Saturday Morning

I love Saturday mornings. Especially Saturday mornings that are right in the middle of an eight-day vacation. Otherwise, I'm generally too tired to enjoy them.

This morning almost turned out that that anyway. I was awakened at barely 5am by the Little One who woke up for no good reason:
"Is it morning yet?"
"No, go back to bed."
"I can't, I'm thinking of scary things."
"Well, think about nice things. Like your birthday party. And go back to sleep."

Finally, after much tossing and turning and whispering, "Is it morning now?" she goes back to sleep.

Then the dog starts scratching to go out. It's 5:30am. Then Little One has to pee. She gets up and goes to the bathroom, comes back, "Can we get up now?"

"GO BACK TO SLEEP."

FINALLY, after everyone has had their pee and gone back to sleep, dog wrapped around my feet and small child with various appendages draped over my body, until it must look like some skirmish just mysteriously decided to fall asleep on top of me. Despite the big pile on top of me, I fall back asleep.

7:30 am comes and the dog wakes me up again. Apparently the quick 5am pee was not enough to hold him over any longer. The upside to all this is that after a groggy but proper walk, I am awake alone in the house. Alone to enjoy my tea, toast with soy spread and Inside Washington without familial interruption. Also, I get to work a little bit on the umbilical cord I'm making for a certain new baby.

The family must wake up eventually. Here is our fabulous Saturday wake-up smoothie:

Almond Banana Smoothie (disclaimer: this is not quite as thick as a smoothie, but still very yummy).

• 1 cup ice
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1 banana
• little bit of vanilla extract. I use half a cap-full, but for detail's sake we'll say 1/2 teaspoon

put the above into a blender and blend until there's not great big ice chunks in it and it's frothy. The small child loves it. It's gluten- and dairy- but not taste-free. 

Too Big to Fail

“If you’re too big to fail, you’re too big.”-Richard Fisher, President, Dallas Federal Reserve

When Richard Fisher spoke those words, he was talking about the nation’s bailout of Wall Street and the nation’s largest banks following the crash of 2008. Those words, however, came to me when reading about two child abuse scandals that were in the news this summer: the Sandusky trial and the Philadelphia trial of a Catholic Priest who was convicted of child endangerment. Monsignor William Lynn was not charged with child abuse. Rather, he was convicted of reassigning pedophile priests while saying they were excused for health reasons. Lynn kept a list of 35 suspected pedophile priests that was testimony in the case. He said he kept the list in hopes that the burgeoning problem would be addressed by his superiors. He also admits under testimony that at no time did he go to the authorities with his information. Part of the trial focused on Father Edward Avery, who was accused of molesting a boy in the 1970’s and sent to an archdiocese hospital for priests with sexual and substance abuse problems. When he came off his disability leave, he was placed into a community parish, despite recommendations that he not be around children. Avery later pled guilty to sodomizing a 10 year old boy there.

The Jerry Sandusky trial, for those who spent the summer in Antarctica, reads like a primer on how to molest kids. Sandusky, assistant coach for Penn State, an NCAA football powerhouse, used his position as the founder of non-profit charity to sexually abuse young, at-risk, disadvantaged boys over a 15 year period. Sandusky was convicted on the testimony of 8 brave men who said that Sandusky forced them to have sex in exchange for money and favors. To me, the most alarming testimony of the entire case was when Mike McQuery, then a Penn State graduate assistant, found Sandusky raping a 10 year old boy in the shower. He said at trial that he couldn’t be sure of what he was seeing. Instead of going to the police, he informed his supervisor. An FBI report released this month came to the conclusion that Penn State knowingly allowed this behavior to continue unabated for at least 10 years. The Penn State Administrative Director and its Senior Financial Officer were subsequently charged with failure to report child abuse. Experts say that if Joe Paterno had not died this past winter, he too would be facing charges.

Amazingly to me, now that Penn State’s football program is in danger, people are complaining that it’s unfair that the program is in jeopardy. Let’s be clear folks: if the football program receives a penalty, the fault lies with Sandusky and those who protected him. I love Rutgers football, but I would rather see the stadium razed to the ground then have one 10 year old raped in its showers.

