BRAWNY
18
BAGS
13 GALLON
LOVE, HELIER
(Well, he did copy it all out himself, straight off the box of garbage bags. And, as he pointed out several times, it was funny. I can think of worse things to give Dad for Father's Day than a good laugh.)
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
This, That, and T'Other Thing
Around here we have a day to get on with, but here's a little potpourri of links for your amusement and edification:
Anthony Esolen on marriage and the maintenance of culture
The Anchoress on John Quincy Adams
Nun-Gazing at The Crescat (which is also hosting an Ugliest Church Art contest)
Cooking with lard at The Common Room
Joe and Micah continue the poetry conversation at First Thoughts
Hear Charles Causley at The Poetry Archive
Kevin McIntyre on Wendell Berry at Front Porch Republic
Regina Doman on washing machines
Finally, sad news from our friends at Redblur Ramblings. Please pray for the repose of Miss Joann's soul. She was a lovely lady, very dear to all our family and especially kind to Epiphany. That she was able to die peacefully in her daughter's home, surrounded and cared for by loving family, comfortably and quietly and in the natural course of things, testifies to a primary but unsung function of the family: to stand with each other at the door between this life and the next, to await its opening, and to see, and pray, each other through. R.I.P.
Anthony Esolen on marriage and the maintenance of culture
The Anchoress on John Quincy Adams
Nun-Gazing at The Crescat (which is also hosting an Ugliest Church Art contest)
Cooking with lard at The Common Room
Joe and Micah continue the poetry conversation at First Thoughts
Hear Charles Causley at The Poetry Archive
Kevin McIntyre on Wendell Berry at Front Porch Republic
Regina Doman on washing machines
Finally, sad news from our friends at Redblur Ramblings. Please pray for the repose of Miss Joann's soul. She was a lovely lady, very dear to all our family and especially kind to Epiphany. That she was able to die peacefully in her daughter's home, surrounded and cared for by loving family, comfortably and quietly and in the natural course of things, testifies to a primary but unsung function of the family: to stand with each other at the door between this life and the next, to await its opening, and to see, and pray, each other through. R.I.P.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Frugal Homeschool Prom
Dress: Goodwill $4.99 (never-worn shoes also from Goodwill, $3.99)
Corsage: made by me from backyard flowers (daylilies, clover, blue sage, vinca, rosemary, lavender)
We took ginger-ale/lemonade punch with frozen raspberries, plus homemade sugar cookies.
It is good to have friends.
It is good to have friends with handsome brothers.
It is good to swing dance and waltz and troika and do the Cotton-Eyed Joe at your high-school prom, and to fall into bed at your friend's house at 1 a.m. and wear her best skirt to Mass the next day, because it looks so nice with your shoes of the night before.
It is good to be fifteen, and to know that with imagination and $20, you can do a heck of a lot.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Friday Poetry
Come and visit me at First Thoughts, where I attempt to answer the question, "Is Billy Collins killing poetry?"
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
What You Can Do On Pentecost Tuesday
Read this meditation on marriage and marriage vows from the incomparable Anthony Esolen.
What We Did On Pentecost Monday
Which I think ought to be a holiday like Easter Monday, but who listens to me?
What We Did:
1. Got up.
2. Decided to go to the mountains.
3. Well, some of us decided to go to the mountains: Amicus, Helier, Crispina, the dog and me. Aelred, MM, and Epiphany stayed home. The dog didn't actually decide, but had decisions made in his name, as sometimes happens.
4. Amicus, Helier and Crispina made a picnic lunch while I wrote a First Thoughts post about a charter school in California. Crispina managed to wrestle the dog into his head collar, then left him moping around the back steps while she underwent four or five costume changes, as sometimes happens.
5. The children loaded the car. You think there's going to be some big punch line in which we arrive in the mountains only to discover that we've forgotten some crucial item, like the rear left tire, but I assure you that this was not the case. They were very thorough.
6. Epiphany had wanted to stay behind because she'd been promised payment for washing the cars. She didn't have time to wash the big van, but she cleaned it out and vacuumed it, and Aelred was spraying the windshield very forcefully with the brand-new hose nozzle when we noticed a large crack, which had developed out of a much smaller, nay practically-negligible one, running vertically the height of the windshield. It looked potentially dangerous.
