Journaling the day again! (I guess I lied!)

 Woke up way too early to cat scratching at my bedroom door at 4 a.m.  S must have let him in when he got back from girlfriend's at some point in the night.  Grrr.  Put cat out and tried to go back to sleep, gave up at about 5.

Coffee, fed cat, sat and thought.  Wrote up a new year's plan for organizing the house with adult children in it.  Tidied kitchen a bit.

V came upstairs.  She has old snowpants and boots from D that might fit L.  It is supposed to snow tomorrow!

Read some Winter Holiday - almost finished.  Hope to finish today and make booktube video.

Somehow need to go to 2 stores today.  Can I recruit one of my sons to run to one of them?  What to have for dinner?  No idea, don't feel cooking today.

D came up.  Gave him some eggnog.  He played on switch for a bit.  Says he wants to keep reading The Enormous Egg.  I read him a couple of pages.  He keeps saying that an egg can only hatch what its mother was!  He's not buying the premise of the book that a chicken can hatch out a dinosaur!

V left for work.  It is nice that she is getting D up, bathing him and getting him dressed in the am.

Made breakfast for R.

D not hungry yet.  He's been playing a lot with his stuffed Pokemon plushies and making up games with marbles.

Did Advent calendar.  He's still kind of upset about the Angelfish.

Did regular calendar with him.  He played some more.

The neat thing is I just have to put out his printing workbook and when he sees it he just sits down and does the page!  My kids were never like this!  

Had to wash our Christmas cookie cutters.  Activity for this morning is making playdough Christmas cookies.

D is playing so nicely this a.m.  Played a lot with playdoh, did lots of counting, built a city out of lego.  He designed it so the ocean was on one side and he had a lot of fun building a sea wall to keep it from flooding his city.  

Couldn't get him to eat breakfast so early lunch with a leftover cheeseburger from Sunday night's dinner  

11:00 Beatrix Potter storytime from Outschool.  Cutest thing ever.  The teacher read Mrs. Tittlemouse out loud.  D really enjoys this every Tuesday.  Starting in the new year though we are switching to a French class at 10:50 a.m. for him, also through Outschool.

After story,time, I forced D to go outside.  He resisted but I said just 15 minutes outside.  We wound up staying out 45 minutes.  It was cold. He was having fun playing by the stream and watching sticks float down the stream.  But he got his hands wet in the cold water and couldn't take it after a while.

Came in.  I made him and R hot chocolate.  D played on Switch again, Pokemon.  It's been a much better morning than yesterday.  Now it's 12:30.

Now he's made me help line all his stuffed animals on the couch and is leading them as a choir leader!

Lost control of things. Sean was watching him while I tried to make a booktube video but that took longer than I expected.  Then I took a shower.  D watched Moana (sp?) with S and then starting watching Pokemon tv.

4:30 Another Outschool zoom class. This is a winter camp (just 4 classes in December) for learning French.  Next year we are going to drop the Beatrix Potter (she's going to run out stories soon!)  And have another ongoing French class every Tuesday at 10:50 a.m.  D enjoyed it.

After that he immediately wanted to go back to watching Pokemon but I then I remembered that we had planned to clean up the living room to make it ready for a Christmas tree.  He was excited to help!  We tidied and then he held the dustpan while I swept.  We rearranged the furniture a bit too to make room.  Not sure when we'll get our tree but probably soon.  So that was a nice shared chore time.  I am trying to get him to do a couple of chores a day with me. With one child and so many grown ups, people do everything for him.  So it is good for him to learn to help out and that he is capable of helping.

After cleaning the living room he sort of wandered around and then wound up going up to J and playing video games there.  Sigh.

I did not plan anything for dinner.  Everyone ate meals at weird times today.  V is probably working late, S went to babysit L while H and P go see It's a Wonderful Life.  R isn't hungry - the lunch he got didn't agree with him.  So it is just me, D, B in quarantine and J for dinner.  One of my neighbors is cooking curry.  I went out to put the chickens to bed and it smells heavenly.  Can't I just go over and invite myself to dinner there????

J ordered Thai food.  I'm done.  I have been up since 4.  

Remembered to light candles again!  Yay me!

Ate late, said prayers, R was just putting D to bed when V came home.

