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Thursday, March 31, 2005

not very credible

I am, as I mentioned previously, doing a transcribing job right now. This involves using a nifty little shareware program which slows down audio (and enables me to use a lot of handy keyboard shortcuts to pause and back up, but that doesn't enter into this story) so that I can type what the people are saying without having to pause every ten words to catch up. The audio files I'm transcribing consist of interviews about printer technology and market share and all kinds of scintillating stuff like that. I just wanted to note that when you're listening to someone (who already says "you know" twice or three times per sentence, but maybe that doesn't have much to do with it, it's hard to say) speaking at half-speed about the advantages of his product and why ink costs so much, he sounds a lot like a person who's at a party having way too much to drink and who has accosted you against your wishes and sat down to tell you all about something that is doubtless very important to him but about which you couldn't care in the slightest, even if you were forced to try.

Not a lot of credibility, is what I mean. I keep involuntarily and unfairly thinking (not in so many words, perhaps), "What do you know, you pontificating old sot?"

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

frazzly

Today we (the kids and I) had to go to the valley to go shopping. On the drive home, LT (who's far less anxious than he used to be, but who still always worries if one of his parents seems unhappy or sick) asked me if I'd had an OK day, because I seemed a little frazzly. He was certainly right. Here's why.

First, picture a Chatty Cathy-type doll. Very cute, about 45 inches tall, goldeny kind of hair and eyes, freckles. Are you picturing?

OK, now her "chatty" switch is stuck ON, got it?

And she is being SO contrary and confrontational, and she never stops asking for things she wants or arguing when you tell her no until you either punish her or blow your top a bit and yell at her, and even when she's not doing this she is JUST. CONSTANTLY. TALKING.

Now picture spending hours teaching this doll school, or riding with her in the car, or taking her through a series of stores, or cooking her dinner, or reading her a bedtime story, or all of the above, and you have my day.

The worst part is that, in the midst of my frustration, there's a lot of guilt. First, there's guilt that I could ever be annoyed with someone whom I love so wholeheartedly. And then I feel guilty that I don't pay better attention to her -- you know how you swore you would never EVER tune out ANYTHING your kids said, you would hang on every word, until they learned to talk fluently, that is? yeah -- until the annoyance threshold is breached and then I act irritated with her. It's not that we have no pleasant interactions. It's not that I don't completely and totally adore her, because I do. It's just that instead of stopping her demands/arguments right away and being consistent, I start tuning her out and wait until I am seriously irritated before I deal with the situation. It's something I need to work on, and it's a recipe for disaster on a day like today. Or at least, it's a recipe for being "frazzly".

In other news, I am finally working on a transcription job I've been waiting on for two weeks. The guy who hired me for it first gave me the audio files in the wrong format, and then couldn't find the CF card with the correct files, and then got the flu, so it's taken this long to actually have files I can work with. I started transcribing tonight and I'm taking a break right now so that I don't get a life-threatening case of carpal tunnel syndrome. (you are forbidden to notice that I am, um, typing right now. I've BEEN taking a break, I really have.) It's amazing to watch how the Lord provides; last week we got smacked with $320 in extra bills out of a blue sky, and some odds and ends of broken stuff needed fixing, and we had no idea how we'd pay for any of it. Then a guy bought a car part from T -- T had not advertised it for sale, it was just sitting in his garage unwanted -- and then I did a résumé for a guy (who was in my first-grade class) and he paid double my usual rate, and now this job finally came through, and we're going to have enough and to spare. God is truly "able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all we ask or think." yay. :)

Monday, March 28, 2005

we've been on the slippery slope for years and just not known it.

I found this article linked from Molly's site. The whole article is difficult to wade through, for more reasons than one, but the basic gist of it is:

1) Passive euthanasia, practiced quietly at hospitals around the world,
is the practice of denying care to infants so that they die. Often
it's done to infants who have serious birth defects; denial of defect-related treatment (or sometimes any treatment at all) allows them to die. Generally it involves parental consent; however, in Europe especially, parental consent is becoming increasingly unnecessary. We personally had a daughter in 1997 who was born with a serious congenital heart defect; my husband I and were mystified and frustrated at the way her doctors continually disregarded our increasing concerns about her worsening condition, refused to move her corrective surgery date any nearer, and changed from one week to the next the standard for what was acceptable regarding her condition. (Week 4: Well, 02 saturations in the 80's are ok for her, but if she drops into the 70's, that's when we get concerned. Week 6: 70's won't hurt her; it's in the 60's that we get concerned. Week 8: An occasional dip into the 60's won't hurt her, but staying there for long periods, that's what we want to avoid. And so on.) At the time, we basically trusted their judgment and attributed their behavior to inattentiveness, failure to communicate with each other, or lack of emotional involvement in the case. Somewhere in the intervening years, in looking over her records and my updates about her case, I began to suspect that something like this might have been going on, but doubted it, because I simply didn't want to believe that doctors could do such a thing. Now, I wonder. Angrily. As I think I've mentioned here before, Natalie died at nine weeks of age, three weeks before the age at which she was supposed to have had her surgery.

2) Babies aren't really persons in the strict sense.

cf: "... it is difficult to determine specifically when in human ontogeny persons strictly emerge. Socializing infants into the role person draws the line conservatively. Humans do not become persons strictly until sometime after birth... . Unlike persons strictly, who are bearers of both rights and duties, persons in the social sense have rights but no duties. That is, they are not morally responsible agents, but are treated with respect (ie, rights are imputed to them) in order to establish a practice of considerable utility to moral agents: a society where kind treatment of the infirm and weak is an established practice... .The social sense of a person is a way of treating certain instances of human life in order to secure the life of persons strictly.

In other words, a person's not REALLY a person till s/he is "a morally responsible agent", and letting anyone else (especially a baby) be considered a person is basically just being nice.

This is an article in a respected medical journal. This is not some
scaremongering site. What is happening in our world??