7. We took the van first to an auto-glass establishment at a non-existent address -- there is no 315 Aspen Street in our town, did you know? -- and then to the mechanics who fixed the air conditioning in the same van last week, not that it's not currently broken again or anything, which isn't really their fault; there's a leak somewhere in the system. The head mechanic very kindly called a glass man of his acquaintance, and after some minutes of conversation, with all the children in the car, we mutually determined that we could probably drive to the mountains and back with the crack in the windshield and not die. It was on the passenger's side, anyway.
8. Amicus, who had been sitting up front with me, moved to one of the back seats for the drive to the mountains.
9. So we went to the mountains. There's a very nice mountain, with a lake and a creek and a hiking trail, only about an hour from our house. We went first to the lake and walked a little way around it, then we went to the creek. There the children put on bathing suits and proceeded to fall down in the water a lot. The dog also went into the water, which surprised me, because he doesn't like water. That is, he doesn't like water falling out of the sky, and he doesn't like water lying around in puddles on the sidewalk, but he seemed to have no problem whatsoever with really cold water rushing at a terrific rate over stones.
10. After an hour or so of falling down in the water, by which time their legs and lips had turned blue, the children got dressed and suggested that we might go for a hike. Of course, to reach the hiking trail from where we were, you have to wade back across the creek, and a couple of people fell in again, and it occurred to me that taking my hiking boots off and leaving them to dry in the sun for two hours had been something of a wasted effort.
11. We hiked.
12. Amicus fell over a root in a sort of tunnel of rhododendron and skinned his knee and left actual bloodstains on the ground, though when we came back that way we noticed that they were gone already.
13. Crispina -- and this is the really exciting part of the whole day -- who was trotting along merrily ahead of the rest of us -- was nearly run over by a deer. We heard a crashing in the rhododendron, then a little scream, and then more crashing downhill. Crispina was unharmed, though by the time we reached the bottom of the trail the one deer had become a big daddy deer with antlers which she had almost touched, and some little baby deers which she had petted and fed rose petals to. All very exciting, as I say.
14. We got back into the car and drove home. When I stopped for gas, I called Aelred to see what dinner plans might be brewing, and I happened to mention, casually yet meaningly, that at the picnic area at the creek, there had been some people grilling hamburgers, and they had smelled awfully good.
15. We arrived home just in time to stop the rest of them from going to Bojangles and bringing home fried chicken. Normally I like chicken, and I almost never, never, never want fast-food hamburgers, but I had been thinking all the way home about the smell of that meat and, as I said to Aelred and MM, when you have hamburgers on your mind, can milkshakes be far behind?
16. After dinner, bathed and read to Helier and Crispina. Helier furious because Eastertide is over, and we won't sing the "Regina Coeli" for another year. Maybe now he'll stop thinking about the plant in the closet and just focus on this outrage for a while.
17. With all children in bed, or at least upstairs and out of my line of vision, I sat at the dining-room table between Aelred and MM, the former doing his year-end professional self-assessment ("I was GREAT at everything I did!"), the latter doing Latin. I finished the J.R.R. Tolkien biography by Humphrey Carpenter.
18. Watched a Jeeves and Wooster episode on the computer. I prefer the first season to the second and the third. Drank a little glass of chartreuse and then ate a lime popsicle, though not immediately after the chartreuse.
19. And now it seems to be one in the morning. I have to decide whether to say night prayers for Monday, or morning prayers for Tuesday. Maybe I should just split the difference and say Vigils.
What We Did:
1. Got up.
2. Decided to go to the mountains.
3. Well, some of us decided to go to the mountains: Amicus, Helier, Crispina, the dog and me. Aelred, MM, and Epiphany stayed home. The dog didn't actually decide, but had decisions made in his name, as sometimes happens.
4. Amicus, Helier and Crispina made a picnic lunch while I wrote a First Thoughts post about a charter school in California. Crispina managed to wrestle the dog into his head collar, then left him moping around the back steps while she underwent four or five costume changes, as sometimes happens.
