October 15, 2012

feint
(faynt)
noun: A deceptive move, especially in fencing or boxing.
verb: To make a deceptive movement.

(“Feint” was Friday’s word from Wordsmith.org.)

My three sentences:

(Sorry, I can’t help myself.) “To feint is not for the faint of heart,” the fencing instructor joked.

(Puns are punny!  Hee, hee.  Moving on…) Gloria feinted, sliding behind the door of her open locker, before Mrs. Crabbypants caught sight of her.

(It’s election season.  It’s also hunting season.  Coincidence?)  A political debate is not so much about truth as it is about the feint – to trap and annihilate one’s opponent by crafty, subtle speech.

Word of the Day courtesy of Wordsmith.org.  Sign up for their email newsletter here.

Sometimes I think God is stingy with me.

(Nooo-bodyyyy knooooows, the troooouuuble I’ve seeeeen…)

Not true, says St. Paul, in fine rhetorical form:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.  He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us.  For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph. 1:3-10 RSVCE)

“every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”?
“destined us in love“?
“glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us”?
“riches of his grace which he lavished upon us”?
“all wisdom and insight”?

Dude.  This is for the taking!

Oh, no.  God is not stingy.

Yesterday was also the first anniversary of my grandmother’s passing.  With the exception of my brother, who had been driving from Idaho to Oregon to be with us, we – and by we, I mean, we, the entire extended family – and that’s a lot of people, people – were all at Grandma’s bedside to wish her farewell.

She was a beautiful lady.

I am grateful that this lady is back on my desk:

This picture of St. Thérèse of Lisieux is a favorite of mine.  Piercing eyes, knowing smile, full of life and light.  You wouldn’t know that she was suffering a slow, painful death from tuberculosis.

My husband, knowing how much I detest almost all depictions of St. Thérèse in religious art (pour me some saccharine), gave me these photographs of her some years ago:

Isn’t it wonderful having saints in the modern age?  We have photographs of them!

A philosopher friend of mine, Michael, once mentioned how wonderful it was to pour over the works of the Scholastics, learning much about God, but then to switch gears and read St. Thérèse’s The Story of a Soul. “Ah!” he thought. “That’s right.  It is about loving God.”  St. Thérèse is the Doctor of the Church that the Church did not expect.

I am also grateful for our newly-arrived storm windows:

These storm windows are not just any storm windows.  They are Mon-Ray storms, designed for historic preservation, sound abatement, environmental protection, etc. – any task where one might want to keep one’s original windows and still get some new window bennies.  A friend recommended getting these instead of new windows, as new windows have a short life, whereas our lovely original old-growth wood windows, with some TLC, should last forever and ever.

Our contractor, who is working with these for the first time, is duly impressed.  They’re solidly made and fit our windows like a glove.

Not only does the arrival of the Mon-Rays point toward a less-drafty house, but they represent the final stages of our home remodel.  Soon and very soon, we’ll be able to close up our 203K paperwork.  And for that I am grateful.

(with thanks to Colleen for hosting)

My friend and colleague, Tacy Williams Beck, a fellow contributor to CatholicMom.com, recently sent me an email with the following question:

Do you have a routine that you stick to, or a post about it?

Now, let’s be honest. I ought to be asking her the same question:

She has three kids under five.
I have one.
She wins!

Finding the time to write amid housekeeping, errands, and family time is the challenge of being both a writer and a stay-at-home parent.  But it is a challenge that can be met, per the witness of so many excellent stay-at-home (and paid!) writers.

How each writer faces and meets that challenge is unique to his or her situation.  There is no one schedule, no one check-the-box solution.  What works for me with one child may not work for you with eight.

For me, making a schedule = death to writing.  My making a schedule usually means that I have, in the dank places of my heart, the mistaken notion that I’m going to manipulate my time to fit my wants according to my way of doing of things.  I have made thousands of schedules in my life, and they have all failed.

Setting Priorities

What does work for me is to have a loose routine and some checklists.  Both are shaped by an understanding of my priorities, ably articulated by Holly Pierlot (who, by the way, is a successful schedule-maker, unlike me) in her A Mother’s Rule of Life .  Holly’s “Five P’s”:

1) Prayer.  Before all else, I need to talk to God.  Can’t do much without him.  Can’t give what I don’t have.
2) Person. After that, I need to take care of myself.  Food, exercise, sanity.
3) Partner. Then, my husband.  Our primary vocation is to each other in the Sacrament of Marriage.
4) Parent. Next, our child, the resulting fruit of our marriage.
5) Provider. Finally, managing the house and bringing home the bacon (ha).

Note that the order of priority does not equal the amount of time I give to each one. The amount of time and attention due to each requires careful and searching discernment.

In looking at priorities, all expectations of authorial grandeur have got. to. go.

My son is anything but sanguine about my being on the computer when he’s awake, and so I write when he sleeps, when I’ve scrounged up enough loose change to pay for a babysitter, or when my husband gives me time off for good behavior.  That’s it.   Nora Roberts and Dean Koontz might produce a novel every 28 days, but I do not and will not.

Thinking About the Day

Because my son is young and not in school, I do not schedule many time-specific activities.  The Boy has swimming lessons on Tuesday evenings, I participate in a spiritual formation program at church every other Tuesday evening, I go out for my weekly dose of sanity on Fridays, and of course there’s Mass on Sunday.  Other days have other activities, but all are optional, contingent on being done with housework and exercise.

My checklists, however, are specific. Let’s take a look at my housekeeping checklist (click to enlarge):

My housekeeping checklist includes a morning routine (i.e. doing the key activities that keep us sane), a midday routine, and an evening routine.  The morning routine also includes doing the Chore-of-the-Day, with Tuesday being a catch-all, catch-up day.