Take away this one thing: in the Catholic sex abuse scandal, in the Sandusky case, NOT ONE PERSON CALLED THE COPS. In large part because the institutions ‘reputations were seen as more important than the need to protect children. They didn’t want a scandal to dirty the name of their religious institution or their favorite sports team. And this is dangerous.   When one person rapes a child, they have damaged a vital portion of that child forever and it is a tragedy. When an institution is complicit in the cover-up and continuation of child abuse, it is a horror beyond imagining. If an institution, a religion, a university, whatever, is too big to abide by the laws of our country, not to mention common decency, then it is too big to exist here. 

I'm meditating. Officially, I mean, although that's an odd way to describe something that should be as organic as breathing. What I mean is that in addition to the few minutes of deep breathing I do before I go to sleep, counting my breaths, I am attending a weekly meditation group. Every Tuesday night at church, a small band of us, usually 3 to 5 people, sit in a candle-lit circle, read a brief illuminating passage  from some inspirational work and then meditate for 20 minutes to a CD of monks chanting "HU".

Hu, apparently, is an age-old name for God. Never heard of it before. Since, I've found it mentioned in two books. Go figure.

I am not really a meditative person. My thoughts tend to scamper around like a puppy on a short leash. Especially when I'm awake and sitting up. It's a lot easier to call my deep breathing exercises "meditation" when it really should be called falling asleep. But I have done at least enough meditation to know that this is normal and I shouldn't freak out about it. I keep pulling on the puppy's leash and try and get her to behave. That was the first week and I did pretty good and it sure seemed like that 20 minutes went really fast. The next day I felt a bit more centered, I have to admit.

The next week went about the same. Meditation runs from 7-7:30pm and when I open my eyes in the middle of it, the setting sun is setting the stained-glass Jesus alight and then the whole window is glowing with reds and blues and greens and that's pretty cool. I start to get antsy at some point but then the leader realizes that the chime has never gone off and we have meditated for 35 minutes.

Week 3 I am very fidgety, which I tend to be anyway-ask my husband. And I've a tickle at the back of my throat which I keep trying to ignore and that only makes me want to clear my throat urgently. Also, everything itches: my foot, my back, my mosquito bite. I also try to ignore these and when that doesn't work, I scratch them as unobtrusively as I can. At the end of the meditation we talk about this, and Awat, who led the group this week, says that when you do meditative practice long enough, this goes away. You should just acknowledge, "my foot is itching" and it will no longer bother you.

Awat is interesting. He's from Nigeria and I've seen him at bible study as well. He always has something good to say and between the content of his words and the way he delivers them, with a rolling cadence, you want to nod your head and go, "yes, that's it exactly" when he speaks. Awat comes to church on Sundays dressed in a shirt and pants in an African print and style. His youngest son, also Awat, looks and dresses just like him, so we have Big and Little Awat. The first week of meditation, Awat shared this story with us. A few years ago, he had a hairline fracture of his femur. He was home with crutches, told not to walk on the leg and he was supposed to go for surgery on a Monday morning. Sunday night, while asleep, he dreamt that his mother, who had passed away, came to him, asking him about the leg and where it hurt. Then he dreamt that his father, who was also dead, came into his room and starting showing him an xray of the leg without any fracture and told him, "Your leg is not broken." Then his mother took her hand and placed it over the area where he told her it was broken. He felt warmth from her hand and saw an orange glow. Then he woke up.

He felt his hip and it was hot to the touch. Gingerly, he got out of bed and stood up. The leg didn't hurt. He walked to the bathroom and his leg didn't hurt. His wife woke up and called to him in the bathroom. He said, "I'm ok." And he cancelled the surgery. His doctor, who did not take to kindly to the surgery being cancelled, called him and asked him what was going on. Awat told him, "my leg is all better." Being a doctor, he wanted some proof, so Awat came back in, first for an xray, then another MRI(he had already had these prior to surgery). Nothing. The tests came back showing that Awat's leg wasn't broken and had never been broken.