My last post? Journaling the day

 I think I am going to abandon this blog.  Sob!  I've been at blogging for a long time, off and on, over the years but I just don't feel the impulse very much anymore.  I am enjoying my booktube channel.  I like posting photos on Instagram.  I am trying to cut back on facebook but I am involved in a couple of groups there that are still relevant to me.  I really only use this blog to keep track of my book reading but I could do that more efficiently I think if I really took my goodreads account more seriously.  

But I thought I'd journal this day.  It is December 14, 2020, a gloomy, rainy, chilly Monday.

Woke about 5:30, coffee, fed cat, sat and thought

Read some Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome

Cleaned kitchen some - mostly loading dishwasher, tidying, wiping down counters and table

Watched a little youtube, checked out facebook

V went to work

D came up (already dressed) and played on switch, made him some vanilla milk

Moved laundry, put on load of dish towels and napkins

Got dressed

Did Advent calendar with D.  It was a slow rainy morning so I didn't feel like rushing him off the Switch.

Made french toast and sausage for R and any other family members who wanted it.  No one was up though but D and I.

Read next chapter of The Enormous Egg while he nibbled some cheese.  He's not very engaged by the book though.  Might DNF it.

Did our regular calendar (wooden board with date, day, time and weather)

D carried down a pile of his clean laundry to put on his bed.

D started playing with legos but left them all scattered everywhere.  Lots of mishaps and accidents this a.m.  Must be the rainy day.

B is home from visiting A and is self-quarantining except D went in and chatted with her for a bit.  Sheesh.  Brought B up some breakfast.

Read or rather since it was in French, retold The Red Balloon while looking at photos in book.  Read Frog and Toad All Year, got interrupted because R came down with news that angel fish had died.  Very gross.  Eel was feasting off its eye.  Really impressed D.  We ceremoniously took it out (in the rain) and dumped it in the garden where it can decompose into the soil.

Got out wikkisticks and spelled the word fish in honor of the dead angelfish.

D hung out with S while I tended the chickens (late) and ran to the library.  Man, I have not had a solo trip to the library in forever!  Felt good but a little nervewracking too b/c of covid.  I went to look for cozy mysteries for the booktube Cloak and Dagger Christmas reading challenge.  I was able to get a bunch to choose from.

Came home and showered while at this time J played video games with D.  J is off this week from work because he had too many hours to roll over into 2021.  S had his piano jury this a.m.  I think he has one more exam or end of year thing before his semester is officially over.  B's semester ended last Friday and then she went to Phila for a weekend and is now quarantining just to be on the safe side.  

Came down and resumed D responsibilities again.  He's watching kids tv now.  

Heating and A/C guy arrived.  Hope he hurries.  It stopped raining and I was hoping to take some packages accidentally left with us to the proper address a couple of blocks up.  Before the sun goes down which is early these days.  Hurry up service guy!

Cleaned kitchen some more.  It is always dirty.  I never get it 100% clean - more like 40 to 80%.  

Realized J was home so I asked him to watch for the service guy and D and I took our two block walk to return the packages.  It was good to get out even though cold and raw.

Service guy left.  Humidifier is finally running.  The dry air was wreaking havoc on my sinuses.  

J and S are once again playing video games up in his room.  I need to start dinner in about 10 minutes.

Wow, the wind is really picking up!  Glad we took our walk when we did!

D is back down this time watching Pokeman.  Sigh, he gets too much screen.

Making meat loaf, roasted potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes.  I don't think I have ever cooked them before.  I might have eaten them.  Just roasting in oven with onion, garlic salt and olive oil

Have quick google meets meeting with sisters and Eileen to see how she is doing.  Then have 7 o'clock meeting (zoom) for hypothermia shelter.  Might be able to eat between those 2 things!

Lit both Advent candles and Hanukkah menorah.  Pretty proud that I've been 90% consistent in remembering to do these things!

Had meeting with E.  Ate - discovered that I do not like Jerusalem artichokes!

Looonggg meeting about hypothermia shelter.  didn't end until almost 8:30.  

R instead of doing something else with D sat and watched UP with him.  Sigh.  The kid was in front of a screen of some sort for maybe 7 hours today.  We were bad before about this but an only child during covid in the winter is miserable.  

