Irregularity

At the beginning of the year, I made a promise to myself that I would post regularly. My standard for "regular" posts was at least every other day. What I did not factor in to this little deal was my computer being overtaken by a nasty virus. After nearly two weeks of trying to diagnose the problem, I am finally back in business. It seems that computer anti-virus software, of which I was running two at the time my computer was infected, is about as effective as the medical profession at the art of disease prevention and diagnosis. As of this moment, I do believe that we have a clean bill of health. Pray that there is no relapse!

We will now return to regularly scheduled programming . . .see you tomorrow.

I Shouldn't Be Laughing

Like most mailboxes these days, mine is stuffed daily with catalogs offering me everything from English muffins to tractors. Sometimes thumbing through their pages satisfies my desire for retail therapy and at other times it is pure amusement. The latter was the case recently with a catalog that BK brought to show me.

I must first confess that I was looking at this particular catalog early one morning on the way to school after a night of way too little sleep. My ability to be amused is highly enhanced by sleep deprivation. So keep this in mind as you read on. The catalog that I was looking at is one that carries only religious items. I don't think that any one's religious convictions should be the source of fun and ridicule, but when I saw some of the things that are being marketed as symbols of one's faith, I had to laugh. Also, having just led a retreat on simplicity, which focused on freeing our lives from those things that are unnecessary or in the way, I was hard pressed to see how many of the wares in this particular catalog would strengthen my relationship with God.

Here are a few such items:
Saints Trading Cards: I can hear the kids on the playground now.
"I'll trade you my St. Goar (the saint invoked against whirlpools) for your St. Claude (the saint invoked against twitching." Or, "Do you think I need both St. Genesius (patron saint of actors) and St. Alexis (patron saint of beggars? Isn't that a little redundant?" ""I'll give you my St. Rita who is good for tumors and loneliness for your St. Amand, the patron saint of brewers and your Teresa of Avila who is invoked against headaches."

If trading cards aren't your playground entertainment of choice, how about Holy Habits - St. Agnes of the Good Shepherd Paper Dolls. Isn't this kind of a rip off? I thought the point of being a nun and wearing a habit was that you did not have a closet full of clothes. I guess nun paper dolls would answer the question as to what nuns wear under their habits.

Then there is the jewelry section of the catalog . . .
The Miraculous Wrap Rosary Bracelet Is it miraculous because it wraps or because it is a rosary?
How about the Chastity Ring? It is not what you think. Apparently these are rings given to teenagers by their parents (who obviously know what is on the mind of teenagers) as a sign of the teens promise to be chaste until marriage. The idea is that the chastity ring is worn on the ring finger of the left hand until the person gets married at which time it is exchanged for a wedding band. If only the problem could be solved so easily.

How about the ultimate paradox . . .the Memory Rosary Based on the name, you might think that this rosary somehow helps you learn scripture passages or prayers. Nope, this rosary is for people "on the go". Just in case you can't stop long enough to pray the entire rosary, these beads slide and stay put once the prayer on that bead has been said. This rosary keeps you from having to give your undivided attention to your prayers and it keeps you from repeating prayers and wasting precious time that could be spent on other important things like idol worshipping and coveting the goods of thy neighbor. I think this particular rosary is also recommended for those with ADD.

I am always interested in books. Here are a few that made me chuckle.
The ABC's of Choosing a Good Husband and The ABC's of Choosing a Good Wife. (incidentally, there is no discount for buying both.) I don't believe that these manuals come with a satisfaction guaranteed or your money back promise, but if you find yourself married to Mr. or Ms. "ess than Good", you can spend another $13.95 for Annulments and the Catholic Church. Or, perhaps you can find a kid who has a St. Gomer (patron saint of unhappy husbands) or St. Uncumber (patron saint of unhappy wives/

Perhaps all of these things hit me as being funny because we are in the midst of the season of Lent, a time that asks much of us as followers of Christ. And, we are approaching the most holy of weeks. I find myself asking if any of these things mentioned above are truly representative of faith. Also, I have a child who is about to be confirmed and I would like to give her a meaningful gift as a reminder of the commitment she is making. I am not sure what this gift will be, but I have many ideas about what it is not.

Snow Day

The temperatures here today reached 50 degrees and much of yesterday's snowfall is now gone. Here are some pictures taken yesterday. All were taken within steps of my front door. I am blessed to have such beauty so close.

I could not resist a few more dog pictures.

And, my favorite snow day picture . . .

What's For Dinner?