A miracle? I tend to believe that the initial tests were wrong, that he never had a broken leg. Maybe they mixed up his films-that does happen. But I'm willing, just a little, to think that there are powers in this world that defy explanation, mostly because people who exist solely on rational thinking give me hives.

Anyway, by the latest meditation effort, I decided that my mind is not an unruly puppy, but more like a small, wayward child. Like a toddler, who wants to go after shiny things, even if that shiny thing is a pair of sharp scissors. So, like a good parent, I gently redirect baby while quickly putting the shiny thing away where it wont distract her. Because, you know, you should be gentle with your brain so that it'll grow up being gentle back to you.

All this meditation has made me pick up Rumi again (who speaks of Hu, even if I hadn't noticed it before now):

Work. Keep digging your well.

Don't think about getting off from work. 

 Water is there somewhere...

 Submit to a daily practice.

Your loyalty to that 

is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside

will eventually open a window

and look out to see who's there.  

 

 

 

 

I'm reading Nabukov, Invitation to a Beheading, which is probably not what I need to be reading. I already feel like the world is contrived and artificial, I don't need help from him.

Like I went to a baby shower yesterday, which seem about as staged as a Catholic mass. Everyone enters, pregnant mom arrives, everyone yells surprise. Greetings continue, then the organized, slightly frantic friend will make various announcements: time to eat, time to play a shower game, time to open presents. Then cake. That was the best part, I think.

It was lovely, really. And kudos to the mom-to-be, who gets to go home with a lot of schwag. (Most of which I think is unnecessary to raising of young, I mean Diaper Genie-whatever). Maybe I'm just jealous that they are doing it "the right way." Get engaged, get married, work and save, buy a modest house and raise your kids, send them to college, retire and die. Which wouldn't even be such a prison sentence if you could at least enjoy it. Mom-to-be is going back to her low paying job almost immediately. But it doesn't matter-lawyers and doctors, cashiers and waitresses, even Anjelina Jolie I suspect, are all on this treadmill going nowhere. So how am I expected to enjoy a baby shower when I can't even find a Meaning For It All.

So, this morning, full of ennui and self loathing, I went to church. I didn't want to. And the service was pretty tame-regular pastors were not in attendance, student preacher preaching. Lackluster song choices, if I may say so, and one that was so hard to sing that we all just mumbled through it. Bitchy of me, I know, but I was in a critical mood. But I did see one old friend who I gravitated toward and she gave me a big hug and I told her I woke up on the wrong side of bed and she said that that's ok, just straighten it out now. And I got a few more hugs from people who genuinely like me. And I saw that the lady I helped last week when she almost passed out from the heat was back in her pew. They didn't have to admit her after all, just gave her a tune up and sent her home. And another parishioner who I saw in the ER this week was ok. And the wife of another good old guy I took care of a few weeks ago told me that he's going home, there's nothing more to be done and he wants to spend his last days sitting in his chair and looking out his window and that it's ok. And it was ok. Because sometimes ok is enough.

So, I got hugs and a reminder that I am both liked and useful, which is not too shabby for a Sunday morning. I like church. I'm still not sure who I'm praying to or what all the details are, but it is a tonic for those things that can't be fixed by either logic or therapy.

I got back home, still a little irritable (really, now, STILL?), wanting to write and getting interrupted a dozen times with "Mommy, can I...?" Just when I thought I would lose my stack, and S could tell, she went and brought me a sticker. Of a dragonfly, because she knows they are a special to me. And we stuck it on my phone so I can have a substantial reminder that I can't always get what I want, but sometimes I get a gentle and loving reminder not to be such a poop head.

Cake Happiness

Yuuuup. I'm retarded.

I can bake a cake, but can I upload the photo correctly? No. I cannot.

Anyhoo, after only minor drama, which involved screaming at my family and a mushroom cloud of powder sugar hovering over my mixer, the cake was made. I wish I was exaggerating. Somehow, to no one's surprise but mine, we made it to mom's surprise birthday party with 2 cakes and all family members accounted for. And she was surprised, which is hard to do with my mother.