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Happy what?

In a way, this is one of my least favorite times of year. It's not the rain, it's not the chill in the air, it's certainly not the longer days or the green grass or the wildflowers everywhere -- it's the darn bunnies.

You can't go three steps in our town this weekend without being told "Happy Easter". And therein lies the problem. We don't celebrate Easter, for reasons that are pretty important to us (more on that in a minute) but it's to the point where we just gloss over the comment and move on, rather than trying to explain it. Unless people start pestering the kids about it, and then we'll usually go into it a little. Here's what we tell them.

• The name itself, "Easter", is derived from the name of a Babylonian queen (the wife of Nimrod), who was revered as a goddess of fertility in Babylonian "mystery religion". She was originally known as Semiramis but later became known as Ishtar.
  
• Bunnies and eggs have nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ. They are, however, pagan symbols of fertility. (and besides, the Cadbury creme ones are really gross.) I know some people see them as symbols of "new life" and equate that with the Resurrection -- but we don't see a need to stretch them in that direction.
  
• Even the date is not Scriptural in its origins. Ordinarily "Easter" is celebrated on the Sunday after Passover, which is in fact the Sunday on which Christ was resurrected. However, that's just an ornate kind of coincidence, since the actual determination of the date of Easter is that it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This year Passover is in late April, but Easter is in late March.
  

We do commemorate the Resurrection. We just don't do it with egg hunts and baskets of candy (this doesn't keep me from overdosing on chocolate during this time of year, however. ;). And this year, we won't be doing it when most people do.

I'm not posting this to say that I'm holier than anyone else, or to imply that Christians who dress up their daughters tomorrow morning and go to an egg hunt after church are unspiritual slackers who don't love Jesus. These are just our family's personal convictions about this one particular issue. Comments and questions about them are welcome.

Friday, March 25, 2005

a book meme from Ria

I've not been as addicted to memes lately as I used to be, but KiwiRia passed me this baton, so how could I refuse? That's like getting my name in a KS list post! ;)

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451-- which book do you want to be?

Hmm. Which book? I don't know. It's not so much the paper and ink that are key to what's important in a book, it's the content (although I realize that for many many years, print was basically the only enduring medium for retaining content, and so was very important) -- so I would be one of the people memorizing books in the woods -- a human book, so to speak.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I've answered this one a few times. Justin in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and Stan Crandall in Fifteen, among others.

The last book you bought is:
Actually, it was Fahrenheit 451.

The last book you read:

Les Misérables.

What are you currently reading?
After Les Mis I wanted something stirring and pungent without being heavy, so I'm reading some Cynthia Voigt -- Izzy, Willy-Nilly. I also am midway through Anne of Avonlea but I haven't picked it up in a while. And in my morning reading, I've just started Joshua and am a few chapters in.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
1) The Bible
2) War and Peace. I'd be sure to get through it then.
3) Anne of Green Gables, the definitive "comfort read" for me.
4) Pride and Prejudice

5) Persuasion

Whom are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Kristen, Jenn, and -- Mary, do you still keep an online journal? If you do, send me a link, missy!

Thursday, March 24, 2005

grr.

Real life (in the form of unexpected bills and a very messy house and two stir-crazy kids stuck inside because of the weather) is interfering with my blogging AND with my photography right now. I'll be back around soon, I promise. Assuming I don't go completely batty insane.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

how totally unlike me this all is

I am scaring myself.

I don't write, OK? I mean, I write HERE, but this is just goofball little anecdotes with the occasional serious post thrown in, and there are no rules, and the level of perseverance required is just perfect. "Finishing" isn't really an issue. But today I got an idea for a story. AGAIN. NaNoWriMo, the gift that keeps on giving, right? This story is about the parallel universe version of me, sort of. OK, OK, so really she's the complete OPPOSITE of me, but sometimes when my life is really cluttered and hectic and there are all these emotional demands being made of me and I have three people to answer to and they all want different things and I get that it-would-feel-really-fantastic-if-my-head-could-just-explode-right-now feeling, sometimes I calm myself with this vision:

Somewhere in a parallel universe there is another version of me. This is the universe where I went to college and studied something I loved, like, say, orchestral conducting, or the flute, or librarianship, because I didn't get together with my husband (bear with me, I didn't say this was a happy fantasy, just a calming vision) and because I worked harder in school and got better financial aid. After The Parallel Rachel graduated with an advanced degree, she moved to the city, maybe San Francisco, yes, San Francisco. She got a job she enjoyed and rented or bought a smallish apartment with hardwood floors and comfortable-but-sparse furniture. She got a cat and maybe some fish. And she lives alone, and nobody comes up to her and says, "I'm hungry" as if she's a genie who's just supposed to twitch her nose and make food appear, each person's favorite dish in each respective place. Nobody (including herself) leaves dirty clothes in the living room, and there're only two or three jackets in her hall closet and NONE on her floor, and she wears makeup every day, and is totally coordinated and socially adept to boot (those last two items are in absolutely NO way connected with any kind of reality, parallel universe or not, but this is MY calming vision, so lay off), and her apartment is never EVER messy, and she doesn't own a lot of stuff. She comes and goes as she pleases and can leave the light on as long as she wants to read in bed and she doesn't own a single children's movie no not one.

Now, this only works for a minute. Or less. Because really, this parallel Rachel, her life is Bleak. No morning cuddles, no compliments about her milkshakes, no marriage that is the epitome of a fabulous relationship, no love, none at all, except for the cat, and a cat's love is decidedly limited in comparison to what the real Rachel has. But for the briefest of times, it's, well, calming to imagine her going about her sparse, quiet, orderly day, somewhere imaginary. When I need it to be.

