Sometimes when you’ve had a day full of Zoom meetings and newsletters revisions and two hours on the phone with the university IT help desk, there is nothing to do but watch Youtube videos of Steve McQ.
Tonight, if I’m still feeling really confused, I may have to indulge in a little Channing Tatum…
‘Cause a woman ought to do what she thinks is best.
That’s all I’ve got today. Oh, and this from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
It’s been a strange year, indeed. And stranger things are no doubt in store. However, today I choose to focus on the positive. At least two great things have happened this year.
The first is a no brainer: little Katie was born in the middle of the pandemic and she is truly a pearl beyond price.
What’s the story, Morning Glory?
However, another great thing happened a few weeks ago, which I haven’t mentioned, but it has made me smile every time I think about it.
Our neighbors across the street sold their giant RV! Yes, we no longer have to see it every time we look out our living room window and our cul de sac no longer looks like a trailer park.
Not the RV, but like the RV
Their driveway still looks like a used car lot and the unused trampoline in the side yard still gathers leaves more efficiently than their teenage son can keep up with the leaves in their yard, but, hey, I’m not quibbling.
No doubt, something equally heinous will take its place, but such is community life. I mean these are the same people who halted their home renovation halfway through and it stayed half done for over a year with numerous ladders leaning up against the house. They frequently have an industrial dumpster in their driveway for extended periods of time. But this was big. A major source of triggering for me has been removed and so I am grateful.
Of course, they haven’t put up their Christmas decorations yet…
Another home not far from our house…
(Check out more festively decorated homes around my flyover hometown here.)
Well, I wouldn’t want you to think I haven’t repented many times for criticizing my neighbors and hated my terrible sinful nature, so here’s a great prayer from an early English Puritan, David Clarkson:
Lord, I would be the most miserable person in the world if my hopes were only in this life. Why? Because I am hopeless without Christ’s righteousness. My life could never be comfortable, and there would be no hope at all of eternal life.
If you denied me that hope, I would be the most miserable one of all. I may be happy without worldly enjoyments, but all things in the world cannot make me happy without this.
So however you treat me in this world, whatever you deny me, Lord, deny me not this. I can be happy without riches and abundance, like Job and Lazarus were. I can be happy even if I am reviled and reproached, as was Christ and his disciples. I can be happy and comfortable in prison, as were Paul and Silas.
But I cannot be happy without the righteousness of Christ.
All the riches, places, or honors on earth will leave me miserable if I am without this. Even if I were rich and needed nothing, without this I would still be wretched and miserable, poor, blind, and naked.
If I had all things that a person could desire on earth, what good would it do me without Christ’s righteousness?
What would riches do for me, if they came with the wrath of God? What comfort would honor bring me, if I remained a son of perdition or a child of wrath?
What sweetness would there be in pleasure, if I were on the path to everlasting torments?
What miserable comforts and enjoyments are these, without Christ’s righteousness!
Lord, however you deal with me in outward things, whatever you take from me, whatever you deny me—do not deny me Christ! Do not deny me a share in his righteousness! Amen.
P.S. In an effort to broaden my movie viewing and try some newer Christmas movies, I have watched/half watched some really bad movies. Case in point: Jingle All the Way (1996) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad. Excruciating. And they made a sequel. It’s back to the classics for me.
This week I had the urge to cook. I started by making cranberry-pear chutney (i.e., cranberry sauce) from a recipe that my son’s fiancée shared with me. Though I halved the recipe, I still ended up with a vast quantity of sauce. I hope it freezes well. Then I tried my hand at making baguettes from scratch (okay, the bread machine mixed the dough but I did the rest), so we could eat the chutney with brie and bread. Although my bread did achieve a hard crust, the end shape was all wrong and the interior texture lacked the requisite air pockets (but I felt it wasn’t bad for a first effort).
Finally, I made this meatloaf recipe from Bon Apetite. The glaze is very nice, but if I make the meatloaf again, I will reduce the amount of breadcrumbs and broth and probably skip the bacon. I love bacon, but on meatloaf it just tends to add grease. So much for my efforts to amuse myself in the kitchen.
I spent the rest of my week reading Robert Galbraith’s (aka J.K. Rowling’s) 5th Cormoran Strike book which clocked in at a wildly bloated 945 pages! Will someone please assign Ms. Rowling a good editor?