Dad and Mom enjoy the cakes

My niece MADE these yummy donuts. Which I also can't load right. CRAP. 

Also fruit salad and G's back up Wesley Fudge Cake. 

Seriously, what is wrong with me?

Wrapping up the school year

10 people read my blog...isn't that neat. I know 3 or 4 of them, I think. And I don't even pay them. Interestingly, 1 is from Canadia, 1 from Pakistan and 1 from Indonesia! Welcome, ya'all.

We have been lazily finishing up first grade at home. I finally found a homeschool group, now that they are also finishing up the school year, but they have some activities over the summer, so it'll be nice to get to know them. We went to a play group last week and I really like them. G says I should, cause they're flaky. Whatever.

S and I did some projects. Last week with Venus in transit, which we did not see a. cause it was cloudy and b. cause we didn't send away for special viewing glasses, gave us a reason to talk about how the earth goes around the sun, etc. From a neat book that Aunt Chris gave us, that's ancient (from the 80's), we learned how to make sun dials, so we made two:

the top one is your classic, horizontal dial and the bottom is the same concept, but with a little, bitty bead that casts a shadow.

Here is a neat page about sundials, from down under New Zealand, keep in mind when following the instructions.

S and her dad also started a garden. Our church's community garden had some room, so we took them up on their offer to use the space. They are keeping a journal of their activities. S worked hard, including turning the earth and staking our squares and deciding what was going to go where.

done tilling and weeding

boundary is marked off. with tiki torches, cause we're awesome!

someone has a bucket of tadpoles, so we took a picture. 

 S also finished up with her singing and dance classes AND there was Ag field day AND we took trips to the museum AND....we've been busy. More pics to come.

AND we won tix to see Cirque du Soleil in NYC! So we got dressed up all fancy and went to see a show in the big, big city like we are fancy people. Cause we are. 

Let them eat cake! (and fruit salad)

Next week is our Matriarch's 75th birthday. So we're having a surprise birthday party for my mom at my sister's house today (shhh, don't tell. Actually, this page would take 75 years to load on her computer).

I agreed to make a cake. A rainbow cake! Before he brings it up in the comments, rainbow cake was my husband's idea. I was gonna go with chocolate. Since I agreed to rainbow, he's going to make a chocolate backup in case the rainbow cake fails. Cause that's how he rolls. Also, cause he's nuts.

Now, there's two kinds of rainbow cake circulating the webs. The hippy, dippy, tie-dye version:

whoa, man, it's like cake

Or the more OCD, Martha Stewart approved version:

It is cake. Ja. 

I went with version deux. Cause that's how I roll, yo'. 

The first part is basically make some cake. I suppose you could use cake mix, but our house does. not. Then you have to divide 5 1/2 cups of cake mix into 6 parts. Like I can do maths and stuff. That's why we have programmable IV pumps, but I digress. After that, it's easy-peasy, just color them six rainbow colors, remembering ROY G BIV : red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Crap, that's 7. But if you notice, even Martha Stewart combines indigo and violet to make purple. And if it's good enough for Martha, etc. 

Then S starts singing the Cat in the Hat rainbow song. "red, orange, yellow. green, followed by blue! Indigo and violet, that's a rainbow song for you!" Listen, I say, we're combining indigo and violet. We're just making purple. "But mom! The song!"

Shut up, cat. 

Anyhoo. Here's some cake....

first 4 layers, check. Now I just need blue, indigo and violet-DOH!

For those not eating cake (?!), there's fruit salad, a la Alton, who is a minor deity in our house. 

I know they sell those little grasper thingies to take the core out of the strawberry. I do not have one. So it's either cut straight across or make a fancy, V-incision. Don't judge me.

fruit labels. The bane of my existence.

Lots of cut up fruit on the right, lots of compost on the left and that weird thing in the middle is a mango slicer, much more useful than you'd think and since it works on peaches, nectarines, et al, NOT a uni-tasker. 

Gotta go make frosting. More pics to follow.