"I want to save for a car, but I want a pair of Red Monkey Jeans that cost $1,000. I'm going to get them."
A story that would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
(I can relate to a young person’s fashion desires. The memory of that $20 (in 1973!) red T-shirt with “Rock ‘n Roll” in glitter still chafes. Much like the glitter itself.)

Can somebody tell me about Red Monkey Jeans? And why they cost more than most of the cars I’ve had?

Too soon old...too late smart
Bridget and I saw that adage written on the back of a truck.
She was a little unclear on the concept.

I'll take it as a warning. And check the celebrity news at home. Not at work.
It may not be too late...

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
And it occurs to Mrs. vonHuben that that is all that she does.
Especially process.
Process dishes. Process laundry. Process school work
Process phone calls. Process candles, incense and charcoal. Process altar servers. Process baptisms, marriages and deaths. Process oplatky.

And she has made peace with it. The process is the career.

How many of them really know what they want, though? I mean, a lot of them think they have to know, right? But inside they don't really know, so... I don't know , but I know that I don't know.

The problem is...
not in my chair. Especially when I’m careening about the Internet in the comfort of my Recaro seat. The problem is being able to see the monitor when I’m sitting at a 135 degree angle.

That pinching pain in my lower back is what keeps me turning into a complete zombie.

I used to be Prudence...

Which Positive Quality Are You? Your Result: Charity   You are Charity. The spirit of giving has been promoted by every religion. Charity is kindness. It is compassion for our fellow man. Charity doesn't ask anything in return, and in this way it serves as the opposite of greed. "Be charitable with many."
Love
Faith
Courage
Friendship
Peace
Which Positive Quality Are You?

Like I said - used to be.
See entry below.

Well, isn't that special?
or
Have you no sense of decency?
Ostensibly watching for news about the Holy Father’s trip to Turkey, I came across this vital information. Then I had made a clandestine check of celebrity news. (It’s like Chicago-style popcorn - disgusting and irresistible.) I was distracted by work issues and didn’t realize this was left on my monitor. I am hoping Fr. didn’t notice it when he came in to discuss the Christmas schedule. I don’t want “You’re fired!” to be the defining catchphrase of my week. I’ve learned my lesson.

Could have been worse...

You paid attention during 91% of high school!

 

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

considering my sketchy attendance record.
(This could explain the ongoing nightmares in which my highschool is trying to recall my diploma.)

Via Video Meliora....

Well, my daughter is Asian by marriage...

You are 49% Asian!

 

Your Asian-ness could use some Feng Shui. Try re-arranging your Asian characteristics. Start up a collection of Sanrio characters or go out and Karaoke with your friends. Don't forget to pimp your cell phone with cute characters!

How Asian Are You?
Create MySpace Quizzes

Me too Miz Booshay

You Belong in Winter

Quiet, calm, and totally at peace... You're happy to be at home, wrapped in a blanket, completely snowed in Whether you're lighting a fire or having a snowball fight, you always feel best in the winter.

What Season Are You?

Which is a good thing for those of us within a relatively short drive of the 45th parallel.
(Well, it’s 57 in Chicago today, so I shouldn’t be kvetching...)

About those gaps in the education...
Martha just told me that in Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte dies.
I never knew. (I only recently realized that Charlotte is not the pig.)
I also never read Catcher in the Rye.
Or Lord of the Flies. Or Rings. Ouch.
Yeah, there are gaps.

Unschooling
I don’t totally buy into the “gaps in the education” caveat.
I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t have gaps in their education.
If your kids are learning the same thing as all the other kids (I, for example, am thinking owl pellets, meal worms and Futhark) you think they are getting a thorough education. Maybe. Maybe not.

(PS - Thanks to the Internet, I now know that Futhark is a real linguistic system. I honestly thought it was some BazFaz that a local teacher made up. It wouldn’t have been the first bit of curricula tried out on the local guinea pigs children. And for all these years, I’ve been referring to it as “FooFark.” As in, “Why are they teaching you FooFark when you aren’t so good at English?”)

And your firstborn is a Librarian!!!

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm   You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Of course, if books were cats, I'd be in trouble.

(Via Happy Catholic)

It would appear....
that we can put up the Christmas decorations a little earlier every year and still be the last people in the neighborhood to have decked the halls.

I woke up in the middle of the night to notice an eerie glow reflecting off of the overhang outside of my bedroom window. No need to panic. It is simply the lights on the neighbors' bushes. Going to Mass at 7:30am, I saw that the whole neighborhood was decorated and illuminated. Except for us. I mean, it is still November, right?

I don’t blame anyone who wants to take advantage of the mild weather to put up lights etc. I think that would be the electric equivalent of planting bulbs in fall so that you can have daffodils for Easter. Turning the lights on in November is like eating Cadbury Cream Eggs during Lent. Disordered, improper and not really satisfying.

Thanks Mom
Oh, I shouldn’t be so cynical. I’m just happy to have been born at all.