Said prayers.  Cleaned up a bit.  Forgot to give B dinner so gave her food up in her room.  She is already hating this quarantine business.  

Went to bed very early.  So glad house humidifier is now working!

My Response to Pope Francis' Statements in New Documentary

1)      First off, the whole phrasing of “ God made me gay” and “gays have the right to be in a family sounds so bogus and is such facile theology I find myself really doubting this story.  , I really doubt the Pope who has written beautifully profound things like Laudato Si’ or, the one who gave us the beautiful homily of hope in the midst of soaring death rates in the rainy dark and empty St. Peter’s piazza,  would say such cheap sound bite things which show such a lack of understanding.  I think these are taken out of context and filtered through the documentary maker’s own all consuming world view on this issue.  I highly suspect him of propagandizing for his fetish cause.  Also, I can’t hear or understand the statements myself because I don’t speak Spanish, so I can’t tell you exactly what he said.  I don’t know how he edited things.  I have to rely on interpreters.  So that gives me another layer of questioning the actual statements.

2)      We’ve already heard from this guy (sorry too lazy to look up his name!) last year.  This is the same interview but now since it’s in a documentary it is ‘news’ again.  We’ve already been through this, though.  Are we going to repeat this one interview and a couple of sentences somehow every year and act aghast all over again?  Which brings me to the next point.  We are gullibly at the mercy of cynical and exploitative forces in the media.

3)      The media knows that anything controversial is clickbait and means money to them.  Therefore their primary purpose is to stir up controversy. (Not that they don’t do good at times but you definitely have to sift the wheat from the chaff these days when it comes to trustworthy objective reporting of news).  They also have an agenda of undermining Pope Francis and the Catholic Church.  This is easy to do since the church has been dealing with corruption at high levels, all kinds of sordid sin and is full of sinners, including the pope, who often say foolish things or don’t exercise the prudence they ought to.  We are such an easy target.  And we are money for these folks.  Bad combination.

4)      The media works to divide us and we now are living in silos where we demonize the other side unthinkingly.   We are conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs to salivate and growl at every stimulus they’ve trained us to respond to.  Don’t be a Pavlovian dog!  Instead pray for the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  Exercise patience, self-control, kindness, humility especially when talking about the Holy Father. And do not spread untruths, gossip, scandal, detraction over the internet.  Do not post when you are upset.  Make that an absolute rule.  Practice self-sacrifice by not indulging in keyboard rage.  Go off and pray, give thanks to God for all his mercies and blessings.  Do something more important!   (I am talking to myself here as much as to anybody!).

5)      Read church history. The Church has always been a mess.  Judas started things off badly!  Peter goofed up repeatedly.  “Look not on our sins but on the faith of your Church.”  There is a reason that is a part of every Mass’s prayer!  Read church history to get a better perspective.  We’ve made it through truly horrible times and we’ll do it again!  In spite of the fallen nature of man.

6)      Remember Pope Francis was giving a private interview.  Learn your own Catholicism better.  You as a Catholic should be able to distinguish between when something is spoken magisterially and when it is an off the cuff remark.  Why don’t you know your faith better?  Ignorance means you are easily manipulated.   Take responsibility!

7)      I really like, admire and trust in Pope Francis in many ways, but I do think he can be sloppy and unclear at times. The media and his enemies (the Enemy!) exploit this.  No one is perfect. Today is the feast of St. John Paul II.  He is rightly revered, but he also had some terrible glaring faults.  Much sexual abuse went on under his reign and in fact people tried to warn him and he turned a blind eye.  The Legionaries of Christ and his explicit support of Marcial Marciel are a despicable legacy of JPII’s reign.  There are people alive today who are the walking wounded, having suffered severe trauma because of the Catholic hierarchy’s outright complicit or negligent approach to the problem of sexual abuse by clergy.  In fact, the guy who did the interview with Pope Francis may be one of these walking wounded.  The sin of abuse reverberates again and again down through time.  Yet we respect and love JPII.  Apply the same standard to our current Holy Father.    Or as St. Paul said, examine everything, take what is good. 

