Sin of envy....
A truly amazing child. Not that my own children don’t have their charms...but this boy is like my fantasy child. And to say that says something not so good...about me, not him.
Via Fr. Stephanos

Does your mother like chickens?
Murray McMurray Hatchery has everything she might like for Mother’s Day.
If Dad has issued an edict against peacocks – or little chicks – they do have beautiful prints. This is not a hint to my family. You all should know that there is no place left to hang a beautiful chicken print… There is always live fowl. Or pesticides and disinfectants. Or maybe a little something from Crabtree and Evelyn, perhaps. A little lily of the valley? (Ixnay on the odybay utterbay. Oundsay icksay. At least to people born in Wisconsin.) To digress completely, wasn’t India Hicks one of the little flower girls in Princess Di’s wedding? And what is her name doing all over the Crabtree and Evelyn website? I guess she’s grown-up now.

Fine Art Friday
Let’s end another less than fabulous April - i.e. Shakespeare month (which, dear students, has been extended into May due to circumstances beyond our control) with one of my favorite pre-Raphaelite works.

Ophelia 1851-52
by John Everett Millais 1829-1896


I love the close-up. And the exquisite Lizzie Siddall really suffered for Millais’ art - soaking in water while posing.

Re: Sheryl Crow...
and the toilet paper business. I’ve been ranting about toilet paper waste for so long (though for totally different reasons) that all I can do is laugh. So that is all I have to say on the subject. Except, why didn’t she start by encouraging young people to stop T-P-ing houses to celebrate major life and sports events? That would save some TP for the rest of us. For the intended purpose.

All those who sat in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him and saw that his face was like the face of an angel. “This is not what was meant.” That was what hit me when I listened to the reading from Acts at Mass on Monday morning. To anyone whose image of what is angelic has been formed by kitschy art and pop culture the thought of stoning someone with the face of an angel doesn’t make sense. Who would hurt a guy with the harmless face of a pale, overfed Rococo putto, right? I think the term “face of an angel” means something much more awesome. Scary in fact. (Not that I wouldn’t be scared if a Precious Moments angel appeared to me. But it wouldn’t be reverent fear. And yes, I seen quite a few Precious Moments angels that I wouldn’t mind dropping a stone on. I like cute as much as the next person...perhaps too much. I even own a SnowBaby. But SnowBabies don’t risk polluting or diluting one’s spiritual life.)

The crux here is that Stephen meant business. Christ’s business. God’s business. And something is lost when the picture that comes to mind is bug-eyed progeny of leprechauns and tooth fairies. Or Della Reese, for that matter.

Thanks to St. Expedite for Favors Received...Six Days Late
April 19th did not go unnoticed. It is hard to believe that a year has passed since I had my gammy hip replaced, after several years of procrastination. Yes, it’s all been quite successful...I’ve been too busy running around to mark the anniversary. But, of course, that is what a decent is hip is for.

Hallelujah -
then WTF?
While I am working I need a little mental stretch from time to time. The internet provides some nice one minute breaks. And I do try to keep my web reading (at least tangentially) work related. So there was cause for rejoicing in reading about the Supreme Court upholding the partila birth abortion ban.

Then the WTF moment came later. Searching for an article, I came to the U.S. Catholic website. Couldn’t find what I was looking for, but I did get quite a jolt from their “Quick Poll”:
If the church offered short-term service for the priesthood:

*I would seriously consider becoming a priest

*It would not affect my interest or calling

*I can't become a priest because I'm a woman

What the? It would seem by implication that this would a feasible option. Which makes U.S. Catholic look even loopier than usual. So there were no write-in answers. No places for “Whose idea was this?” “This is a joke, right”? “Is this The Onion?” or “I want to be a princess and live in a pink castle made out of jelly beans.”

“better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”
I think what we are seeing in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy is the price of freedom. We now have a mental health system modeled on this premise and it does not appear to be working well. I doubt if I am the only person who has known at least one seriously mentally ill person who could have benefited from some forced “help,” help that they never received because they could not be convinced of their problems and they had not yet met the standards of being an imminent danger to themselves and others.

