it a day at a time.

And thank you to everyone who prayed for my dad!

My dad is in intensive care.

He went to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon with some mild chest pain. Yesterday they did a heart catheterization... and almost lost him. His blood was so thinned from anti-clot medication that he need two transfusions and emergency surgery to close up the artery.

When I visited him yesterday after he came out of surgery, he wasn't doing too well, but gradually started to seem more like himself.

So much so, in fact, that when a nurse came in to do a procedure that makes my husband squirm just to think about it, so I won't even mention it here except to say that it has to do with not being able to get up to go to the bathroom to pee, my dad started cracking jokes with her. I'm not kidding. He launched into what we in the family refer to as "The Chocolate Chip Cookies" joke, as opposed to one of his other favorites which is the "Don't Mess With Aunt Sue When She's Been Drinking" joke.

Yep, that's my dad! And that's when I knew he was feeling pretty darn good.

But even if he was feeling pretty good, it turns out his heart isn't in such great shape. First they thought it was just atrial fibrillation, but the cath showed major blockage. So, tomorrow he goes in for the gold standard in heart surgery: A triple or quadruple bypass.

Today we talked with the doctors, anesthesiologist, nurse clinician, and other nurses. Today we spent time with Dad, and laughed and talked and reminisced. Today I took my kids down to see him, and his eyes lit up and he proudly introduced his grandchildren (four of the nine) to the nurse.

Today I remembered how many times I've told my Dad I love him, and that he's been a wonderful dad to me. Today I remembered how he taught me to be responsible, and charitable, and generous to the Church and the poor, and to work hard, and be faithful to your vows and your commitments, and to volunteer, and to always be there for your family. So I knew that today, I didn't have to try to tell him all those things, because I did. He knows.

Tomorrow my mom and brothers and I will wait in the limbo otherwise known as the Surgery Waiting Room. We'll go to the chapel and pray a rosary. We'll get coffee and breakfast and talk. We'll try not to imagine the worst. We'll wait and hope that the doctor will eventually come out and say "all went well".

I remember a few years ago: we were all together, walking away from a restaurant, I believe, and I saw my parents walking together a few yards ahead of me. I realized with a shock how small they were getting; my dad bent over a bit, leaning on his cane, my mom always so tiny but now even tinier. They seemed to be just shrinking, I thought, until one day they would simply disappear...

But, to paraphrase Scarlett O'Hara, I can't think about that now. So, tonight I'll try to keep the laundry going here, make some meals and run some small errands, tuck the kids into bed, and get some sleep.

Then tomorrow I'll get up before dawn and go to the hospital, kiss my dad and tell him I love him one more time ... and then hope and pray that I will be able to tell him that again before the week is over.

A trip to the Swart Pumpkin Farm this afternoon was quite successful.

We all hiked to the garden in the far corner of the backyard -- a grueling trip of 30, maybe 40 paces (the little ones and I pretended to be on a jouncy, bouncy hay wagon, much to the chagrin of my teens and their friends who happened to be over) -- and picked not one, not two, not three... but FIVE beautiful pumpkins!

This was our best pumpkin harvest ever. But, I thought, too bad that we didn't have six -- one for each person in the family.

Then, later in the afternoon, I went alone to the garden to do some fall cleanup work, and what did I find but another pumpkin! It had been hiding in the hedge around the garden perimeter.

Let the carving begin!

I still have two kids who are shorter than I am.

I can still kiss the tops of their heads.

My oldest teenage daughter couldn't wait till my second-oldest teen daughter got home the other day -- so they could talk.

My youngest daughter can cheer any of us up in a heartbeat with her silliness.

My older two tell me all about what's going on in their lives. Well, as far as I know, anyway.

My younger two still have lives that I know I know everything about.

My husband and I can go out to dinner and know that the kids will have a wonderful time together while we're gone.

My husband and I can go out to dinner and have a wonderful time together.

We all still go to sleep and wake up in the same house.

We all woke up this morning.

What more could I possibly ask for?

We've been studying geography and maps lately.

In the process, we learned the latitude and longitude of our own city, discovering that it lies at approximately 42N and 88W -- which we realized is very close to the halfway point from Equator to North Pole, and between East and West in longtitude. How cool is that!? (OK, no big deal, except when you're studying geography.)

Then, of course, we had to find out which city in Wisconsin was right smack dab in the center, at 45N and 90W. And now we know: it's Poniatowski, "named for the last king of Poland in the late 1700's" according to the town's own website.