If your mother was young when you were born, you're more likely to live to a ripe old age, a University of Chicago study has found.
Children born before their mothers' 25th birthday were nearly twice as likely to live to 100, the study found.
So, Em, Fran, and Bridget are in luck. Martha, Chuck and Ed, well, what can I say?

"This film is about death,…"
Indeed.

Calif. court says bloggers can't be sued
Hmmm. Interesting.
Not as interesting as when I first read it. I thought it said “cured” instead of sued. So much for reading on the fly while ‘working.’

"No Excuses University"
Kindergartners at Anne Fox Elementary School in Hanover Park recently learned to sing "Ring Out Ahoya," the fight song of their favorite college, Marquette University. They even decked themselves out in Class of 2023 T-shirts. ... Part of an effort launched at the beginning of the school year, teachers, pupils and parents have all agreed to work toward academic success with college as the objective. Each child also set a list of personal goals. ... Each day begins with pupils chanting outside the school, "We are Anne Fox! We are college-bound!"

I do applaud a reverence for education. I just hope these kids do not confuse success in learning with success in life. And confuse success with prosperity. Then they’ll be OK.

But it kinda makes me wish I had spent more time singing “On, Wisconsin,” as a child. My aunt Dimi taught me the words the night my little sister was born. (meet your new sister, UW-Oshkosh class of ‘80!) And how to sing it blowing bubbles while brushing my teeth.

Those are my jaundiced thoughts for the day.
I am Ellyn. I am a college graduate.
I am bound for another exciting day as a church secretary.

Lost
Oh, that’s right, that is already a TV show.
I’m developing a storyline about a boring suburban mom who keeps loosing a seemingly unrelated string of banal objects. It starts with the “Greetings from Asbury Park” beach towel, moves on to the single Sorel bootliner (women’s Caribou - size ten), the classic black and gold clutch bag and takes a turn for the worse when the “White Christmas” DVD goes missing in November. Paranoia sets in. The strangest

There is a bit of comic relief when the mom returns home one day to find the three dogs are staring at mom’s earrings, having been shaken out of the flimsy plastic box that they are kept in. And pulled them off of the ‘holey’ card to which they are affixed. Young-dude husky, Klondike Clyde, looks the most suspicious. Maybe there could even be a talking “dog thought” moment; some PG-13 commentary on the humor of messing with the family jewels.

It ends with the family no longer listening to any sentence which begins with “Has anyone seen…?”

How about Lost in Space....Gaslight....Cold Case....Flushed Away?

I Love Jesus.
I'm Catholic. I love Jesus. I work for Jesus.
But I'm more than a little creeped out at the concept of the Talking Jesus Doll.
I don't blame the Marines for not wanting to give them out as part of Toys for Tots.
There is a always a time and place for evangelization. This ain't it.

Sr. Mary Martha Clarifies It All

I thought I was working at a church rectory. But I think I’m really working at Home Depot I just forgot to pick up my orange apron. And the tobacco habit.

Google could 'help doctors diagnose illness'
Sure works at our house.
And we're just amateurs.

Marines...with Cake
A few of my favorite things.

Timberdoodle is not my favorite homeschooling resource catalog. It's not necessarily that they are Protestant - I can navigate the minefield of Protestant based curricula. But they have made statements that are most assuredly anti-Catholic. So if I have a choice I would rather spend my money elsewhere.

That doesn't mean I don't page through their catalog when it arrives. So, my question now is...is the new Architecto/Equilibrio game a repackaged
Architek Game with different colored blocks? It looks awfully familiar. They both have 18 blocks. Maybe I should just walk over to the shelf and take out the Architek box and give it a look see next to the Architecto ad. Maybe tomorrow.

Make N' Break
Martha, the third of our girls to work at the local toy store, tells us Make N' Break is a big seller this year. Looks like fun. I think we can handle it.

Unlike the Pirate Ship (whose manufacturer I will not mention) that Martha brough home to construct. Despite the expertise of her two nerdy, construction-toy skilled brothers and some tweaking by a brilliant brother-in-law with a Master's Degree in neuroscience plus other advanced skills, it never worked quite right. Safely displayed in the store window, it does not rock back and forth the way the manufacturer intended. It was fun to have the opportunity to play with it, but I'm glad I didn't shell out $99 for that experience.

Ellyn... you're the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem. Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you're the Charlie Browniest.
Or maybe that is a pitfall of working for the Church. You have to split your mind. There is the part of you that should be spiritually attuned. And then the other part that sees Advent/Christmas/Lent/Easter as problems to be solved. Specialty paper to be ordered. Candles to be ordered. Things to be scheduled. Phone calls to be answered.

Working on the outer envelope for our Christmas Schedule/Bulletin I suggested leaving off the lovely script declaiming "O Come Let Us Adore Him" and simply spelling out:
A) Put this bulletin on your refrigerator. Do not lose it.
B) Remember to put your offering in the enclosed envelope and bring it with you sometime before March.
C) Don't lose this Mass schedule. If you do, don't even think of calling us. Really.

