Mr Winkle: The Cutest Dog in the Universe.
Well, yeah, he's cute. What does he have that our Scrappy doesn't? A talented stagemother willing to devote her energy to promoting his career. That'll be have to be up to you, Bridget, because I'm immersed in Eddie's competitive LEGO career.

Mid-day at the Oasis...
We had a nice, albeit brief, family reunion with Karen, Ryan and the kids at the Lake Forest Oasis. Bridget was working and Em was out of town, but otherwise the gang was all there. A big enough group that we had to push together three tables. The dining experience has changed a lot since Karen and I were kids, but the big thrill - traffic speeding below one’s feet - remains the same. Eddie and cousin Dave were obsessed with the nearby jumbo claw machine. That’s why I didn’t tip the maitre d’ (aka Chuck) for finding us deluxe seating. This time we remembered the boots for Auntie Karen, so she will never again show up at a messing crime scene wearing open toed pumps.

Time to get caught up on all the news. Em’s wedding plans. School for the cousins. Eddie’s triumph at the LEGO store. (We were there yesterday. His record still stands. So if no one beat it today, I guess he’s the man.) Karen in trouble with state government (from governor on down) for a three line email to a local radio discussion of drug enforcement in the north woods. (Sorry, guv, she’s right.)

Then time to hit the road. School starts at our parish tomorrow which means parking lot mayhem. If I didn’t keep irregular hours, I’d be tempted to pay the bus fee and ride to church with the kids. (There must be a lot of room on the buses because it looks as though most of the dear ones are personally delivered by maternal chauffeurs piloting Escalades and Navigators. Blech....)

Time to do more school work with our guys. I’ve sort of violated the no school before Labor Day rule this year, because I’ll need to be working some extra hours in September. I’ve tried to explain that we want to do a lot of September now, and we can relive August in September. Doesn’t make much sense to the boys. Or me, either. But we try.

I Can’t Even Imagine.
NOAA is our usual educational and outdoor activity planning resource. Today it’s an integral tool for my prayers.

And in the words of my late father......
updated for the 2005 economy....
"That and $4.50 will get you a cup of coffee!


Isis

Indeed, you are 95% erudite, 91% sensual, 58% martial, and 62% saturnine.

This Egyptian supreme Goddess is certainly the most influential deity on subsequent cultures. She was the ideal figure of womanhood, usually compared with the Greek Goddess Demeter or her Roman version, Ceres.


Isis
was one element of a Holy Trinity, the remaining two figures being her brother and husband Osiris
and their heroic son Horus. She was the Goddess of Magic for her brilliance, as well as the Goddess of Love because of her tenacious devotion.

She is often shown with wings, curving to caress coffins and sarcophagi of many a king. In certain papyri she is shown with her falcon wing headdress, covering her ears. One of her sacred symbols is the sistrum, a musical instrument that was believed to ward off evil spirits. Isis' sistrum was carved bearing the image of a cat and was representative of the Moon.

Isis was the High Priestess and an omnipotent magician as well as the only being ever to discover the secret name of Ra. She invariably carries the ankh, the symbol for eternal life. Her name is, by the rules of numerology, adding up to the number “2” and she just so happens to be depicted on the tarot card “Key 2 – The High Priestess”.

The Fifteen Goddesses

These are the 15 categories of this test. If you score above average in …

…all or none of the four variables: Neit


Erudite: Minerva

Sensual: Aphrodite

Martial: Artemis

Saturnine: Persephone

Erudite & Sensual: Isis

Erudite & Martial: Sekhmet

Erudite & Saturnine: Nemesis

Sensual & Martial: Hera

Sensual & Saturnine: Bast

Martial & Saturnine: Ilamatecuhtli

Erudite, Sensual & Martial: Maeve

Erudite, Sensual & Saturnine: Freya

Erudite, Martial & Saturnine: Sedna

Sensual, Martial & Saturnine: Macha

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99%on erudite

You scored higher than 80% on sensual

You scored higher than 40% on martial

You scored higher than 40% on saturnine

Link: The Mythological Goddess Test written by Nitsuki on Ok Cupid

A clue...
that it's time to get back to school work.
While plotting my living room dusting strategy, I noticed that our little statue of Romulus and Remus with the Capitoline Wolf was nowhere to be seen. A simple inquiry, "has anyone seen Romulus and Remus?," lead to a response of, "Romulus and Remus? They suck." Owing to my delicate sensibilities, it took about three go rounds before I got the joke. I had to restate my policy on the general use of the word "suck." Babies and vacuums suck. Otherwise, try not to use the word.