So as I was doing the dishes this afternoon, and actually thinking about a former high-school acquaintance who's going through a lot of painful stuff right now, and wondering if she's going to totally change her life around and move back to the small town which I'm sure she hates to live with her parents whom she disdains, and WHAM, all of a sudden Parallel-Universe Rachel popped into my head, and she was having to move back to her non-sparse, non-detached hometown to be with her noisy, loving, cluttery family for some unknown reason (reason is still unknown, by the way), and words just started FLYING INTO MY HEAD, I am not kidding, about what made this person enjoy her solitude so much and how she felt when it had to go away and how things changed for her. I could not get my hands dried off fast enough to get to the computer to start tapping out ideas. It was almost scary. And the only reason I'm writing about it here is that now that I've mentioned it to someone I'll actually feel like I have to do something with it and not just let it slide away. Maybe.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

finis (a book review)

Finally, I have defeated the behemoth. Les Misérables has been vanquished and will probably never again stray from my bookshelf. Which is a shame, because the story itself is really good, and Jean Valjean will go down in my personal literary history as one of my top ten characters. He's very well-written while also being almost completely admirable, which is somewhat rare. But Victor Hugo felt it necessary to give the complete history of every aspect of anything mentioned in his story. Something happens to one of the characters during the battle of Waterloo? Forty pages detailing the entire battle, but not in such a way that a person who doesn't already have a good grasp of Who's Who In The Napoleonic Wars can understand it. A character escapes through the Paris sewer system? Let's have a lengthy treatise on the history, advantages, and shortcomings thereof. Yes, OF THE SEWER SYSTEM. (not for reading while eating, that section). And then there were the discussions of all these little barricaded city uprisings in early 19th century Paris which I was supposed to already know about, but which I was basically just hearing about for the first time (thank you public school system), and let's not forget the pages of tribute to the city of Paris itself and all its beauties and uglinesses and street urchins, and all the pages devoted to discussions of royalists and how they felt about republicans and how everyone felt about Buonapartists, and all the allusions to Voltaire and Rousseau... all of which succeeded in making me feel like a complete idiot because I had only the faintest of faint ideas what they were talking about. All this extra stuff seriously dampened my enjoyment of what was otherwise a really, really superb book.

I am reminded of a discussion on an author's weblog about how much the author should tell, and how much s/he should assume her readers will be able to figure out (the author in question had been accused of being overly subtle, since she runs little subtexts through her stories which are so well-hidden that almost nobody finds them). Hugo seemed to miss the boat completely on both sides of this issue. He assumed knowledge on his readers' part about the intricacies of French (and even more specifically, Parisian) government and customs in the early nineteenth century, while simultaneously feeling the need to go into far too much detail about nearly inconsequential side issues. If he'd made five or six books out of this one -- one ripping good yarn and several academic treatises on various subjects in which he was obviously quite interested and well-versed -- he'd have saved at least this reader a lot of frustration. For once there's a book for which a condensed treatment on film would be a blessing. I can't wait to see the movie of this one.
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Monday, March 21, 2005

Thinking about Terri Schiavo

There have been a lot of really good posts about Terri Schiavo in the past few days, and I don't have a lot to add to them, but I just went and watched some of the videos of Terri interacting with her family and her doctors, and I read this article written by one of the lawyers involved in the case (thanks Kristen for the link), and all I have to say is this.

If Terri Schiavo is in a "persistent vegetative state", then this:

is just a blob of tissue.


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Our neighbors

I've mentioned our neighbors in my photo blog (they're the ones with the gorgeous tulips). They're these little old Christian ladies who have lived together their entire adult lives, who ran a Christian camp for kids until just a few years ago. They used to shuttle my dad (and T's dad too) back and forth to Sunday school when they were kids, this is how long these ladies have been loving the Lord and spreading Him around as much as they can. Anyway. One of the ladies has become quite infirm, and needs live-in care. This past weekend the live-in carer apparently went on a drug binge (!!!) and failed to show up from Friday through this morning, when she showed up long enough to quit and grab her stuff, not even willing to help her former patient out of bed. So this weekend T and I have been filling in for the absent nurse in the morning and evening, getting Miss Ruth up from her chair, into the wheelchair, onto the commode, up from the commode, and into her bed in the evenings, and reversing the procedure in the mornings. We do the heavy work while Miss Jan, who is about the size and weight of LT, helps Miss Ruth with the more intimate aspects of her care. It has been quite an experience. (This morning I did the morning procedure without T, since he was at work). We walk away each time with our muscles aching, stretching our backs, so unspeakably grateful for the freedom to simply hop out of bed and go about our day without giving a thought to how we'll do it, pondering the kind of friendship that says: I will offer you my emotional support and friendly affection as long as you need it. I will trust you with my physical and financial well-being. And when we get old, and you can't take care of yourself, I will stand beside you and take care of you and stand up for you and help you in what should be very private moments, and I will strive to keep your dignity intact, and I will do this as long as it takes.

That is agape if I ever saw it. May God grant me the grace to love -- my friends, my family, my husband, my children -- like that.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Happy Birthday Family :)

Yesterday was our eleventh wedding anniversary. My parents came by and gave us a gift and offered to watch the kids while we went to spend it, but we decided instead to get dinner for the whole family and have a little "party" at home. We'd been thinking and talking all day about how our wedding anniversary, yeah, it celebrates the day we got married, and the first time we -- um, nevermind -- and the fact that there was NO MORE KISSING GOODNIGHT AND SAYING GOODBYE -- this was a biggie at the time. But the thing we kept thinking about yesterday was how our wedding marked the formal beginning of our family, of the entity that has grown and changed and become the center of our earthly lives and given us so, SO much joy. We spent a lot of time thanking God for the fact that His way of doing things is such a happy way. So it seemed fitting that our celebration wouldn't just involve T and me, but the whole gleeful group of us.

Do we rot the teeth out of your head with sweetness, or what.