The time may have come when we may need to think it ‘better that one or two people get help they don’t need than that ten dangerously ill people walk around like ticking time bombs.’

The immediate pleas for tighter gun control sound a lot like Sleeping Beauty’s plot to destroy all the spinning wheels. We might minimize gun related tragedies, but those who are delusional and dangerous will find other weapons. (Have we already forgotten Andrea Yates? She didn’t use a gun. And no one is suggesting we ban bathing young children. My sister [the lawyer] once defended a woman who killed someone with a cast iron frying pan. No one suggested banishing frying pans.) I know that guns are dangerous. That is why we chose not to have any in our home - at least at this point. But having grown up in a family where guns were appreciated and respected I do tend to see them as neutral instruments when handled correctly.

We can talk a lot about mental health awareness. But when the very sickest of our society are unable to self-diagnose and aren’t treated until very near or after the fact of tragedy, that is an abomination.

Don't hold hands and sing bad pop songs.
Kathy Shaidle’s superb commentary on grieving the lives lost at Virginia Tech.

Don't make America look stupid and shallow to the whole world by Disneyfying your grief.

I would also add that this is not a good time to try to take the mystery of evil and encapsulate it as whatever issue one wishes to flog at the moment ie. video games - NRA - ACLU - bad parenting - smother-mothering – bottle feeding – attachment parenting – food additives – Quentin Tarantino - public schooling - Rupert Murdoch - MTV – Democrats – Republicans – global warming - fluoride in the drinking water…whatever. It’s just not that simple….

The Odor of Sanctity is Not for Sale.
You know, you have to get it the old fashioned way - you have to earn it. Today I read about a new perfume that is supposed to help one get in touch with one’s spiritual side. Sounds like it has quite a top-note of snakeoil about it. And for $80? Whoa.

Would be better and cheaper to pray for true sanctity. And as a fall-back measure, I would endorse Tea Rose by the Perfumer’s Workshop as much cheaper and quite efficacious. Someone told me I smelled like Padre Pio’s glove. I’m sure she meant it as a compliment.

Goodbye Blue Monday
or
God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut
One of my highschool teachers was a big Vonnegut fan and I caught his enthusiasm. I read just about everything Vonnegut wrote (I bought most of his work. I highly suspect these books are in my sister’s possession)

The splendidly puerile Breakfast of Champions is one of the greatest works of twentieth century fiction. Really. (Don’t ever watch the movie. Trust me.) I still read Breakfast from time to time - it still makes me laugh. I’ve neglected the rest of Vonnegut’s work for a long time. And I got off the Vonnegut jag before I was tempted to name one of my boys Kilgore Trout.

Has OneMillionMoms jumped the shark?
That's right. Burger King is senselessly using adult nudity to promotes its kid's toys!

During the NCAA Championship game, Burger King's ad featured a dad taking a bubble bath in a family room. After the kids run through talking about Burger King's new Spongebob Squarepants toy, he places a sponge on his head and stands up in front of his wife, asking her to guess who he is.

After she gives an lingering stare at his private parts (covered in soap suds), he proclaims to be "Spongebob, No pants." Naturally, the dad is portrayed as a buffoon.

Not so funny as to be memorable, but not especially shocking to me. I thought the dad was bathing in a big bathroom with people running in and out, not a family room. At one time a feasible scenario in our house. Perhaps below the modesty standards of some people but A)it appeared to be a gen-u-ine nuclear American family B) the parents were heterosexual and married to each other. C) the dad wasn’t dumb enough to stand up when the kids were in the room D) the last I heard, wives were allowed a lingering (or more) stare at their husbands’ private parts when the children are out of the room E)we can take the occasional luxury of acting like a buffoon in our own homes.

Not terribly funny, but not the sort of thing to motivate me to take part in a campaign of indignation. I know when I’m offended. There’s nothing like dozing off watching cartoons with your son to be awakend by Trojan Man on your TV screen. Or having ads for movies like Saw turn up during a family entertainment. And what about the bimbos nattering on about how “Yaz” is the miracle pill that changed there lives?

I fear if we mount a massive campaign for every thing that we think is a wee bit off (and why didn’t Rev. Wildmon mention the rumors that SpongeBob is really gay, too?) no one will listen at all.