8)      I remember when gay marriage was becoming an issue, there were people who supported the idea of a civil union because it would be a secular, governmental thing and perhaps would keep us from redefining sacramental marriage.  I remember people saying that marriage used to only be a church thing and it was the anti-Catholic French Revolution that made it a secular thing.  I remember arguments like that coming from conservative and faithful Catholics.  I don’t think supporting civil unions is anything but an attempt to keep civil authorities from imposing on religious teachings.   Or at least it can be construed that way.  You may vehemently disagree with this and my memory is a bit fuzzy but I do remember that there were a variety of approaches to this issue taken by various conservative voices. 

Fall Garden Thoughts

 I have kind of stopped posting here because Blogger updated and I can't figure out how to post photos.  And in fact, I copied book covers from Amazon and they disappeared.  So now I don't know how to blog properly anymore and I am too distracted and busy to stop and figure it out. 

But the gardeners came today and cleaned up the garden for all and so I am very happy.  They only come six times a year and it isn't quite often enough.  I should be doing more but honestly I am new to gardening and I have so many other things going on and only a limited amount of energy.  And my arthritic knees are really starting to hinder me.  

After two years with this garden I now have a better idea of what I like:

Herbs - I want way more herbs.  I need two giant St. John's Wort bushes to be moved so that I have access to the herbs.  The way they are now I can not access them without having to haul myself up a wall that is about 1.5 feet high and my knees just don't want to do that.

Fruit trees/bushes - except fewer chokeberries and lots more blueberries and maybe raspberries.  We had a disappointing yield for fruit this year except for the strawberries.  I'm spending my winter figuring how to take care of fruit trees/bushes for better results.  That's my winter homework assignment.  Actually, I need to see what to do for the fall for them as well. The gardeners did some but I might want to go further to protect them from disease and make them more robust.

 We are putting up a garden on the side of the house.  We have to move much of it because it was accidentally on our neighbor's property.  We got new neighbors and it turns out they want to fence in all of their yard.  So we have to move trees anyway.  So we are just going to redesign that area.  I am excited.  Going to try to plant paw paw trees for starts.  Squeee!

For veggies - I am determined to figure out how to have greens all winter.  I bought a cold frame to put in a raised bed.  I plan to try to grow brassicas and beets there).  I also am going to keep growing microgreens in the study window.  I want to get grow lights and have a real indoor kitchen herb garden.  I also want to try to grow lettuces and maybe cherry tomatoes indoors by a window with a grow light.  I'm just going to experiment.  I do seem to be growing carrots and potatoes successfully in the raised beds  My sugar snap peas don't seem to be doing anything.  Perhaps they need some fertilizer. Must see what to do about that.

I also am going to try to clean out the junk closet at the end of our mudroom and turn it into a cold storage room.  I am going to experiment with trying to keep apples and winter squashes in cold storage there.  I also want to start a prepper pantry.

So those are my thoughts for now!

Classics Spin #24 - Winning # is 18!

Number 18 on my list this time around turned out to be Minor Works by Jane Austen.  

Classics Club Spin #24 List of Potential Wins!

 Here's my list of 20 potential reads for the next spin.  I am deliberately picking shorter or easier works because I am feeling rather overwhelmed with the non-reading portion of my life!  This is also limited by the fact I am just pulling books off my shelves I've been meaning to read for ages.  The Power and the Glory is a favorite of mine but I haven't read it in decades so time for a reread.

Here's the link to the blog post for the spin:  https://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com/2020/08/01/cc-spin-24/

1. Utopia by Thomas More

2.  Paradisio by Dante

3.  King Lear by Shakespeare

4.  The Complete Tales of Alexander Pushkin (might just read a selection)

5.  Short Stories by Flannery O'Conner (read a selection)

6.  The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne (This was originally published in 2 volumes.  I've already read volume 1).