Today we went to my parents' so that T could help my dad fix, um, I think the fuel pump in Mom and Dad's van. But it could have been some other thingamajiggy, I'm not sure. Meanwhile I went for a long walk (a very long walk, to quote the Musgroves in Persuasion), because I had of course brought [holy chord] The Nikon, and by golly I wanted to use it. Apparently I should have remembered the How Long And Which Direction rule, because everyone got kind of freaked out at how long I was gone, and went out searching for me, wondering if maybe I'd had an episode of tachycardia and was lying curled into the fetal position in the mud beside the road in the rain, or something. Which of course I hadn't, I was just, um, taking, er...

one hundred and sixty three pictures.

That takes a while. In fact, it's rather remarkable that it only took me two hours and three and a half miles, isn't it? Don't you think?
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Thursday, March 17, 2005

the textbook definition of "uncomfortable"

Today I had to go to what my dad has always euphemistically called "the ladydoctor" (all one word like that). I had to have a sonogram. I want to note here and now that this is far less fun when you're not pregnant. Especially it is less fun when you sit there (with the required full bladder, of course) for TWO HOURS in the dressing room with the little gown on, reading Les Misérables (thank you, Mr. Hugo, for that scintillating history lesson about Louis-Philippe, can we get on with Jean Valjean now), wondering if they've forgotten about you. And it is even less fun when the technician comes in to call out the third or fourth person who has arrived after you and then been seen, and tells you that by the way, the reason you're waiting is that you arrived half an hour late and they have to wait till they can "squeeze you in." Especially when you arrived on time -- early even -- and the front-desk people had your appointment time correct in their book but the technician lady didn't.

And yet I didn't kill anybody. Not even one person. I didn't even swear, not even in my head. Aren't you proud?

(Just don't ask if I, uh, cried. Because of the frustration. When I was alone.)

Then after I finally finished that unpleasant business, I went shopping. Alone. I went to Subway alone and then sat on the grass at the park alone and ate my sandwich alone while reading alone and I went to Costco and Save Mart and Smart and Final alone. It was like a vacation and a prison sentence at the same time. Like being Martha Stewart maybe, only I bet Martha Stewart never had the fun of figuring out the best way to spend exactly $55 at Costco.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Ware the Ides of March

I love when March 15th is on a Sunday, because then when I see my high-school English teacher at church I can walk up to him and say that.

Me a geek? wha?

My head is so stuffed up. In every other way I am almost completely done being sick, so I'm grateful that this is all I'm dealing with, but wow. I am going around mouth-breathing like, well, a mouth-breather, and my ears feel like they need to pop, and I can't taste anything. NOT EVEN CHOCOLATE. I have Tim Tams that someone (bless you bless you you are my hero bless you) sent me from Australia, and while I ate, um, quite a few yesterday, I'm saving the rest until this head congestion passes, so as not to waste them. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is HARD. Have YOU ever had a package of genuine Tim-Tam goodness sitting on your counter and walked past it without taking one? It hurts. Oh, the pain.

Monday, March 14, 2005

jam, man, jam

You might be a homeschooler if:

• Your eight-year-old son gets in an argument with his sister and you overhear him saying, "Well, so be it. If that's the way you want to be..."
• The "carrot on the stick" at the end of the schoolday (for you AND the kids) is the promise of getting to make a soil/sand/soil parfait in a jar, and add worms, to see what happens.
• Your children know far more about Jane Austen and astronomy than they do about Pokemon or Saturday-morning cartoons.
• Your child sees a TV commercial for the first time at the age of five and asks you to make it stop.
• Your kids love Ramona Quimby, but they can't identify with her because she spends so much time at school.
• Your child asks you to turn off your music while he does his math, as it is "a great distraction."
• You leave the children with your husband to go to the doctor and run errands, and continually look around you, freaking out because you can't help feeling you've forgotten them somewhere.
• You no longer even know what kind of shoes are "cool".
• You forget that most people can't just take off for a family vacation without waiting for a school holiday.
• You're so used to people thinking you're some kind of freak that you don't even think about it anymore.

P.S. Kristen, I bet you thought I wouldn't do it.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

If I'm not posting here as much...

It's because of a really cool discussion at my friend Jenn's new journal. Between her and Kristen I'm doing most of my posting in other people's comments sections. I'll try to keep up in all three places, though. ;-)

Finisher Prize

Spent much of today playing with C while T and LT played Civilization III (we stayed home from church not because we are heathen rebels but because we are all sick with the same crud I've had for about a week now. Fun times.). One thing we did was a horse race. It's a complicated sort of thing -- the horses move forward in turns; for each turn, the horse's owner rolls two dice, subtracts the smaller number from the larger, and the horse moves forward the resulting number of spaces -- a "space" being a board-width on our hardwood floor. Observe my sneakiness, slipping in math like that, as if it were zucchini in a meatloaf. Anyway. C wanted to use this dollhouse stable as a finish line, and I couldn't figure out why at first:

One of the more difficult small decisions of motherhood, made over and over on the road from "accume-see" and "bop-ooo" onward: When does cuteness have to give way to correctness? Not here, not yet, anyway.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

we really know how to throw a party

(I thought about putting this entry in the photo blog, since it is rather image-intensive, but since it's more of a daily-life entry, and the photos are, um, not artistic in the slightest, I stuck it here. Sorry about the hugeness of it.)

One night maybe six years ago when T was going to be away overnight visiting a friend, I decided that I would do a lot of fun girly stuff to make his absence more endurable (up until he got a job in telecom with its requisite two-week overtime stints in fire season, we had only very rarely been apart overnight). I rented chick movies -- this was the first time I watched "You've Got Mail", which turned out later to become one of T's favorites, but oh well -- and bought Doritos (which T hates) and made myself meatloaf (ditto), and I stayed up as late as I could make myself so that I wouldn't have to lie in bed waiting to go to sleep without him. (shut up, that is NOT pathetic.) Anyway. Somehow this developed into a tradition wherein when Daddy is gone, the kids and I throw a "party". That sounds really bad, I realize that, but we're not celebrating his absence -- we're more taking our minds off it. Tonight T is at a men's retreat, so here, courtesy of The New Nikon and the fact that I'm feeling a lot better than I was, is a look into the debauchery that the mice get up to while the cat's away.