Time to run Dad’s Mr. Bubble.

I end up being horribly embarrassed. We end up in a big fight and we come home more miserable than when we left. You have to promise me that this isn't going to happen this time.
I wasn’t sure what to say about our Members’ Nite at the Field Museum. It was a good experience, but it defied description...until I was watching The Simpsons the other night. The above quote is from Marge in the episode in which the family plans a trip to Itchy and Scratchy Land. That about says it all.

Not that it wasn’t a worthwhile time. Just not the time I had envisioned. And I had been envisioning this for about a year, since I saw a news feature showing excited families tramping through the taxidermy rooms at the Field. For starters, I was far more psyched than the rest of my party. One of the boys really, really didn’t want to go. (This was not the same boy who once had a melt-down out of fear of being locked in the museum, so you could say we are making progress.) I had planned this for them and I sensed they were going to make me happy. And the evening went well once we achieved a certain happiness/suffering equilibrium.

The areas that I thought would be the most fascinating for the boys left them with feelings of claustrophobia and a generalized dread. Familial fear of elevators led to an exaccerbation of Dad’s achy knee. (Coming down from the 4+ floor staff area felt like a descent into the Paris Metro - one flight of stairs after another. The alternative - a ride in a freight elevator - was too horrible, even by my standards.)

My favorite thing was the bug room (Embot says she’ll take me back there again when her friend the entomologist unveils the wasp that he is naming for her.) I’m not too crazy about insects, but they looked exquisitely gemlike when mounted in cases. There were live bugs, too. I decided to face my fears and held the tarantula. It was friendly, non-threatening and as velvety as Eddie’s head right after I buzz him. My sister had a tarantula about thirty years ago and the most interaction I had with it was to constantly check to make sure it was still in its tank. The big millipede would have been interesting to touch, too, but there was too much of a crowd.

Watching the ‘replication’ department work on a diorama was like something out of A Night in the Museum...just without Owen Wilson. I could have stayed there much longer,but I had broken the number one field trip rule (Wandered off!) and needed to find my group.

Too bad we didn’t bring a camera. It would have been nice to have my picture taken standing in front of the Ellen Smith Memorial Hall of Birds. Easily the most boring part of the tour, Mrs. Smith’s memorial is a huge room of padlocked lockers for dead birds. But there is always that cheap thrill of seeing one’s name above the entrance to a room (even if the spelling is a bit off).

It would have been easier to keep track of everyone if we had worn our official orange shirts. I failed to think of this unitl I ran across the family in the lime green shirts. Highly visible. I kept finding the ‘limes’ but my own group evaded me. No one was lost for long. Another plus to our evening. Along with no fainting, swooning, panicking or dangerously excessive profuse perspiration.

A good time nonetheless. Educational, too, I’m sure. And when we had worn out our energy (physical and psychic) it was time to head back to the car. And not a moment too soon. I was so exhausted from the effort of staying calm and educational that I attempted to insert a BlockBuster gift card into the machine that processes parking tickets. Many thanks to the people at the machine next to me for not laughing. Too much.

Yesterday’s mail brought a most tempting membership invitation from the Museum of Science and Industry. I’ll think about it. Andyou have to promise me that this isn't going to happen this time.

Finally!
The auspicious day has arrived.
I have scored 100% on the mental_floss daily quiz.
Just what my sagging self-esteem needed.
(To paraphrase my late father, "That and $3 will get you a cup of coffee..")

Deja vuTube on YouTube
It’s like these guys have made a little documentary about us. I’d like to see what they could do with fifteen people posing for an Easter picture. (Which was skipped this year for some reason...was it the flurries?)

Si on avait besoin d'une cinquième saison..
I think we’d have to call it chilly Easter. Or something.

It didn’t take too long into Lent before I regretted my giving up of non-essential music. (Briefly described, any music that is pleasurable, non-liturgical, not for work-outs, non-accidental and/or not totally outside of my control. That means I wouldn’t think of attempting to ask music to be turned off in a public venue. But I wouldn’t linger too long in the produce aisle at Dominicks’ because, for example, I couldn’t tear myself away from the Beach Boys’ Help Me Rhonda. Likewise, I would graciously endure music that ordinarily makes my nerves raw, such as that ‘cool jazz’ station of which my husband is so fond.)