5. The children loaded the car. You think there's going to be some big punch line in which we arrive in the mountains only to discover that we've forgotten some crucial item, like the rear left tire, but I assure you that this was not the case. They were very thorough.
6. Epiphany had wanted to stay behind because she'd been promised payment for washing the cars. She didn't have time to wash the big van, but she cleaned it out and vacuumed it, and Aelred was spraying the windshield very forcefully with the brand-new hose nozzle when we noticed a large crack, which had developed out of a much smaller, nay practically-negligible one, running vertically the height of the windshield. It looked potentially dangerous.
7. We took the van first to an auto-glass establishment at a non-existent address -- there is no 315 Aspen Street in our town, did you know? -- and then to the mechanics who fixed the air conditioning in the same van last week, not that it's not currently broken again or anything, which isn't really their fault; there's a leak somewhere in the system. The head mechanic very kindly called a glass man of his acquaintance, and after some minutes of conversation, with all the children in the car, we mutually determined that we could probably drive to the mountains and back with the crack in the windshield and not die. It was on the passenger's side, anyway.
8. Amicus, who had been sitting up front with me, moved to one of the back seats for the drive to the mountains.
9. So we went to the mountains. There's a very nice mountain, with a lake and a creek and a hiking trail, only about an hour from our house. We went first to the lake and walked a little way around it, then we went to the creek. There the children put on bathing suits and proceeded to fall down in the water a lot. The dog also went into the water, which surprised me, because he doesn't like water. That is, he doesn't like water falling out of the sky, and he doesn't like water lying around in puddles on the sidewalk, but he seemed to have no problem whatsoever with really cold water rushing at a terrific rate over stones.
10. After an hour or so of falling down in the water, by which time their legs and lips had turned blue, the children got dressed and suggested that we might go for a hike. Of course, to reach the hiking trail from where we were, you have to wade back across the creek, and a couple of people fell in again, and it occurred to me that taking my hiking boots off and leaving them to dry in the sun for two hours had been something of a wasted effort.
11. We hiked.
12. Amicus fell over a root in a sort of tunnel of rhododendron and skinned his knee and left actual bloodstains on the ground, though when we came back that way we noticed that they were gone already.
13. Crispina -- and this is the really exciting part of the whole day -- who was trotting along merrily ahead of the rest of us -- was nearly run over by a deer. We heard a crashing in the rhododendron, then a little scream, and then more crashing downhill. Crispina was unharmed, though by the time we reached the bottom of the trail the one deer had become a big daddy deer with antlers which she had almost touched, and some little baby deers which she had petted and fed rose petals to. All very exciting, as I say.
14. We got back into the car and drove home. When I stopped for gas, I called Aelred to see what dinner plans might be brewing, and I happened to mention, casually yet meaningly, that at the picnic area at the creek, there had been some people grilling hamburgers, and they had smelled awfully good.
15. We arrived home just in time to stop the rest of them from going to Bojangles and bringing home fried chicken. Normally I like chicken, and I almost never, never, never want fast-food hamburgers, but I had been thinking all the way home about the smell of that meat and, as I said to Aelred and MM, when you have hamburgers on your mind, can milkshakes be far behind?
16. After dinner, bathed and read to Helier and Crispina. Helier furious because Eastertide is over, and we won't sing the "Regina Coeli" for another year. Maybe now he'll stop thinking about the plant in the closet and just focus on this outrage for a while.
17. With all children in bed, or at least upstairs and out of my line of vision, I sat at the dining-room table between Aelred and MM, the former doing his year-end professional self-assessment ("I was GREAT at everything I did!"), the latter doing Latin. I finished the J.R.R. Tolkien biography by Humphrey Carpenter.
18. Watched a Jeeves and Wooster episode on the computer. I prefer the first season to the second and the third. Drank a little glass of chartreuse and then ate a lime popsicle, though not immediately after the chartreuse.
19. And now it seems to be one in the morning. I have to decide whether to say night prayers for Monday, or morning prayers for Tuesday. Maybe I should just split the difference and say Vigils.
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