This is not for the faint of heart.

(OK, maybe it is.)

First we all played a good game of pretend. The kids had torches (flashlights) and were exploring a ruin of a castle (our house, with all the lights turned off). I was the queen, who inexplicably was still alive inside this ruin. Adventure ensued.

observe my stately mantle (made from, um, a waterproof crib sheet. C was the costume designer for this production). And if you look really closely you can see the brown paper crown on my head. (LT took this picture. He is suitably aware of the honor and trust I bestowed upon him in allowing him to use The Nikon.)


LT then made a map of an imaginary country. I am unclear as to whether this map represents the country over which I reigned. I'll have to ask him tomorrow.



Then C made cookies, almost entirely by herself, from a mix she'd been given, um, for her birthday. In September.

it's a good thing these were just for family. C still needs practice at not licking the spoon.


the finished project

Part of a traditional party is the freedom to stay up as late as we want. When the kids can't keep their eyes open any longer, they make a tent in the front room and go to sleep in it.

The sheet down the middle divides it into a room for each of them. Do you notice that their legs have to go between the chair legs? Why again is this fun??

So there you have it -- a virtual tour of our wild, wild life. I'd better hope T doesn't read this one.
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Friday, March 11, 2005

reflections from a sick person

A few facts about me and sickness:

• There are muscles involved in coughing that I didn't even know I had.
• I buy tea bags at Costco. This week, since my new "comfort food" seems to be tea and toast, that's a very good thing. (actually it's because I go through about thirty bags a week in the summer, making sun tea, but it's also convenient when I'm making a cup of hot tea every forty-five minutes. Now if I could just keep track of my cups so that I don't have every coffee cup in our house dirty at the same time, that would be progress. Also, I heart my teakettle. Anything that whistles when it's done to remind me that I'm using it has my stamp of approval at this stage.)
• We buy the not-terribly-soft-but-long-lasting 1000-sheet rolls of Scott toilet paper. (wow, bet that just made your day, finding that out.) Remember in a previous post, I mentioned that I could not find a box of tissues, so I was using a roll of toilet paper instead? I just finished off the roll. So it lasted, hmm, about thirty-six hours.
• The underside of my nose should have its own Crayola named after it. "Rachel's Raw Nose Red". Catchy, no? It's so very attractive.
• From the time I had LT up until last year, other than hospitalizations for c-sections and some complications from C's birth, I was never sick enough to have to drastically change my daily routine. Everyone else in the house would get sick, everyone else in the COUNTY would get sick, but I was fine. I think that this was God's way of making sure that someone in the house could take care of everyone else. I'm serious, I really do. And now that the kids are old enough to take care of themselves a bit better, I guess the germs are making up for lost time.
• Last night I reached the point where I was unable to envision a time when I would ever not be sick. I would be hacking and sneezing and feverish at the kids' college graduations, that sort of thing. Today, however, I am at the point where I feel like it's patently ridiculous that I've let this alter my behavior for so long, and if I just snap out of it, I'll be fine. Not sure which is less realistic.
• Ice cream is no fun when you can't taste it. What a waste of six hundred calories.

I'm going to go answer the siren song of the couch now.

P.S. My brain is so, um, absent -- that's it, absent -- today that I posted this to the wrong blog and then had a little rant at Blogger when it kept not showing up where I thought it was supposed to. I think maybe I should not be allowed out of the house today.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

The H word

I think pretty much every mother has this happen at some point.

Today C is just being, well, a little pill, in lots of little five-year-old ways. This is not so uncommon a thing as to really bother me, or to even be worth noting. She's distractable when it comes to schoolwork, she is obstinate about wanting enchiladas for breakfast even though I've told her those are for lunch, she continually interrupted me while I was doing my Bible reading, etc. She's being suitably punished when she needs it. The kicker, though, came when I told her to go change out of her pajamas into daytime clothes. She got as far as taking off her pajamas (and throwing them on the living-room floor), and selecting play clothes from her stack on the coffee table and carrying them into her room, but she kept coming out of her room to play, still naked. I would remind her (decreasingly gently) that she was supposed to be getting dressed, until finally I tapped her on the bottom and sent her sternly to her room to get dressed or get restriction (THE BIGGIE). On her way to her room, she muttered, "I hate you, Mommy."

Whoa.

I: "What did you say?"
She: "Nothing."
LT: "She gets over it."
I: "What? Gets over what?"
LT: "She says it sometimes. Then she kind of gets used to you again."
I: [thinking, !!!! this happens, what, often? Don't know whether to get angry or cry, so do neither, just sit and stare at the computer screen]
LT: "It'll be OK."
C: "I was joking..."

Now, like I said, I know this happens to pretty much every parent at some point. I just remember, you know, being a little older than five when I threw the "H" word at my mom. More like, I dunno, fifteen.

In the end, when she came out (dressed) and hugged me and said she really does like me, I told her that it's OK to be angry with Mommy, it's part of growing up and having to do things you don't want to do. But it's never OK to say mean things just to hurt someone, even when you're angry, and that means Mommy too.

I feel like I should have handled it far better than that. I just am not at all sure how.

ahh, Mr. Darcy

Not in a "ooh, isn't Colin Firth handsome," kind of way, you understand. Just in a "what a totally fantastic and amazing dynamic character, how well-written, how subtle, and most of all, how TOTALLY-SIGH-WORTHILY ROMANTIC" kind of way. My new-but-already-dear friend Kristen was mentioning to me today (er, yesterday?) that she enjoys watching A&E's "Pride and Prejudice" when she's sick, and she's right, it's the perfect accompaniment to sniffles and fever and a cozy bed on the couch. I love reading (and watching; this is a rare excellent adaptation, even though there's the periodic use of a crow sound effect which reminds me startlingly of the cat-swinging scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail") the subtle ways in which Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth change their attitudes, and analyzing their reasons for doing so. I love Mr. Bennet's wry remarks. I love Caroline Bingley's expression every time she tries to get Mr. Darcy to say something nice about her, and he says it about Elizabeth instead. I love that when T is in the room while the movie's on he doesn't even pretend not to watch it.