According to the jailhouse homeschool lawyers, the joke should supposedly be OK. On the basis that Romulus and Remus are (were) babies. I'm not impressed. And certain family members are still repeating "Romulus and Remus? They suck." Oh the juvenile capacity to get the maximum mileage out of a mediocre pun.

"Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, Late have I loved you!"
Jeff Miller strikes again with brilliant reportage of World Misspent-Youth Day.
World Misspent-Youth Day was open to those 35 and above who in their youth lead lives not exactly pious, which really means open to all of us 35 and above.

Weep & Moan
Weep & Mop
Sweep & Mop
No trouble with task delegation around here.
My sister called Tuesday morning to say that they would be coming to town to bury her husband’s grandmother somewhere on the northside of Chicago on Saturday, and could they bunk at our house on Friday night. Well, what kind of sister would turn down an opportunity to see family that she sees so infrequently? Not even I - though I knew it would mean a blitzkrieg of housework owing to a combination of more ‘out of the home’ work for me, more intense hours spent by Rick and the boys working on his charitable foundation (how was I to know I’d wake up one day married to the local Bob-freakin’-Geldof of the IT world?), the fact that I’ve never been a great homemaker anyway (The SHE card file worked for a while, then I got pregnant with Martha - in 1986. SHE meaning Sidetracked Home Executives, not She - A Magazine of positive and inspiring articles on women for lesbians. I tried restarting the card file but never quite got back on the wagon. The last time I was sidetracked by creating a lovely collaged wooden box in which to keep the 3 x 5 cards that I should have been using. Oh, well. The box looks nice. Especially when I brush away the patina of oleaginous dust...) So,yes, one could say that we are living in CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome)

Tuesday night I worked on school stuff and meditated upon my cleaning strategy. Franny actually posted some clear instructions on the dry erase board to get things started. Said instructions were surely read, if not followed.

Wednesday I returned from work to pick up Eddie for our promised expedition to the LEGO store. Someone had erased the ‘S’ from the word sweep. Wednesday we were to weep and mop.

Thursday morning, lots of planning, including a scheme to rush the oriental rug to the cleaners and and vacuum the ceiling of the upstairs bathroom. (Don’t ask...) The memo board now says weep and moan. But not much has been done. Rick and Chuck are moving computers about the county and I’m coming home from work early to be with Eddie and clean.

Karen calls me at work. “We’ve had a change in plans. I hope you won’t be mad.....” My panicked heart assuming that they would arrive tonight. But, instead, her in-laws wanted to put everybody up in a hotel so Karen’s husband could have some quality time with his brother and sister who both live out in some frontier type state. That makes sense. Very good sense. Now we can tidy up at a reasonable pace. And meet the cousins for lunch on Sunday before they return to the north woods. Maybe at the Tollway Oasis. Karen thinks that is a dining experience that her children would relish. And there just happens to be an Oasis about 3 miles away from here.

Who knew...
that there would be such a thing as competitive LEGO assembling? And for all the times that I tried to discourage construction at table, in the dark back seat of car rolling down Hwy 41 after sundown, in the bathtub and just about everywhere else*, I am truly repentant. For I now am the mother of the current record holder at our local LEGO store. (3 minutes and 48 seconds, without consulting the instruction book) To think that I tried to discourage the little savant. The contest ends in 3 days - during which time he may return to the mall once a day to try to better his score. ...even if he doesn’t win the contest I think it did Edward a world of good to see that he left the other 3 kids working at his table to eat his virtual modular dust.

*Church. We held the line at church. There may have been attempts to smuggle blocks in various pockets, but at no time was anything assembled.

"Generally speaking, Catholics do not like to have non-Catholics try to get them to leave their faith,"
Interesting Chicago Tribune article on the intrusion of suburban Protestant megachurches into traditionally Catholic urban areas.

While I’m thinking of it, I must brag about my Charles’ willingness to take a “spiritual bullet” for Rick and me by telling the Jehovah’s Witnesses that we “weren’t available.” (I don’t think you could really consider that a lie. Spiritually speaking , we weren’t available for the Witnesses. I didn’t really want my session with The New Yorker interrupted, either.) I was sitting upstairs reading when I heard Chuck head them off before they rang the door bell. He was quite polite as he responded that, yes, indeed, he had heard the word of the Lord. And quickly retreated into the house.