So, they predicted snow for today. A possibility of snowfall late in the afternoon was the last word I heard before leaving the house this morning. When we left,, we were prepared for a snowy afternoon. What we had not planned for was the snow coming barely after noon. BK and I were about 15 miles away from home meeting with the Knitting Fairy about the next issue of Spirit of Knitting. As we finished lunch, it was raining, then it was sleeting, and then it was raining. We were not too concerned about the impending snow until about 12:45 when Erin called and said that they were closing school immediately because of the weather. Since when do they close the schools for rain? Or, freezing rain? We were not too concerned about our ability to get back to Denton to pick up Erin, but we cut our meeting short and headed for home.

The first six or eight miles were no big deal. Then all of the sudden, the roads were covered with snow. It had been 70 degrees on these very roads yesterday when we traveled them about the same time and now they are completely covered in the white stuff. It was like someone had waved a magic wand and said "Let there be snow, and there was snow." From that point on, the driving got more and more treacherous with the last three miles before we got to the high school the absolute worst. This part took us an hour and forty minutes because of numerous accidents along the way and other vehicles, including a Denton school bus, in the ditches along the side of the road. By the time we got to Erin, most of the half dollar-sized snow flakes had stopped falling.

Needless to say, all evening events around town were cancelled. This included Sound of Music rehearsal. So, the quiet night at home that we had hoped for on Monday was now rescheduled for tonight. All I had to do was feed all the animals and then it was jammies, hot coffee, magazines, and TV for me. I didn't even have to worry about what was for dinner because the stroganoff ingredients from Monday night's failed attempt at home cooking were waiting for me. By the time we got home, life was looking pretty good.

Erin and I put on our boots and headed to the pasture to feed the big animals.


Serena, the llama, was first.
"What's this white stuff on my food? I have always heard when they try to cover up your food with what I think is called gravy, you really don't want to eat it. I don't want gravy on my grass. So, if you can't scrape the gravy off, I am not going to eat it. I want sweet feed. I think you humans call it something like oatmeal. However, I don't want gravy, or milk, or whatever the white stuff is that you people put on your grain either. I just want it plain. Is that too much to ask?"

"Thank you for obliging."

The donkeys were next.
"We have reservations for two. And if possible, can we have our meal served on top of the gravy?"

Did I mention we now have two donkeys? This is another of those planning things that didn't quite work out. I introduced Cory a few posts ago. We got him to keep Serena company. About the time he was ready to leave his mother and come to us, the breeder told us of another baby about the same age who also was in need of a home. The neon SUCKER lights were flashing brightly and now we have two donkeys. Meet Petunia our five month old jennet.

After attending to the culinary needs of all of the pasture animals, Erin and I headed back to the house to feed the dogs, the cats, and ourselves.

"Hey Harley, if you dig down under this white stuff, we might be able to find something really good for supper. I'm sure the bird carcass or the turtle shell or a field rat can be found under here somewhere. Several of those things can be pretty dry but with this gravy stuff on them they are a bit moister. Let's see what we can find"

“Okay Adidas, I give up. I can't find anything good. I am going to enlist the help of the human. She is bigger than I am and is not likely to get buried alive. And, I am fairly certain that I will not have to fight her for the good stuff."

“Maybe Serena is right. If you have to hide it under gravy maybe it's not worth eating. Let's just play snowplow. I heard the humans are having stroganoff for dinner. If you can distract them for just a minute, I can pull the pot of the stove. Voila! A hot dinner with no gravy."

This time Adidas' plans were unsuccessful. He and Harley had turkey and rice kibble. The cat, on the other hand, had a few licks from my bowl while I went to answer the phone. When all was said and done, we had nine inches of gravy, I mean snow, at our house. It was beautiful. More importantly, it was enough for DISD to have already cancelled school for tomorrow. No alarm clock in the morning.

Stay tuned for more pictures tomorrow.

What's the Plan?

I am a planner. I like to know what is supposed to happen and I like to have at least some idea what my role is in making it happen. Don’t get me wrong, I can adapt if things don’t go as scheduled as long as there was a plan somewhere. I guess it is like that old adage we were taught in school and that I rely on heavily in my capacity as “awesome mom” (as I was called by the girl’s soccer team this morning), you must know the rules before you can break them. So begins the story of my week.