Here's the home page for the very cool and quirky site that I found via the Google search linked above: The Degree Confluence Project. Their goal is to have people visit every single confluence point (the intersection of latitude and longitude) all around the world. They've made exceptions for the poles and some parts of the oceans, but there are still over 11,000 points that can be visited.

Unfortunately, all of Wisconsin's 19 points of confluence have already been visited. Too bad, because the kids and I could have spent just about seven oops, about 12 minutes driving to the confluence of 43N and 88W to document it. We've probably driven past it dozens of times without realizing its significance!

Today's quote on The Quotation Page, posted here for Nancy, Love2Learn Mom, and the aptly pseudonymed (if that's not a real word, it should be) Chestertonian:

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. G. K. Chesterton

My friend Ana... by the way, color me green with envy because she lives in South Dakota, a state that I am inordinately fond of considering I've only been there twice... but it's so beautiful .... the endless vistas, the rolling hills, the roads straight as a plumb line from east to west, the sky that goes on forever... the enormous, empty loneliness and yet the sense of being intimately connected to past, present, and future... the other-worldly Badlands and the gloriously green and pine-scented Black Hills... the history, the cowboys, the Lakota... the great and terrible battles fought... the dust storms and blizzards, testing body and soul...

.... where was I again?

Oh yes! Ana! Anyway, she had a post yesterday about unusual deliveries from UPS, which makes me want to play "Can You Top This?"

Here's my entry for weird UPS delivery:

1) A package containing a flatworm, crayfish, a frog, and a fish
2) Another containing a cow eye, cow heart, and fetal pig
3) A third package containing... you have to know by now ... dissection tools.

My delivery was far more disgusting than Ana's. All in all, I'd rather have gotten Ana's. I'd really hoped to get through all my years as a homeschool mom without ever having to turn my kitchen into a gross anatomy lab -- and I do mean gross. But with a daughter who absolutely loves science, and is taking Advanced Biology this year, I had no choice.

So what's YOUR most unusual UPS delivery?

He won the "Britain's Got Talent" show. (Yes, I know it took me awhile to find this out; I think it happened last June). I had a few minutes today between soccer games, so I played the clip below again, and then followed the links to related clips. He won! I'm so glad for him.

This is so funny. I just got done with my critique of HP 7 in the previous post, picked up the book again, started reading... and was proven WRONG immediately!

The first thing that happened was that the trio wasn't able to use a spell to get out of a sticky spot -- just after I'd griped that they were always able to save themselves with some new incantation -- and they were unexpectedly rescued by a stranger.

Of course, the stranger turns out to be Aberforth, who has all kinds of interesting information to share with them.

Another cool thing: John Granger has said that Harry = spirit or will, Hermione = brains or mind, and Ron = body. So, I'm reading just now, and Ron suddenly comes up with a very wrong-headed conclusion, leading Aberforth to say drily, "Brains like that, you could be a Death Eater, son." (pg. 560, hard cover). And what does Ron say? "Oh. Yeah... well, I'm hungry!" and his stomach grumbles.

I'm finding Granger to be much more right than wrong about the meaning of these books, though I understand he didn't do so well at predictions. But hey, we all know that humans usually mess up on predicting the future, right? I mean, look at me: I can't even predict whether I'm going to like the book I'm reading or not!

This post mostly has my HP-loving friends in mind. My daughters are getting tired of my incessant need to discuss every book with them, and so YOU, dear readers -- both of you -- are the oh-so-lucky beneficiaries of this obsession.

No more posts today; we have hours and hours of soccer to sit through enjoy today. Time to get the troops rolling here.

As I've mentioned, we got a very late start reading Harry Potter for a variety of reasons, including the very bad press the books got from Christian sources, and the fact that when the first book was published, our oldest was just 8. A dear friend (Hello, D!) gave us a copy of the book back then, and I started reading it aloud -- but honestly, kind of lost interest half way through. I just didn't think it was that great.

Fast forward to this summer and things changed. It wasn't until I got to the end of the second book that I was really captivated by the story, but after that, I was completely hooked.

Zip ahead again, to right now, and I'm having flashbacks to my first experience with Harry Potter. At first I thought I was reading this last book slowly so I could savor ir. Now I'm starting to realize that I'm reading it slowly because I'm getting a little weary of it. Harry is careening from one terrifying action scene to another, dragging various friends, goblins, and elves and magical objects along with him. It's starting to feel like the grand finale of a fireworks show -- BAM! CRASH! POP! BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!!! -- and I'm showing signs of thrill overload.