"We're trying to get unreachable people, the ones who are burned out, disgusted and haven't been to church for years," said Escobar, the bongo player. Maybe they should be trolling the pages of the latest Chicago Magazine. The institutional Church herself is quite favorably reported upon. The Opus Dei supernumerary had a bigger, better picture than Barbara Blaine. (The better to see that he wasn’t a homicidal albino. No offense intended to any albinos.) But the average Joe Catholics in the street came across as rather poorly catechized and lackadaisical. You know, the not uncommon “love the Church, just don’t have time for Mass but I’m sure it’s all good with Jesus.”

I rely (perhaps too much) on Google news to keep me updated on what is going on in the world. From time to time I must remind myself that despite the pool of sources it draws from, I am still getting a rather skewed view of the world. And its priorities. (Big Ed explained to me how items work their way to the top of the Google heap. It makes sense. And it is, I would suppose, an accurate mirror of what people want to know. ) But there is still something wrong in a system that would have let me go unaware of the killing of Br. Roger of Taize while keeping me posted on P. Diddy’s dropping of the “P” from his name. And the problems of Eminem and Courtney Love. Who are probably more in need of prayer than the late Frere Roger...but it still doesn’t seem right.

Something old, borrowed and blue...
Note to Embot, re: necklace for your wedding.
How about my Wedgwood daisy necklace? It satisfies 3 crucial criteria.
Didn't wear it at my wedding. I wore some antique pearls that Aunt Tommy gave me. Wish I could give them to you but I managed to break them at my wedding reception. Still have gotten around to having them restrung. (By now, I don't know where they are.) But the Wedgwood is in good taste. That has the matching earrings, but I think I lent those to one of your sisters and they've gone missing. (the earrings, not the sisters.)

PS - Am getting some good feedback on the picture of the purple and white houndstooth flats that I posted on the memo board. I may just have to go to Old Navy to give them a look-see.

August 15...
The yearly tradition arrives. The once a year nightmare in which it is Christmas Eve and I have done absolutely no preparation. This year's edition: We're staying with the in-laws, all the guests have arrived, and I must try to sneak away in the middle of the night to do my shopping. We still have a baby in diapers, who I must take with me. As soon as I can change his diaper. We're in Illinois, but I'm headed to the Marshall Field's at Mayfair, outside of Milwaukee. I tell Rick that he'll have to wrap the presents when we get home, so I can decorate our own tree (in the playroom, where we always had a tree when we lived with Rick's folks) and then bake some cookies. All during the night of December 24.

I have a permutation of this scenario every year. Always variations on the theme of unpreparedness. Usually in August or September. I don't think it ever happens more than once a year - so I'm safe until 2006. No wonder I felt tired today. I not only examined all of my Christmas ornaments in my sleep - I was also making new ones!

Take a look at the September issue of Chicago Magazine.
The Catholic Church in Chicago. I hear that the articles are fairly...fair. Since I’m cheap, I’ll wait ‘til I can look at a friend’s copy. Or find a copy in a waiting room somewhere.

True Love
Dawn Turner Trice writes in the Chicago Tribune about a Chicago family facing a daunting challenge. And a way we can help.
Phillip and Ama Thomas have been married for eight years. Until recently, their lives were fairly uneventful and filled with children's laughter...

Sudoku
My newest bad habit...
It must have some redeeming value. Please. (You know. Like Tetris has made me more efficient at loading groceries in the car.)

Only £100,000?
I have it on the best authority (my hubby who once lunched with the Dean of the Cathedral) that the upkeep on Lincoln Cathedral runs approximately one million pounds per year. So I can’t even try to rationalize ‘selling out’ to help with maintenance.

Way to go, Sr. Mary!
Sister Mary Michael, 61, knelt in prayer outside the building where scenes for the blockbuster starring Tom Hanks are being shot. She believes the book by author Dan Brown contains heresy.

Asked if she thought the people making the film would care about her protest, she said: "I don't suppose they do, but that doesn't matter tuppence to me. It matters to me what God thinks, not what the film crew think.

The Urban Dictionary, an online collection of user-defined slang terms, lists: "Dooced: to lose one's job because of one's website. Dude, I heard Janey got dooced last week."
The news of late, as is becoming usual, is filled with more doocings or near-doocings...
I shall take this under advisement.
But now I am off to Mass. Then to work. Where I shall be early. And attentive. And won’t think Blog.

It’s a Small, Small World
So I’m procrastinating on the wrapping and packing.
Thinking of my sister reminds me that I was talking to the people in the other half of our duplex. They were headed off to their oldest son’s wedding out east. It turns out that this kid - oops, I didn’t even know he was out of college yet - is in his second year at a small private law school in Vermont. The same school from which Karen graduated twenty years ago. What a coink-i-dinks!