7.  The Light Princess and other Tales by George MacDonald

8.  Common Sense by Thomas Paine

9. Civil Disobedience and Other Essays by Henry David Thoreau

10.  Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

11.  The Story of the Golden Fleece by Padriac Colum

12.  Classic American Short Stories from Dover (read a selection)

13.  Best-Loved Short Stories also from Dover (read a selection)

14.  Seneca On The Shortness of Life

15.  Renascence and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

16.  T. S. Eliot Collected Poem (1909-1935)

17.  The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

18.  Minor Works by Jane Austen (read a selection)

19.  The Gift of Good Land by Wendell Berry (read a selection of his essays)

20.  Little Lord Fauntleroy by Francis Hodgson Burnett

40 Day Novena

I found about this 40 Day Novena (7/7-8/15) via the Catholic Unschoolers group, I think.  I am adapting it to suit my life, my personal challenges and failings.  If I did it as recommended, I know I'd never been consistent.  It is extremely hard, nigh impossible, for me to maintain consistency for 40 days straight.  I really think I am ADD and that is how it manifests itself in me!  So I am using this as a excuse to up my game a little bit, but also consolidate things that I have been trying, halfheartedly in many instances, to do already.  We'll see how it goes.  I am thinking even making the effort is part of the spiritual battle! 

My game plan: 

Reflection:

• listen to a homily every day - could be Bishop Barron, Bishop Burbidge, from my own parish, or some other reflection from another priest
• Reading - I am slowly rereading Augustine's Confessions and also reading Compassion & Conviction; The (&) Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.  I'm also reading a collection of short meditations from Bishop Barron, entitled Centering.  

Prayer:

• Lauds every morning
• Divine Mercy every afternoon (need to set alarm for 3 p.m.)
• Night prayers with my family

Reparation/Penance:

• Confession - I need to quarantine as much as possible until after vacation (to keep my father in law safe) so I will go in early August.  
• Each day I will perform a work of spiritual or corporal mercy.  I am already on prayer requests team from my parish which is a good thing.  Two other things I can do are:  pick up trash around my neighbor when I take walks and remember to buy extra groceries and take them to the drop off at my parish for the food bank.  Next month I'm scheduled to make chicken for the homeless the first Thursday.  I also consider taking my glass recycling to the drop off site a corporal work of mercy since it helps Creation (and I absolutely hate the sound of breaking glass.  Gives me nightmares.  I have to grit my teeth the whole time!).  Conscientious recycling is a work of mercy!  Deliberately choosing to buy ethically and locally even if it is less convenient and more expensive is a corporal work of mercy, I think!  Wearing a mask, even though I hate it, should count too!  I don't hate it for political reasons, I just find it intensely uncomfortable!  I will brainstorm more to come up with ideas I can implement.  It is hard to do something every day in normal times, during CV19 it's even harder but I'll still work towards that goal.
• Consumption of media will be restricted to the following:  facebook for a quick check in with possible posts/messages from family, also I am in a discussion group about Christian civic engagement.  But I'm just going to dash in and out, no hanging out!  I will watch homilies, but that's different, I will still keep up my booktube channel.  That has been nothing but a good thing to me.  But, I will watch only one other booktube channel a day and one gardening/homesteading channel a day.  I often binge watch. I might keep up Instagram because I mostly just post photos of nature or books.  Only takes a minute. No twitter which I recently returned to. No political youtube, no politics anywhere!  I need a breather.  Although, I also am going to attend a maybe three zoom meetings.  Does that count?   Otherwise it would be in person and wouldn't be social media, so I don't think I'll include them.  And they also could double as spiritual or corporal works of mercy because they deal with racism, police brutality and the environment.  I want to restrict the totality of media consumption to one hour a day, whenever possible.  Some days will go over but most days could easily be restricted to 30 to 45 minutes.   Oh dear though.  This is all so complicated!
• Fast from sugar - this is something I regularly try to do but lately have been very bad at.  So I'm going to get stricter about this.
• Abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays.  I try to do this also but often fail utterly!
• Exercise 1 hour a day - this includes walks, gardening, playing outside with D.  However, I also need to stretch regularly and I need to include in this doing at least 15 minutes of housework each day.  I am so lazy.  Outside of cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry, I hardly touch anything.  I wait until someone is coming over or there is some sort of pressure from something to get me going.  It's awful.  If I take a 15 minutes walk with D in the a.m.  Weed for ten minutes, kick a ball around with D or horseplay with him, plus some sweeping, vacuuming, scrubbing, I could get in an hour easily and will probably go over it.  But in truth I probably need at minimum two hours of this low key movement to be healthy.