I'm up late, coughing, watching/listening to P&P while reading online journals (Amy Loves Books just took up a good two and a half hours of my time, thank you Amy), using a roll of toilet paper in lieu of the box of tissues which always manages to disappear exactly when it's needed most, smelling of VapoRub and cough drops, surrounded by heaping baskets of clean laundry which I had intended to fold whilst watching the abovementioned P&P and by little fluffs of tissue. Just so you can have a little snapshot of my undeniably glamorous life.

And now I'm going to make a night of it and put in THE SECOND DVD. I won't be sleeping with this cough anyway; I may as well have the pleasure of seeing Pemberley.
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Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Chapter Summaries

I mentioned chapter summaries a while ago and promised a post about them eventually. Here it is. :) I started this last night, but T needed the computer for a minute, and while he was using it, it froze up. Since I hadn't "saved as draft" before I handed it over to him, I lost what I'd done so far. Clever me. So I'm starting over.

First, why do we do chapter summaries? There are a lot of reasons.

• It's a simple, uniform format, easy to remember.
• It's just you and your Bible, looking into a chapter and finding out what God has to say to you in it; you're not being influenced by someone else's "take" on a passage.
• No matter how many times you've studied the chapter you can always come away with something new.
• It's suitable for virtually any age, since the results can be as long or as short, as complex or simple, as the student is prepared to make them. C, who is a young kindergartener, does one every week, as does LT. T spends hours on his, references various commentaries, and writes sometimes several pages, full of theological (and, especially now as we're doing Revelation, eschatological) insights. The friend of ours who hosts the studies and taught us the format has been doing chapter summaries for thirty-five years, has done the whole Bible more than once, and, as anyone who's read the Bible can attest, hasn't run out of new things to learn.
• Chapter summaries fit in with other study methods. You can use the Bible alone, or look at commentaries and research other scholars' opinions. The format works excellently used alongside the inductive study method taught by Precept Ministries, or without any other method at all.
• If you do it long enough, you end up with basically a simple Bible commentary, written by yourself. We've been doing summaries for eight years, although I took off a few years from mid-week studies when the kids were teeny. T has notebooks containing a summary for every chapter of every book in the New Testament, except Hebrews which I think we're doing next, as well as Genesis and Daniel. It's both a really useful resource, and an interesting look at how he's matured spiritually in that time.
• And lastly, it's the method used in our weekly small group study, and we're conformers. ;-)

Since C has her study done for tonight (Revelation 8), I'll use hers as an example, and maybe occasionally throw in some stuff from mine too. The format, as I mentioned, is simple. It goes like this:

Theme: this is basically a title for the chapter -- the main idea. (C's Rev 8 theme: "The angels and the eagle". Mine: "Only the beginning of the terrible judgments")
Key Verse: Sometimes this is the verse that the student thinks ties in best with his/her theme. Sometimes it's a verse that made you go, WHOA. Sometimes it's a verse the student chooses to memorize. Customize at will. ;-). (C didn't select a key verse this week; she generally doesn't, actually. Mine is verse 13, because it ties in with my theme.)

Teaching: This is where you break the chapter down into sections and describe, as briefly as you want, the content of each section. Some people, like T, like to make these very brief little phrases indeed. Some people, like my dad, basically paraphrase the section and write a paragraph.

(C's teaching:
Teaching:
v. 1-5: The angels with the trumpets and the one with the censer
v. 6-7: The first horn blew and made blood mixed with hail.
v. 8-9: The second angel blew its horn and something like a mountain of fire was dropped into the sea.
v. 10-11: The star was called Wormwood.
v. 12: The lights of heaven became dim.
v. 13: The eagle said, "Woe! Woe! Woe!"

Note: Her spelling is not this good. :) She writes things down as best she can figure out, and then I type it up for her so that it's easy for her to read out loud in the group. I do the same for LT, although before long he's going to start doing his own typing. The words they misspell -- and they are many, especially for C -- serve as spelling words until the next Wednesday. Two birds with one homeschooling stone.)

(My teaching:
Teaching:
v. 1-2: Silence in heaven. (What's coming must be really big.)
v. 3-5: An eighth angel offers up incense mingled with prayers, and then uses the censer to smite the earth with a few preliminary rumbles
v. 6-7: The first trumpet sounds; 1/3 of the earth and the trees, and all of the grass, are burned up in a hail of blood and fire.
v. 8-9: The second trumpet sounds; the seas are struck by a "mountain of fire", bringing death to 1/3 of all life in and on the seas
v. 10-11: The third trumpet sounds; wormwood poisons the waters of the earth
v. 12: The fourth trumpet sounds; a third of the heavenly lights go dark
v. 13: The eagle's warning: It's not over yet by a long shot.)

You get the idea on that.

And here's the part that provides the real meat of the discussion on Wednesday nights:
Meaning:

This can be anything and everything. It can be a mention of something in the chapter you'd never noticed before, or something that really moved you. It can be plain old exegetical teaching. It can be questions. It can be a basic overview of what the chapter meant to you. This is where T waxes really long and scholarly; I generally go for the "something that really moved you" -- the kids write a sentence or a paragraph telling what they thought the chapter was about, or what they think God is trying to tell us in the chapter, or, in C's case, what stuck out in the chapter for her to remember.

(C's example: "The eagle says, 'Woe! Woe! Woe! because the earth is going to be destroyed." LT's: "I think it is important that Jesus opened the seventh seal and seven angels came with trumpets, and they blew them, and things happened to the earth." It would take DAYS to type T's, so I won't, and I haven't done mine yet. But again, you get the idea.)