Emergency, emergency...
everybody to get from street. That’s just our family catchphrase (lovingly lifted from the classic comedy, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming.) for moments of controled chaos and panic. So the emergency for this Sunday night? Martha just got off the phone from wishing her cousin a happy eleventh birthday and announced that she has decided to take a few days to visit Auntie Karen and the family before school starts. (Many thanks to Karen for buying the train ticket for her...money being one of the reasons that we had been delaying even considering the trip. And she didn’t want to drive, since the car Karen gave her last summer just barely made it down here. There are no more long road trips left in its future. ) So now we have about 18 hours for her to pull a few things together (and mothers of girls know how many things constitute a “few.”) before she grabs the train in Glenview. I hadn’t even wrapped Annie’s birthday gifts, so I’d best do that so that they can be hand delivered. Of course, I still haven’t sent my sister’s birthday gifts (has it been that long since the end of April?) so I’d better get cracking. Quick, let's think about anything else we've been meaning to send up north. Oh, yeah, those heavy duty waders for Karen to wear to crime scenes...
now where did we put them?

Am I lonely? Upset? Confused? Yes.
Sometimes, me too, Jen. But is taking off most of your clothes and undulating on the pages of Vanity Fair a good way to work through it? Or do we call that “acting out?”

Now I’m seeing it everywhere. This 600 piece puzzle of the world (OK, 599, we‘ve lost Maine. The state of Maine is now etched in the boys’ minds as a negative space.) is challenging and fun. I kept it in the shrink wrap and was saving it for a fall back project later in the year. That gave it extra appeal and Eddie was begging to work on it. Big Ed gave him a lot of help and now it’s done and ready for disassembly - before we lose any more pieces. Not as easy as one might think. Ed said the big fooler is that the trivia info written on some of the ocean does not appear near the country which it describes.

Cool site....
Toy Maker.
We'll have fun with this.

Plans for the week-end?
None here. Not going anywhere. Weather’s too crummy for anything but bare necessities in the garden. (Time to replenish the butterfly nectar. In hot weather it needs to be changed frequently or it will ferment or do something toxic.) No plans for movies...have to wait ‘til payday to catch up with March of the Penguins. Can’t even watch TV without being assaulted by ads for 40 Year Old Virgin and that revolting Deuce Bigalow Redundant Gigolo redux. They’re everywhere.

There’s a load of iMac’s in my living room awaiting transfer to the St. Isidore Foundation’s storage facility. They’re everywhere. So much for my plans to give the living room a good cleaning. BUT THERE IS SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE THAT CAN BE DONE...Check out Dawn Eden’s blog and Project Max. A great opportunity to help Planned Parenthood hoist themselves on their own petard.

OK, let's try this again...

the Wit (61% dark, 23% spontaneous, 15% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. (YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN WORRIED WHEN YOU SAW YOU SAW YOUR FUTURE HUSBAND'S FRAT HOUSE. YOU WERE LOOKING AT YOUR FUTURE) I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer.Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. (RIGHT...THAT'S WHY YOU'RE ANSWERING PHONES AT A CHURCH FOR A LIVING.) PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender : You scored higher than 0% on dark You scored higher than 0% on spontaneous You scored higher than 0% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

Never would be too soon.
Pfizer Inc. pledged not to directly promote any new product to patients for at least six months after putting it on the market and to target only adult audiences when touting impotency treatment Viagra on TV.
Don’t even get me started on ED drugs.
And I can live without all the other ads, too. Watching any of the network nightly newscasts makes me feel like I am among a select group of hypochondriacs or the particularly frail. It leads to me to wonder if there is a single person alive who is both interested in a quick gloss of the day’s news and not in need of fiber/anti-hypertensives/statins/impotency help/analgesics and/or something for overactive stomach acid production.

I don’t suppose...
that 21st century high school students are typing blood drawn from each other, pithing live frogs and growing virulent strains of heaven-only-knows from swabbings taken from the principal’s desk. Which may explain why my lab experience was richer and more meaningful than the present, judging by this USA Today article. Oh, for the careless yet relatively safe good old days.

Did I mention that once in a while teachers would be known to pass around a blob of mercury? Don't think that happens much these days...

Prayers Needed via Alicia.

“I’m driven to my knees by the conviction that I have nowhere else to go.”
Good LifeSite article on the faith of the late Susan Torres’ extended family;
...She continued, “I tell my children, now do you understand why you must go to Church on Sundays and keep your spiritual life in order? You can’t get it in good order in the middle of something like this. Faith is the only thing that gets you through.”