I thought this Lent would be ‘easier.’ Last year I was anticipating surgery three days after Easter, so Lent was filled with prayer of greater depth and more time of reflection. The self-imposed quasi-silence was efficacious, though there were low moments when I wondered if I were facing death without one last run through the Beatles’ entire oeuvre. As if everything would have been much better if I had spent March and half of April in the fetal position, getting out of bed only to switch from Sgt Pepper to White Album to Abbey Road.

As a whole, it was easier to bear pain and dread than to, as this year, just offer up the general tedium and sense of blah-ness. But if this year was meant to be blah, I would accept it. Perhaps this was the best possible time to be faced with a degree of spiritual dryness, since I couldn’t try to out-run it, avoid it or ‘self-medicate’ it away with copious doses of Springsteen and Stones. Or even find a brief respite by letting my brain glaze over while watching VH1 at 6:30 in the morning.

Back to the above album. A bit of Quebecois rock from the 1970’s. I never really owned it, just a cassette made from a friend’s vinyl. In the past decade the cassette disappeared - as well as the availabilty of cassette players. I was looking around Amazon.com before Christmas and actually found a CD of Les Cinq Saisons for the outrageous price of $49.95. I liked that album a lot, but not $50 worth.

Then, not long after Christmas, I was ordering some school related stuff for the boys on Amazon and gave the CD another look. Now they had some copies available for $19.95. Still a lot, but considering the free shipping we were getting for the school stuff, I bit. The books arrived within days, but the CD delivery date was pushed back multiple times. I acquiesced to the last order update, even though the projected delivery date was May 25. At that point it was late Lent, so why would I be in a hurry to receive a CD I couldn’t listen to.
By Holy Saturday, it was so out of my mind that when a small Amazon package arrived in the mail I assumed it was for someone else in the house. But it was for me.

What a lovely way to break the ‘music’ fast - drifting off to sleep to tunes I hadn’t heard in years. I would call it a nice ending to a less than perfect day. Detachment from my perfectionist fantasies is a slow process. And I tend to focus on the negative rather than the positive. The coordination of family members who wanted to dye eggs but couldn’t agree on a time did not leave me as dismayed as it has in previous years. The grim look on the boys’ faces during the Vigil Mass annoyed me but didn’t drag me down into despair. (There was the consolation that we were there. And that they didn’t set themselves or any fellow parishioners on fire.)

Joyous Easter!!!

Big Night!
This is going to be exciting. Members' night at the Field Museum. Behind the scenes stuff etc. Not to be confused with their Dozin' with the Dinos sleepover. Some members of my family have had panic attacks about accidentally being locked in a museum, so I think we made great strides just by being able to enjoy that Night at the Muuseum movie.

Wish this didn't have to be during Holy Week, but at least there were two nights scheduled. And I wasn't even looking at the dates when I r.s.v.p.'d, just thinking days of the week. Lucky thing I said Wednesday rather than Thursday. Or I would have been back on the phone with some changing to do.

The Big I
Note to Embot: I finally put the St. Is logo on the sidebar, but it is sooo big.
Can you make it smaller? Pretty please?

It’s April 4th
Time for shameless self promotion. Not really self, but it is in the family.


The St. Isidore Foundation
Dedicated to the Environmentally and Socially Responsible Recovery, Renovation, and Recycling of Computers
and Related Electronic Equipment

Painting of St. Isidore used by permission of Matthew Brooks.

Baby's Poor Response to Name Might Warn of Autism
This isn’t funny. God knows it isn’t funny.
But I’m laughing anyway. I saw some of the research video on the TV yesterday. It looked so…familiar. Oh, well, it’s way too late for early intervention here.
Onward…

More on Chocolate Jesus
It is being stored in an undisclosed secure location. Refrigerated. No respect for Jesus (Naked in chocolate). No respect for chocolate. (refrigerated!)