And then the last part, which is the most optional of all of them, since most people cover it in their "Meaning"...
Application. What does God want you specifically to take away from this chapter? How is your life going to change? Some chapters, this is really easy. Some, like these prophetic ones, not so much.

Anyway. Please pardon the long unfunny post, just wanted to share. :)

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

[cue Energizer bunny] ... still coughing.....

I have had this really obnoxious cough hanging on to one degree or another for more than a month. I had the full-out cold back I think at the beginning of February, maybe late January, and ever since then this cough just refuses to leave. It gets better and worse but it doesn't go completely away. Last night it was so bad that I was keeping T awake (for the second night in a row, since C was coughing like this the night before) so I went and slept on the couch. And today it's just gotten worse. Finally tonight I consented to take some Day-Quil (since we have no NyQuil and T pointed out that I wouldn't be sleeping if I was coughing anyway). So now I have a really bizarre disconnected buzzy sort of feeling, as well as, um, a really really bad cough. See, T? SEE? My chest hurts. My abdomen hurts. My head hurts. And because I am so clever, I did not replenish our supply of ordinary cough medicine today, and anyway I'm not sure I could take any since I took the blasted worthless Day-Quil.

Please pardon me while I through a pity-party hissy fit over something so inconsequential as a cough, while real people have real problems on such a scope as to cause my problems to completely disappear. To even be pleasant.

Also please pardon me while I stay up all night jiggling my foot and twitching my head back and forth to feel if it's still attached. NEVER AGAIN WITH THE DAY-QUIL, HONEY. NOT HAPPENING. EVER EVER.

drama queen

Today the kids and I went for a walk with my mom. I wore capris. Warm weather is nice, but I already miss winter. Come back! Before we know it it will all be about harsh hot sun directly overhead. Nooo.

We had to stop by the grocery store, where they just installed a 25c pony ride. C wanted to ride it, but I didn't have any pocket change, so she was disappointed and had to just hug it instead. We walked back to the car (thanks to the enormous hill going up to our house, we don't usually walk into town when we go for walks; we drive down the hill and park. Yeah, we're sissies.) and as we drove up the hill, C said, in a voice dripping with wistful, nostalgic longing:

"I will never forget that horse."

C, the world's foremost five-year-old teenaged drama queen.

Monday, March 07, 2005

Well, it could be worse...

So far today I have:

• Been awakened at 7:50 by the sun hitting the wall in my white bedroom. (I love this, it's the best way in the world to wake up)
• Been summoned to LT's room at 7:51 because he had a bloody nose. (again.)
• CLEANED MY ROOM. Big letters because it was a BIG job. With the kids sitting on my bed much of the time, doing schoolwork and/or reading. (and yes, I made a movie)
• Read Matthew 20-22 (including the parable of the vineyard workers, which, if I had to choose ONE, would be the parable which finds the most daily application in my life. What's yours?) while eating peanut butter toast and drinking a glass of milk for breakfast.
• Taken my asterisk-asterisk-asterisk iron pill. And hence, burped several different flavors of rust.
• Listened to LT sob for the past half hour because -- CRUEL mom/teacher that I am -- I told him that I love his story (about, um, a deer that got sick when it ate a mole, hey, he's an eight-year-old boy, what do you expect?), but he needs to rewrite it neatly.

As you can see, the tenor of my day has gone sloooowly downhill. Here's hoping this trend reverses before I reach the run-for-the-hills-waving-my-arms-wildly stage...

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Yet. Another. Journal.

I was feeling tempted to load up the journal with more pictures today, but I decided instead to, um, start up a whole new journal just for the pictures and for commentary about them. Um.

My New Toy (edited: the photo journal is now at http://www.surrounded-by-treasures.com/photos

Saturday, March 05, 2005

How To Enjoy Housework

Those of you who know me even slightly have probably figured out by now that I am not a neat freak. I am, in fact, pretty much a Messie. It's not that I don't care that the house is messy; I hate when it's messy (which it is, in varying degrees, most of the time). But I'm too lazy/sidetracked/interested in other things to keep it the way I like it to be. I'm better than I used to be -- oh, it is awful to look at pictures from when the kids were babies and see how messy the backgrounds were -- and I remember feeling so guilty when we took those pictures that my kids' baby pictures would so frequently look like they were living in a neglected methamphetamine lab.

OK, so not THAT bad. But still.

ANYWAY. Tonight I had an idea -- a surefire way to make myself enjoy cleaning up for once. Using my new toy, I mean Nikon, bought for me by the most nearly-perfect man ever, I made a time-lapse movie of myself cleaning the kitchen, as well as one of the living room. And now, because I am, um, really not shy about showing you all really embarrassing stuff, I guess, here are links to the two movies, which are extremely short. You might want to play the Sabre Dance while you watch them. Just a suggestion. You know, like the guy who tells you at a fancy restaurant what wine you should order. Not that I ever GO to restaurants like that. Or order wine.

OK OK HERE ARE THE LINKS ALREADY.

Cleaning the kitchen
Cleaning the living room (featuring in dual starring roles MY NEW FANTASTIC COUCHES. Thank you, they'll be here all week.)

Both movies came out a little dark; there's no way to adjust the shutter speed or aperture manually when it's doing a time-lapse movie, and the automatic everything kind of went, "wha? There is something beyond this table?" But you might be able to get the general idea.

This is where I would ordinarily type, "and it's off to bed for me," or something equally hokey, except that I am, um, way behind on laundry. Again. So I'm up washing some things for church tomorrow. Silly people who think they need socks and stuff. Sheesh.

Friday, March 04, 2005

I am SO grown-up

First, I have to get this out of the way. Yesterday we got up at the crack of dawn, which of course I photographed:

(OK, so that's sunrise, not dawn, quibble quibble. I'd also already been up for about an hour when I took that picture. Artistic license, OK? Oh, and you can click to see that bigger, in a new window)


We drove to first one city and then to another, to visit doctors. Here is what I learned (ooh, a list!):

• I have a flow murmur and a classic case of supraventricular tachycardia (neither of those things is actually that scary, but they sure sound like it).
  