Catholic faithful answer the call
I would have, too. But while the Church militant is processing, somebody has to be picking up the phones at the Church bureaucratic.

But what a beautiful day for such an event. After a string of hot, humid irritating days the weather is giving us a break. I wish the Trib hadn’t relegated this to the category of ‘local’ news. Mayor Daley in a pouty snit is likewise quite local, but that makes its way to the front page. The local news section is a lot more along the lines of auto wrecks in the outlying parts of the city coupled with stories of two headed frogs found in exurban swimming pools.

Then again...some days you just skip the whole thing.

Your Blogging Type is Artistic and Passionate

You see your blog as the ultimate personal expression - and work hard to make it great. One moment you may be working on a new dramatic design for your blog... And the next, you're passionately writing about your pet causes. Your blog is very important - and you're careful about who you share it with.

What's Your Blogging Personality?

Celebrating the Creation of Families
Just when I thought the niche magazine market had been exhausted. Yeah, I bought my share of Modern Bride when I was at that age. And I’m a bit perplexed that prom preparations have their own specific publications. But when I went into to the local bookstore and saw Conceive Magazine I knew I had seen it all. (Maybe not...what’s next? Fancy Funerals and Wonderful Wakes?)

There is probably some info that would be helpful to all young families, but I cannot imagine that one cannot find health advice and support anywhere else. The whole thing seemed so, well, icky. Really icky. Like when the contents get down to “--let’s go shopping! Tips on how to choose the best donor gametes—eggs and sperm—for your growing family.” Let’s not.

The implications of the cloned dog...
are too horrifying to ponder. And the more we've talked about it, the layers of creepiness just keep piling up. Anyone who has listened to Bob Barker knows that there is not shortage of natural born dogs. This ain't about dogs.

So all I have to say is, if I were going to clone a dog, an afghan is the last dog I would create. Blech.

No, not the massage shop...

At this moment I am having the time of my life. Propped up in bed with the laptop complete with ethernet cable and iTunes. I could stay like this forever...Fortunately, it will not last. Who would want to be become the local Brian Wilson.

Pretty nice way to end a crummy day. I didn’t feel like going to work. (I was feeling cold on a 90 degree day - for me that is a very bad sign.) I went in to work just long enough to do everything that I had to do today and came home. Slithering off to bed with an unusually wretched head-ache. I could not even muster the energy to rail at the young enterprisers holding a garage sale in my driveway. I’m just barely getting my head above water after about two months of being blessed with extra opportunities to pick up hours at work coupled with a vague cloud of dismay and irritation. Because I can expect extra work time again in September, I’ve been trying to get going early on schoolwork. But what was the use today? Like anything else can compete with the Cirque du Refuse being performed in the driveway.

A two hour nap helped considerably, and though my head was still pounding, I found my way downstairs to make a strawberry smoothie and look for today’s mail. When someone announced a package for me I thought maybe it was the backordered Egyptian stickers from Dover. I couldn’t think of anything else that would be on its way. But...on closer inspection, the package was not from the dubious sounding Massage Shop but a media outlet called The Message Shop (8 point type return addresses are so confusing) from which I ordered some copies of Untold Blessing: Three Paths to Holiness with Rev. Robert Barron. I didn’t expect to receive them so quickly, but it was nice to have something good to keep my mind off the garage sale. Reading hurt too much and that left me to pass the time with Dr. Phil or Inside Edition.

I knew the DVD would be excellent. ( OK, I was in the audience when it was taped.) But it was good to hear again what Father had to say. And I must add that watching it with one eye open and the rest of my head sunk into a pillow, it was beautifully edited with the addition of illustrative artwork. I’m looking forward to watching it again with both eyes.

They are priced to make them available to everyone and to facilitate stocking up for Christmas gifts, etc. And the DVD has a nice includes a nice little travelogue sort of thing about Mundelein Seminary and other good stuff. Check it out.

Does this still work?
The blog is about as neglected as the housework. If I have to start somewhere, it might as well be here. And thanks to technology and an industrious family, I can blog from the [relative] comfort of my boudoir. It's getting progressively difficult to find a quiet place to think and write. Well, there's work. But they're not paying me to generate original thoughts and homemaking hints. That I have to do on my own time. If only the cold front would pass through and my room could cool down. I should be thankful, though...yesterday I returned home from work twenty minutes after the power had gone out. It didn't last much more than an hour and I wasn't too panicked, since the fridge and freezer were fairly empty and we had nothing to lose but our minds...