I felt as if I were living the detection process in real time — and that is not a compliment. No reader needs to suffer through every interview, follow every lead, and be privy to every incidental conversation and cup of coffee. In addition to the main case, Rowling includes several minor side-cases, thus adding to the already excessive character list. On the plus-side, her two main characters remain appealing and consistent, albeit still mired in the same old family problems and will-they, won’t-they romantic tension. In that respect, the books are like a TV show that relies on the unfulfilled attraction between the main characters to keep its audience. Five books is a long time — too long IMHO — to keep such tension going. Ok, I’ll stop.
That’s about it for my week’s activities. I’m trying to get into the Christmas spirit but it is eluding me (you can tell by my grumpy book review). Echoing my DP and her daughters, I think I need to get back to fundamentals. I plan to return to the Bible and to the classic carols. Let’s start with Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” which seems especially appropriate for 2020:
In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him Nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign: In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Angels and archangels May have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim Thronged the air, But His mother only In her maiden bliss, Worshipped the Beloved With a kiss.
What can I give Him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb, If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can I give Him, Give my heart.
I have always loved that poem/carol. It’s a good place to start.
Well, we are one week closer to Christmas! Daughter #1 came home mid-week to take over at Aunt Mary’s School for Misbehaving Tots…
She said, “I think the red one is called a rhombus” and he yelled “it’s a TRAPEZOID”’
We watched the latest Hallmark movie starring distant cousin and doppelgänger Candace Cameron Bure, If I Only Had Christmas, which per usual, was super yawn-worthy and starred a bunch of actors who were all undoubtedly the presidents of the their high school drama clubs.
We enjoyed it though (and we weren’t even playing a drinking game while watching.)
In other news, I strained a muscle in my back while putting a new mattress pad on my bed and now I am hobbling around like an old lady. Okay, even more than usual. This has, however, put a certain crimp in my activities, festive and otherwise.
Meanwhile I am managing to keep up with my Zoom meetings and phone calls while the countdown to daughter #2’s visit edges closer. This weekend I will put the finishing touches on getting ready for her visit with her wee family…
…and watch some more Christmas movies.
Isn’t it wild to think that two years ago I was in Israel? The boy sent me this Instagram memory of me and those Georgetown lacrosse players:
Time flies. Enjoy every day. They are fleeting. And the Bee is correct as usual:
Our sweet Katiebelle is six months old today! Can you believe it? I really cannot. Every growth spurt has felt pretty crazy to me — remember when she started doing tummy time in earnest? — but this most recent one feels particularly significant. She’s so big!
Katie loves to sit up, and even practices standing…
Quelle nutball
She is very aware of the world: who’s around the corner, what kind of music is playing, if the wind is blowing in her face, and so on. And she knows what she likes! (Soft music, yes; wind blowing in her face, no.) She gobbles down solids at lunchtime every day.
Raise your hand if you’re the cutest!Wearing a hand-me-down outfit of her mommy’s
Still no teeth, even though we’re convinced every fussy moment is a sign of dental development (LOL). Yes, DN and I can be a little hyperactive when it comes to being parents. I blame the pandemic and spending pretty much every waking moment staring at Katie.
6 months ago!
But can you really blame us?!
*Simon and Garfunkel, “The Only Living Boy in New York,” Katie’s favorite new song. DN and I like to give each other the babe-o report (the only news you need etc. etc.) if one of us has been doing something else.
Well, it’s December and I’ve descended into a Charlie Brown-esque funk.
Following the epic weekend of manual labor, I returned to my apartment and got my tree up and decorations out while Hallmark kept me company in the backgound. My tree is pretty and I love my festive things–but I am disappointed that there will be no parties this year.
I started wrapping presents just to get them out of the craft room.
And I guess it is the time of year when I pass this dish and think there’s candy in it only to be routinely disappointed that it is old light bulbs.
I don’t think the lack of candy is the root cause of my funk, surprising as that may be based on my usual blog content. I have gotten a truly revolting amount of emails promising extra deals and 60% off. Literal subject lines declared “Forget gifts, what can you get for yourself?” and I just feel like Charlie Brown. Too much commercialism. I’ll probably take my mother’s lead and read a chapter of Luke a day as a spiritual practice for Advent since the powers that be won’t let us go to church.
The only remedy is a little Bob Dylan. Or possibly a lot.
Irving Berlin won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1942 for “White Christmas,” which had its film debut in Holiday Inn, performed as a duet by Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds.
The song would, of course, feature in another Crosby film, the 1954 musical White Christmas, which became the highest-grossing film of 1954. (I did not know that!)
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to watch all my Christmas movies this month, starting now. It’s not like we have anything else to do, right?
dual personalities 