We are in the midst of soccer season and Sound of Music rehearsals around here. Erin is busy flirting with Rolf and I am frantically gathering boson’s whistles, milk pails, various glasses in which to serve liquor, and other adornments found in an Austrian abbey and the home of Captain von Trapp and his family. Most of this is enjoyable, but, needless to say, time consuming. For some reason, rehearsal was cancelled on Monday night. For the week prior, we fantasized about a night at home – at home to stay by 4:30, a home cooked meal of stroganoff (Erin’s favorite) for dinner, jammies on by 6, mindless TV, wading through the stack of unread New Yorker magazines, maybe some laundry, maybe not, coffee and cookies before bed at 10. The plan was made and ready to be executed.

We did get home by 4:30 and I had the makings for dinner. Just as I was about to start cooking, Erin’s cell phone rang. It was a friend of hers reporting that they were at the mall and had found, in one of those questionable mall kiosks, several cell phones that had been stolen from the girls’ soccer locker room a week or so ago. Erin’s phone, which had already been replaced, was one of the stolen phones. The phone call she received was a teammate saying that the police were at the mall waiting for everyone to come identify their phones and file a report. So, no noodles on to cook and no pajamas. We had to pack up, head back to town, and meet the police. We found what we thought was Erin’s phone, but because of an unfortunate set of circumstances, we could not prove it was hers because we did not have her phone’s ID number. The teeth marks on it were a dead give away, however. By the time this whole ordeal was over, it was nearly 8 o’clock and we were starving. We headed to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. The stroganoff makings are still in the kitchen.

Oh, did I mention that while all of this was going on, Texas was in the midst of a snow storm? It had been close to 70 degrees on Sunday afternoon and 24 hours later a heavy snow was falling. By the time we finally got to bed, at nearly midnight, close to 3 inches of snow blanketed our deck. And though the forecasters swore that it would not stick to the ground because the ground temperatures were too warm, so too was the ground covered in a blanket of white. Fortunately, nothing was sticking or freezing on the roads though they were wet and slippery.

Yesterday was Primary day in Texas. I could have voted early, but because the race is so close, I wanted to experience the polls on the actual day of the primary. We got to our polling location at 10:30. Surprisingly, there was a line, a significant line. Truthfully, I didn’t know there were so many Democrats in Texas! Last week, I had decided that I also wanted to participate in the caucus so we would have to return at 6:30. The rest of the afternoon was given over to cleaning out some kitchen cabinets.

Ay 6:30, I found myself walking up and down the sidewalk holding a Hillary sign and urging other Clinton supporters to stay and vote in the caucus. This part of it was definitely not in the plan. I have strong opinions about politics, but I am not one who normally gets outwardly involved and becomes a cheerleader for the cause. I’m not sure what got into me. Before the night was over, I had been elected (volunteered?) to be a delegate from our precinct to the county convention in a couple of weeks. Neither was this in the plan. In fact, there are two performances of Sound of Music on the day of the county convention. It is time to make a plan that will get everything done on the day.

Right now it seems like the unplanned events in my life have obliterated the planned ones. For example, I was shocked by the fact that it has been over a week since I last posted. here What have I been doing? I was out of town over the weekend on a planned trip. It did go exactly as planned and was a wonderful few days away. The main reason for the trip was to attend the Franciscan Lenten retreat at a convent just outside of San Antonio. I was the facilitator for the retreat. Preparations for this occupied a good bit of my time last week, but not enough to justify me not having made a single post. I still can’t figure this out. What makes this all even funnier is that the topic that I chose for the retreat was “simplicity”. Based on the example of my own life, I seem not to know a damn thing about simplicity.

As part of the retreat discussions, we looked at the many facets of ourselves that coexist daily – the civic self, the social self, the financial self, the professional self, the parental self, the religious self, and the literary self. We were to describe each of these selves as they are manifested in us. As I worked through this process, it became clear to me that right now, the various parts of me are not well integrated. All are functioning, but they are doing so independently of one another. Not accomplishing the daily tasks that I want to do is proof positive of my internal chaotic state.

I realize that I had no control over or responsibility for the plans that did not work out on Monday night, but I do have absolute control over whether or not I write, or knit, or read, or feel good about where I find myself, my whole self, at any given time.

As they say, “timing is everything” and my spring break is next week. I have about ten days of a slightly less rigid schedule to get my priorities straight and get myself back on the track where I want to be. Like I said earlier, I am ready and willing to deal with sudden changes to the plan, but I need to have a plan in place. So as I head into spring, the season of new birth, I will take to heart the message that I shared over the weekend. Get rid of those things that get in the way. Once they are gone, there is room to grow. Hopefully this means more frequent posts here and a little more knitting.