Depending on what time our son gets up and the intensity of the Chore of the Day, my husband and I can complete the morning routine between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m.  Some days more, some days less.

Doing a few chores every day versus doing all the chores on one day is a matter of personal preference.   I find I prefer the former.

Or, perhaps you’d rather do a good deed for the day: stimulate the economy by hiring someone else to clean your house.  You go, girl (or guy).  No one’s judging you here!

For other perspectives and tips on keeping house, check out Cynthia Schroeder’s Mother-to-Mother Guest Post Series at her blog, Finding Great Joy.

My Prayer Checklist:

Short and sweet – my list used to be much more full and much less feasible to achieve. Fortunately, my program of prayer is dictated from without – i.e. as part of my participation in God’s Embrace – rather than within.  This is a full program of prayer and spiritual reading without being unmanageable.

Writing and Studying Checklist:

Realistic, limited expectations makes for more production.  Counter-intuitive, but so far, it’s working. Sometimes I finish items on my checklist early and therefore discover more writing time and a chance to work on other projects.  For example, I began work on a short story this morning, as it’s Thursday and I’m free to work on things not-the-novel.

When I soon return to school, God willing, my checklists will change again.  Such is the way of things.

I have some checklists.  Now what?

Three things help me find success with my checklists:

1) Getting up at five a.m. whenever possible.

2) Daily overcoming my laziness and apathy so as to avoid falling behind and becoming overwhelmed by my wreck of a house.

3) Avoiding Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, blogs, land-o-Internet, and fiddling with the layout of my own blog, like the freakin’ plague.

In other words, virtue makes success possible.

Viiiiirt-yooooooo.  It’s aaaaaaalwaaaaaaays viiiiiiiiiiirt-yooooooo.

If you find yourself plunged into a love affair with the written word, you will encounter what novelist Steven Pressfield calls Resistance.  Because it’s worth doing, you will find yourself having a hard time doing it.  I encounter no Resistance whatsoever to scrolling down my Facebook feed for hours on end. I find much Resistance, however, to settling down to work on my novel.

I consistently fail.  Resistance has my number, though sometimes I give him the old one-two back.  But above Resistance is grace.  I write because it is good for me, and grace comes by way of my obedience and surrender to this personal good.  Resistance may have my number, but God has my back.

All that to say, that’s how this stay-at-home writer stays organized:  examination of priorities, loose routine, a few checklists, and a lot of grace.

October 10, 2012

mense
(mens)
noun: Propriety, decorum.
verb tr.: To adorn, grace.

FYI: “Menses” has an entirely different meaning. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My three sentences:

Miss Bingley was a student of mense, though without understanding the heart of the matter.

The diamonds mensed her cool, pale neck.

“Few men understand the manliness of mense,” the unwed Grace complained to her mother.

Word of the Day courtesy of Wordsmith.org.  Sign up for their email newsletter here.

… for neighbors generous with their rope swing…

… and for Colleen, our gracious link-up hostess.

Adding to the chaos.

Let me ask a potentially blasphemous question to start the Year of Faith:

Faith in what?

If you answered, “Faith in God,” either you are very, very holy, well on your way to canonization (though you might not think so yourself, you humble soul), or you are a Catholic automaton, spitting out what our Protestant brethren call the Sunday School Answer.

Read the rest at CatholicMom.com…

I am grateful for…

…funny faces.

My mother-in-law arrived Wednesday for a five-day visit.

Like any willing grandmother who lives far away from her grandson, she wanted to spend the entire day with him.

And so I went to the library. I finished an article with an approaching deadline. I finished applying to college – for B.A., Round Two. I filled out the FAFSA.  I set up the third replacement modem from AT&T (read: we’re on modem #4).  I began the process of switching this blog from WordPress.com to a self-hosted website.

All this, because a grandmother did exactly what she wanted to do – spend a delightful day with her grandson.

Oh, and she brought a little boy some new books, too:

She’s a good one, that Granny.

1.  Stayed up late and woke up early:
 

2.  (We’ve been on a Singing in the Rain kick around here – can you tell?)

3. The God’s Embrace Renewal Center is offering a program of spiritual formation to both parishes here in my town, and, hearing hints of deification/theosis language in the leader’s pitch for the program (having heard all about deification from my patristic-studying husband), I decided to look into it.

Verdict:  Meat-and-potatoes.  They’re giving us real stuff, and without being draconian and Pharisaical.

What has struck me most is the presence of joy in the facilitators of the program. You can’t fake that funk, you know? Joy means something.

Stay tuned; I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this program.

4. Of course, meat-and-potatoes is hard to follow through on.  There is much Resistance (thank you, Steven Pressfield) against doing an examination of conscience every night.  Of course!  Because it’s worth doing!  And because I have to, you know, look at myself honestly.

And then, reading Scripture every day…
And then…

Parts of the program are easier for me than others, and, thankfully, the program lays a “table of plenty.”  But, still. Darn concupiscence.

5. Speaking of joy, do you remember my pondering over “learning the craft of writing” several months ago?  You do?  Good.   Happily, I’m no longer seeking an answer to that conundrum.  I can take classes, either enrolled as a matriculating student or as a guest, at the college where my husband teaches, for FREE!  No waiting period.

Can I get a wha-wha?

6.  And, thanks to my mother-in-law, I finished the application.  Wha-wha, redux.

Speaking of, follow the linky on that post to join up with Colleen and her Attitude of Gratitude. You won’t be sorry!

7. Oh, Canada!

(Longest post I’ve written in several months.   Have fun.)

UPDATE: Check out Dwija’s post and see all my scandalous doings here in Michigan.

That’s all for me! Quick Takes done quickly and without editing – for once. Hop along, Cassidy, to the other linky-uppers.