The other thing is that I'm getting a little cynical about the magical plot devices; in every new terrifying situation, one of the threesome (Harry, Hermione, or Ron) will come up with some brand-new, custom-designed spell that's just what they need. I guess what I'm saying is that my suspension of disbelief has been strained to the limit.

But I do like the storyline of this book -- that they're in exodus, hiding and running from the Death Eaters, on their final quest to defeat Voldemort -- and I am really enjoying the symbolism of the situations they get into (for example, Bellatrix's vault turning into a kind of gold-filled hell).

So it's not that I don't like the book, but it's not going to be my favorite, I'm pretty sure.

Somebody tagged me for a meme.

It was Michele, who I know in "real life". She was a vendor at our conference; I use the lovely Catholic Woman's Planner that she sells.

Without any further ado:

Here’s a fun quiz made up especially for bloggers. The rules are easy. Just post the quiz on your blog and answer the questions, then pass it on to five other bloggers, and link to them in your post. Be sure to link back to the one who sent it to you.

1. Do you attend the Traditional Latin Mass or the Novus Ordo? Novus Ordo - at a very traditional and reverent parish.

2. If you attend the TLM, how far do you drive to get there? N/A.

3. If you had to apply a Catholic label to yourself, what would it be? Plain Vanilla Catholic. I believe everything that the Church teaches, do my best to live it out, and do not belong to any specific groups within the Church (i.e. Opus Dei, Schoenstatt, Regnum Christi, etc. They're all great ... but I just have never felt called to any of them.)

4. Are you a comment junkie? Is there a blogger alive who doesn't love a comment or two?

On every post?

Every couple hours?

Seriously, I'm just happy to find out, as I did yesterday, that there are a few people who stop by here. On purpose, that is. So a comment every so often is way more than I expect. But of course, it's very nice, otherwise blogging can be sort of like talking to yourself, or the wall, whichever is more interesting.

5. Do you go back to read the comments on the blogs you’ve commented on? If I can remember where I left the comment -- which is only about half the time.

6. Have you ever left an anonymous comment on another blog? No. If I can't log in for some reason, I at least put my initials.

7. Which blogroll would you most like to be on? Hmmmm. I don't know. I always was tickled when anyone put me on their blogroll. These days, I mostly blog because a) it's a nice way for my husband to see what we're doing in homeschool, b) it's like a big party and I don't want to be a wallflower, and c) it's just so much fun, playing with the widgets and memes and ideas and photos and all the rest of it. It's not about the fame and fortune, that's for sure.

8. Which blog is the first one you check? Well, before I signed up for Google Reader, I probably would have said Studeo, St. Fiacre's Garden, or Flying Stars (in whatever random order occurred to me). That's because these are bloggers who I also happen to know in "real life". But now, it's just whichever blog has an update.

9. Have you met any other bloggers in person? Yes, in addition to the friends I mentioned above, and Michele who tagged me, there's my brother (who, like me, pretty much dropped out of blogging, but I hope he comes back), plus Ana and Maureen and ... well, I know I'm going to forget someone, but at least I got to have a little link-o-rama there. Oh, yes, there were a few of the Wisconsin political bloggers... but that will be fodder for another blog post....

10. What are you reading?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I know, everybody else read it last summer, but we came late to the HP party.)

The Eumenides, by Aeschylus. (I know, everybody else read it 2500 years ago, but we're late to the Dead Greek Playwrights party, too.)

OK, now I tag: Ana (oh, rats, she already got this one), Diana, Nancy, Alicia, and another friend whose blog I just discovered today: Margaret. Feel free to pretend you never saw this tag if you aren't in the mood for a meme.

Well. Let's see if this little signature widget works. Testing, 1-2-3, testing... cool! It works!

That's because we are using a book called "Voyages in English", a reprint of a very, very old text book, when a 'gay umbrella' was just a pretty one, and a 'gay party' was just a happy one.

My 5th and 3rd graders are very innocent, thank God, so I can read the text as written without getting any sniggering from them about the many repetitions of 'gay' as an adjective. But I'll bet this text could never be used in a typical classroom today, and that's a shame.

Ha, like anybody actually reads this blog and will respond to my plea for help.