• I will probably be having a hysterectomy sometime this spring.

• I should always turn off my cell phone at the GYN office, because otherwise I may end up talking to my dad whilst being examined, and folks, that just feels all wrong.
  
• T and I still have the happy ability to make a day of boring, necessary stuff into a date, just because we love each other and enjoy each other so much. (kids were with my parents).
  

Anyway, enough about that, on to the real news.

First, in case you are new to my journal(s), I must re-confess that I was a thirty-year-old woman who had never owned a pair of high-heeled shoes. This has to do with having reached my adult height (which is taller than average) in junior high, and all this deep-seated insecurity about being taller than everyone else. And also laziness, also known as "never getting around to it".

Yesterday, however, I figured, what the heck, and we bought me these:

T wants me to make sure you know that he picked them out. I said I wanted high heels, he did the rest. Aren't they darling? DO YOU SEE THE POLKA DOTS?

Then last night I wore them to a community chorus concert. My first time in high heels, how sweet. Now I need a frilly organza dress and a cute little ponytail.

(Seriously, though? HOW DO YOU WALK? I mean, is it really all about these little bitty short steps -- well, they're little bitty short to ME, anyway -- or is there some trick to moving quickly and gracefully at the same time which I just don't know about? And also, very freaky when you take off your shoes and feel like your heels are downhill from your toes.)

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

YAY

IT. IS. HERE.

pictures pictures pictures:

oh yay. Now I'll go read the manual for the next TEN HOURS. Holy cow the thing is huge.

The Sermon on the Mount

I had Matthew 5-7 as my reading allotment this morning. It had been quite a while since I'd just sat and read through "the sermon on the Mount", and wow. Just so much in there to bless me and teach me. Especially convicting and empowering this morning were the following sections:

Matt 5:13-16 13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty {again} It is good for nothing anymore, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. 14 "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 "Nor do {men} light a lamp, and put it under the peck-measure, but on the lampstand; and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (NAS)

I've read/heard these verses with some regularity since I was a baby. I remember doing a skit about them at "church camp" when I was a little ten-year-old Methodist. And yet it was as I was reading them this morning that for the first time I read verse 16 to mean the following:

"Let people know that you love Jesus so that when they see your good works, they glorify God in heaven, and not you."

In the context of the rest of the teaching, that's the reading that makes the most sense -- we are to change the earth, to light it up, not to just go along our own little ways and leave the world unchanged. Wow.

Also, I got a new "take" on chapter 6, verses 19-21:

Matt 6:19-21
19 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
20 "But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal;
21 for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
(NAS)

These verses are often used to encourage people to spend less money gathering up possessions, and more money helping others. And this is one application, but in a larger sense, these verses are about more than just money. "Treasures" here doesn't just mean money; it means the approval and admiration of our fellow men. Again, the key is context. This admonition comes after a long section about not putting on a "show" with our works in various ways -- we're told not to give so that others will see us and be impressed, or to put on a show about fasting or praying. The chapter begins with this:

Matt 6:6 6 "But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. (NAS)

and then we have these verses:

Matt 6:6 6 "But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. (NAS)

Matt 6:16
16 "And whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites {do,} for they neglect their appearance in order to be seen fasting by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
(NAS)

In other words, if you do what you do hoping for the praise of men, then the praise of men is your reward. If you're doing it for the Lord, you don't need the praise of men. We can have treasure on earth (the praise of men) or treasure in heaven (reward/blessing from God).

At first glance the teaching about doing our good deeds in secret may seem to contradict the "city on a hill" idea, but when you look more closely, it doesn't. To hide our lamp under a bushel would be to keep our faith to ourselves, so that the good things we do give glory to ourselves, as opposed to letting the world know that we love Jesus so that credit for our deeds goes to Him. And when Jesus was telling the crowd to look healthy when they fasted and to pray in private and give secretly, He was teaching toward the same end. We don't want people to look at us and go, "WOW. That person is SO SPIRITUAL." We want them to look at us, and then say, "Wow. God is SO GOOD." There's a difference, no?

If you have ten minutes today (that's all it takes for a quick read-through), why not pull out a Bible and read Matthew 5-7? It's one of the most user-friendly sections of Scripture, it's basic and yet no matter how many times you've read it you'll never finish plumbing the depths of it. And besides, I'm itching for someone with whom to discuss it. ;-)
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Tuesday, March 01, 2005

The kind of morning moms dream of

Well, some kind of moms, anyway.

The community chorus* had a rehearsal with the high school choruses this morning, since we are performing with them for a couple of songs at their concert this Thursday. I took the kids with me (obviously), and sat them in a couple of auditorium chairs with their schoolwork while I stood with a bunch of girls who were BABIES when I was their age and practiced singing. And here's the good part: those two angels (they're angels this morning, anyway ;) sat there quietly for the entire hour and did their work without giving me even a single smidge of regret for having had to bring them.

I'm writing this down so that the next time I feel like I am useless as a parent and my kids will have me in the asylum within fifteen minutes, I can read it, and hope. ;-)

*I don't get out much. The community chorus and church and Awana and Bible study, that's pretty much it. The chorus is the only one of those things that I do on my own, without the rest of the family, so it is pretty much the extent of my adult social exposure. So you'll probably hear about it a lot. Maybe I should put a picture of it in the sidebar.

By the way, I've been doing my reading every day. (pats self on back). I am using a modified version of a through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan that divides the days up into The Law, History, Prophecy, etc. Instead of going from one section to the other on successive days, though, I'm reading a book from one section, and then going on to a book from another, so as to have more context. It will still work out to take a year. That's if I don't slack. Which I may well do.

I'm also planning to put up a post about chapter summaries soon, probably when I actually start working on mine for the next study.