I am reminded of the year that my sister decorated anatomically correct gingerbread men. That was when I had decided that the anatomically correct, emotionally volatile food assemblage was the desperate stunt of the petulant and puerile adolescent begging for attention. Luckily for my sister, she received neither acclaim nor satisfying public derision. She saw there was no future in alienating the family with displays of vulgarity. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the world is filled with people who are eager to enable this fellow with his confectionary tantrum. Wen can always hope that something goes awry with the refrigerated truck and he is left with a huge pool of chocolate.

Some of the palms...
at our parish looked like they had mold or some sort of fungus. Maybe I'm paranoid. Nobody complained so I think everything is OK. (This is one of the downsides of working in a church. The times that should be the holiest and most prayerful are also those which I now view as a "problem to be solved.")
Palm Sunday was OK. I made all the two-sided song sheets for the gym and auditorium Masses without the copier breaking down or catching fire. (it was smelling a little hot there at the end...) More details followed up on.

I should make more preparations for home. We're not putting up the ceramic bunny village for the same reason we didn't do the Christmas village. Rick's foundation has not found a new warehouse and we are warehousing a lot of computer stuff in our living room and family room. I'm lucky to get close to the hutch at all, let alone polish it up and put around little bunny houses and paper grass. When this gets me down, I remember to think of one of the moms I saw on Trading Spouses or some show of that ilk. This mom's new family made a living bottling deer urine as a hunting attractant. Every time I trip on computer components, all I have to do is say, "It could be deer urine." There was the moment earlier today when Scrappy appeared to have marked his territory on a tower. No one else was particularly concerned, since it had a Post-It on it that said, "DOESN'T WORK." But "DOESN'T WORK" isn't the same as wiz on me. And for all its beautiful fragrance, the Crabtree & Evelyn Spring Rain room spray that Bridget gave me for Christmas is not a lot of help. As the label says, "Lightly mist the air to enhance your home environment." What would be more helpful would be some of the heavy duty cleaners that were highlighted in my weekly email from the McMurray Hatchery. Reading that email made my somewhat more disinclined to fight for my right to poultry. If next week's shows chickens instead of fly paper and disinfectant, it will be chicken love all over again.

I'm wondering if the former Miss Illinois didn't make it on The Bachelor. I think I hear the sound of inebriated Schaddenfreude eminating across the yard. These are the moments when I really miss the 'unnecessary' music that I gave up for Lent. And, though I do have my C&E vaporisateur d'ambiance close at hand, I would prefer to keep the window open. There must be a lingering Scrappy spot somewhere upstairs, and I may get the vapors if I close the window.

Well, I'll be darned...
I thought the girls were kidding me when they said that a local girl - who, in fact, dated one of the guys next door - is on the new The Bachelor show. I tried watching but the girls all look alike. Oh, well, I'm sure someone will keep me posted. (Plus The Bachelor was counter-programmed against the final episode of Six Feet Under. I saw it last week, too. But it was worth watching again.)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...
April has arrived. Shakespeare month is here. We will make the best of it, having already warned our school’s other teacher that sedition is not the way to my heart.
We will study Shakespeare.
We will make this a fruitful experience.
If we don’t enjoy it, well, we’ll just have to be a model of gracious faking-it.

Things are hopping around here. Though I do know that the best Easter basket goodies are not found by running to an 24-hour Jewel on the way home from the Easter vigil Mass, I have not lived up to my resolution to have all the peripheral preparations done early so that I could have a more meditative Holy Week. I fear work, too, will be filled with last minute details to address, so that I’ll be even less inclined to run to Target to shop afterwards.

Taking things a step at a time...we made it through Palm Sunday. We made it to church on time, though had to leave Eddie behind because he was having a bit of a panic attack. TImeliness was essential because I was one of the lectors. Having done this before, I assumed everything would be smooth. Then I get to the sacristy and find out I am lector #2 - and that lector #2 is expected to wear a lavalier mic. No problem. Except that there was no place on my person to put the transmitter box. No place accesible. (What can I say? The lectors are coordinated and scheduled by volunteers. Male volunteers who always have pockets, belts etc and most likely everybody else has them, too. Oh, well. Fool me once... Or it might be nice if we didn’t have to do this as sort of a “choral” reading/radio play minus sound effects.