On good days work is highly fulfilling. On bad days, it is like a being trapped in a bad reality TV show. (Yeah, the good days are pretty weird, too.) Not that it wouldn't make a funny show. I'd laugh too if I were observing it from home, in my jammies with a bowl of popcorn. What can I say? I get to help the Church. I get paid. That's probably as good as it gets. And how many people get to work with a crowd that could compete with the cast of "The Office" for amusement value. Did I say compete? I might say exceed. There's me, for instance. I certainly have my idiosyncracies. And the woman who, I swear on a DSM-IV and a stack of Merck manuals, has the most raging case of Munchausen's Syndrome that I have ever encountered. And the busy bodies. And eavesdroppers. Discretion keeps me from discussing the 'clientele.' The priests are the heroes. The pour themselves out for the people on a daily basis ... and endure the office staff.

Sixth Grade...
would have been a lot cooler if Ed Bradley had been my teacher.

But we sure were lucky to have his tutelage on the telly for so many years.
(And I always was crazy about his earring. You could sort of gauge the gravitas of an interview by what he wore in his earlobe.) I emailed the sad news to my sister. Who replied that, at least she would never have him follow her down a hallway with a camera crew while she pulled her coat over her head. Even in that, I detected a note of disappointment.

Yes.

I did not vote yesterday. True to my word, and only after debriefing my husband on his electoral experience, I exercised my right to recuse myself from the process in the event that “BITE ME” was not a ballot option. It is unfortunate that election day had to fall on the absolute nadir of my concern as an enfranchised citizen of this country. Yesterday found me not just dispirited but absolutely hostile. The back and forth hissing of negative campaigning had all the maturity of Karen and me on a long distance car trip circa 1965. (“She did.” “She did not.” “She is.” “No, I’m not.”) Too bad these televised exchanges of venom had no cosmic Mom or Dad to yell, “Break it up.” All we could do was hold on till today.

In the year 2006, with the human intellect supposedly at the peak of development and technology at humanity’s service, what we had to observe was the candidates for public offices looking about as classy as Saddam Hussein on trial. Pathetic. And what it all boiled down to was my thinking, “I’d take the trouble to get to our polling place if there was a spot on the ballot marked BITE ME…I LOATHE YOU ALL.”

Rick’s family has a tradition of voting against all incumbents. Just on principal. This never struck me as particularly wise, but not as totally senseless either. Until yesterday, when he said he had voted against any incumbent judges or whatever. That let loose a torrent of bad feelings on my part, since my incumbent sister lost in her primary bid this year and is now looking for a new profession (in all honesty, she was fed up with the law and had already started studying medical transcription…) and a more affordable house. But anyway, the comment was enough to start me ranting about my sister having to downsize and start over, and even her poor little Fred, the miniature wiener dog, will have to go through some disturbing life changes. Not to mention the children.

The first Tuesday in November just happened to be a confluence of bad feelings. Despite my political (in)activity, I am determined to not let my feelings rule my actions. That should make life interesting, since we are heading into, as the song should say, “The Most Affective Time of the Year.” Warm and fuzzy. We all want to be warm and fuzzy. The phones should start ringing soon with parishioners looking for their fix of warm and fuzzy.

Do I know of a soup kitchen where they and their children can help on Thanksgiving Day? You know, so they can learn about love and sharing? Well, no, I don’t off hand.
But I know of a disabled woman, just released from a long term nursing facility, with no resources and no way to get to a food pantry. And she’s too young for Meals on Wheels.
And she doesn’t fall within the parameters of other social service agencies. And the local Catholic social ‘outreach’ people thought she was a little bit too terse – maybe even hostile – to be a recipient of their “luv.” (Which I would be, too, if I had nothing, and no way to get around and was a diabetic with no food and didn’t want to wind up back in the hospital.)

So where were all the warm fuzzies? Does anyone call asking to be put on a list to called upon with an irregular request at an inconvenient time? Not too often. Not since I started working here.

The bureaucracy of love and concern is often as mind numbing as that of government. If someone fell down on the sidewalk and asked for a hand to get up, would I say, “Wait there. I’ll go look for which committee is in charge of that. Or I’ll find some phone numbers that may be of assistance to you?” That is absurd. Unless the person who falls is so heavy you can’t help them. Or so injured that you need the EMTs. Otherwise, just do it.

I found someone who would go to the Jewel and pick up some staples and drive up to Waukegan to drop the food off. Not that she wanted to. It certainly didn’t give her a warm fuzzy feeling to buy food for a stranger. Shopping for a stranger on a day when she would have been hard pressed to work up enthusiasm for doing marketing for her own family. Seeing that the recipient was gracious and grateful didn’t give her a warm fuzzy feeling. That feeling crept up on her much later. But that’s not what mattered. It’s not all about the warm fuzzy, is it?