Did I mention that it is supposed to snow again tomorrow?

It's A Boy!

We have a new addition to our four-legged menagerie. Meet Cory, our five month old miniature donkey.
Cory came to us because our llama needed a friend with whom to share the pasture. I'm not sure a donkey is what she had in mind. She seems to be ignoring him right now. The rest of us are doing quite the opposite. Cory is an incredible animal - beautiful, sweet and loving. He wants to be right by our sides. He will let you hug on him and he will give you a donkey hug right back. (A donkey hug involves a huge equine head with its baby soft facial hair resting firmly on your shoulder.) It is an awesome experience. Animals have so much to teach humans about trust and love.

Right now, Cory is the size of a large dog, barely reaching my waist with his head. And, as has been pointed out to me recently by my assignment to the front row in choir, I am not a particularly tall person.

This morning when I went to the pasture to check on him, I called his name from the gate and he responded with a loud "Hee-haw" (Yes, it really does sound like that.) and came running. He behaves better than my dogs!

We did a little work this afternoon with the halter. Though he has not spent much time with the halter, he was perfectly happy to have me put it on him and then walk him around the pasture. I think as long as he is close to people, he will cooperate. And, as long as there are of plenty of hugs, we will all be happy!

A Man And His Hat

Like most knitters, at least the ones I know and like, I have several unfinished projects on the needles. This fact is both exciting, because it means that there is a lot of creativity going on, and frustrating because I don’t like to have unfinished talks staring me in the face. The unfinished project that is most upsetting to me at the moment is the fairisle scarf that I am teaching a class on at our local shop. Tomorrow is our last class and I am not anywhere near done. In my defense, there have been several more pressing things in the last few weeks that I have needed to finish – the current issue of Spirit of Knitting, posters for Fig Theatre, and then there is school, the one thing I do that I actually get paid for. Though I feel bad about my scarf class sample not being done, I have finished a project lately that makes me happy.

I completed a watch cap yesterday. It is nothing fancy – navy blue with a whit stripe in the middle. It contains no snazzy stitch patterns; it is simply a 2x2 rib for a couple of inches and a stockinette body. So what is the big deal?

Several weeks ago the Dallas Handknitters Guild had a booth at a health expo sponsored by a local TV station. The purpose of the event was to educate the public on health issues such as diet and exercise, blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, and other things that contribute to our well being. Knitting happened to fall in to that latter category. As guild representatives, our task was simple, sit for a few hours, knit, answer questions about the craft and the guild, and share our thoughts on the health benefits of knitting.

Much of the population attending the event was Hispanic. I was surprised at the number of Hispanic men who were genuinely interested in knitting though we could not convince any of them to actually pick up the needles and try it for themselves. They offered to bring their wives or daughters back to learn. One man seemed sad when he said that in his culture a man knitting would not be looked upon kindly. What made this even more saddening is that this particular gentleman really wanted and handknit hat. But, he had no one to make it for him.

We had several sample items in the booth that had been made by various guild members. There were a couple of simple watch caps – one was maroon and one was black. The man asked if he could buy one. They were not for sale. He responded by saying that was OK because the ones we had were not really the color he wanted. He wanted navy blue with a white stripe around the middle. I don’t know why I was so taken by this man, but I was. I offered to make him the hat and mail it to him. I figured that he would not give me his information if he were not serious. He was definitely serious. Without hesitation, he gave me his full name, address, and several phone numbers.

Like I said, I finished the hat yesterday and put it in the mail today. He will probably receive it tomorrow, just in time to do him some good during our current brief cold snap. I suspect that he will be surprised to actually get the hat in the mail. Why would someone knit a hat for a stranger just because he wanted one?

It seems funny to me that we will make hats and blankets and booties for “charity”, but most people will not make or give something to a stranger on the street who asks. In the case of the stranger on the street, we have a human face to go with our gift. Most often when we give to charity we have only a face created in our own imaginations through the description of some agency whose job it is to appeal to our pathetic side. Is not the man who feels compelled to ask a perfect stranger to make him a hat, for whatever reason, equally as deserving of our charity?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not so naïve as to hand out money to every panhandler on the street. But, I am fairly certain that you can’t get much in the way of drugs or booze with a blue watch cap. I have to believe that he wanted the cap because he wanted a hat. I hope his head is warmed and maybe his heart a little as well. Making the cap was a simple but pleasurable task for me. Now, back to the fairisle scarf, the socks, Brooke’s sweater, the bear . . .