But, on the off chance that someone does stumble over here and sees this post, please tell me how I can change the little comment form message! I changed it a couple weeks ago, to say "other moms taking a coffee break", and now want to change it again (because I realized that not everyone who used to comment on this blog was a mom, of course)... and it won't let me change it! I went to the same place... Settings, Comments, Comment Form Message... but it doesn't change.

So, help me, please! .... help me ..... help me..... help ... me........

UPDATE: Thanks to Love2Learn Mom for helping me out. Gosh, I was so SURE I went back to the same place to change it, but obviously, I didn't. This is sad. At one point, I knew lots about blogging. Guess that's what dropping out of the blogosphere for more than a year does to you!

She always said to not expect praise for just doing what you were supposed to do.

And that's pretty much what Our Lord told his disciples in yesterday's Gospel. First, they said, "Lord, increase our faith", and he replied: "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,you would say to this mulberry tree,'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you."

I believe the contrapositive would then be, "If you can't make that tree uproot itself into the ocean, then you don't have faith even as big as a mustard seed."

Certainly, Jesus was using hyperbole. But still, this tells me how incredibly small my faith is; trees definitely don't uproot themselves on my command.

But in this Gospel, Jesus seems to be saying that it doesn't matter. We don't need faith so powerful that we could make trees jump up and down at our command; we don't need to make His creation serve us. The only thing we must do is to serve and obey Our Lord. If we keep on faithfully serving, obeying, forgiving, and loving, then that is faith enough. We don't need more faith; we just need to live out the faith that we do have.

And then, Jesus says, we oughtn't to expect all kinds of rewards and accolades just for doing what we should.

Just like my mom always told me.

Well, to me, it was cool. I love when stuff like this happens; one of those great coincidences that you just know is not blind coincidence at all.

Here's the deal: Two separate streams of reading and learning converged in a very neat way today.

First stream: This summer, we finally decided to start reading Harry Potter. We'd successfully avoided the books and movies for all these years because we were trying to be prudent about what our children were reading, since we'd heard how eeeeeeevil the HP books were.

But this summer, thanks to Nancy Brown and other Catholics saying that the books were actually good, perhaps akin to Lewis's Narnia books or the science fiction of J.P. Tolkien, we decided to let our teens read them. I, too, started reading, and it was at the end of the second book that I decided these books were not just good, but great. (It was that transcendently beautiful scene with the Phoenix at the end of Chamber of Secrets that convinced me.)

The girls, of course, finished the books long before I did (they being teens with plenty of time to do nothing but read for hours on end, and me being a mom with stretches of, say, five minutes at a time), and I have only just started the 7th book. But ever since I started reading them, I've been driving the girls nuts by searching them out in the house to say, "Oh wow, did you see THIS cool bit of mythology that Rowling worked into the plot??" or, apropos of nothing, "Oh, this is so cool, look at this SYMBOLISM!" Stuff like that.

The second stream: We've been studying Greek drama. According to our syllabus, we were supposed to read just the first play of Aechylus's trilogy (Agamemnon), then move on to some other works. However, a mistake in the syllabus meant that we didn't have the correct edition that included those other works, so we decided to just go on reading the trilogy: The Libation Bearers, and then Eumenides. We finished yesterday.

The convergence of the streams happened today. (Oh, isn't this just so cool?!?) I open "Deathly Hallows" to find this incription:

The Libation Bearers

Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death and the stroke that hits the vein,
the haemorrhage none can staunch,
the grief, the curse no man can bear.

But there is a cure in the house and not outside it,
no, not from others but from them,
their bloody strife.

We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth.
Now hear, you blissful powers underground—
answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them triumph now.

—Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers

The Libation Bearers!! and Harry Potter!! Imagine my excitement. (Yes, I do get really excited about stuff like this!) Of course, I immediately ran over to my oldest daughter, in the family room: "Here, listen to this! Does it sound familiar?!?" She, thoughfully, "Ummm, I think it's.... Aeschylus!" "Yes, yes, isn't that cool!!" A smile, a somewhat surprised look, which I took to mean, "Wow, so maybe reading these dusty old Greek playwrights is more 21st century than I thought..." Next, run upstairs, repeat scenario with second eldest. Same reaction, which again I took to mean, "Hmmmm, if J.K. Rowling studied the classics and read Aeschylus, maybe it's not hopelessly dopey that I'm doing that, too."

For me, that's a very cool thing.