Seven Quick takes: Volume 100129

I'm seriously missing my husband while he's gone for a few days at Calvin College's wonderful Worship Symposium. Some quick takes on the stuff of daily life that I forget to mention while on the phone and may not remember to tell him when he gets home.

1. The baking blitz last night with the 9 y.o. went amazingly well. Once again, I find as a parent that my children are capable of far more than I might have thought. When in my desperation and rush I let them try (whatever), I often discover that--yes, they actually can do it! Or at least clean up their own mess afterwards. The eldest sucessfully followed the recipe for bread and put all the ingredients in the bread machine. She sucessfully cleaned up her own flour and dried milk spills. She did most of the mixing for the chocolate chip cookies and learned a few useful techniques on cracking eggs and using the electric mixer. She shaped the bread rolls (though I divided the dough for her because I could do it in about three minutes and it would have taken her twenty). And the reinforcement of 3 tsp = 1 Tbsp, 8 Tbsp = 1/2 cup, 8 oz. = 1 cup fit in beautifully with the fact that they're covering units in math this week. (We went over cups, pints, quarts and gallons a few days ago).

2. I didn't really need Kidnap to inform me that soccer is the most popular sport in Brazil. After four years of working for a Brazilian boss--and living through Brazil's loss to France in the 2000 World Cup, I knew that. (Disclaimer: that France beat Brazil in the 2000 World Cup is about the only I know about professional soccer.)

3. Today's xkcd. I really didn't need any help anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. It comes (distressingly?) naturally to me. Now I'm grieving for the NASA probe and feeling guilty over every childhood toy I ever got rid of.

4. The kids have an issue with the fact that I don't turn on Grant St. like you do when I'm taking them to school, but wait an extra two blocks and go up to Colfax.

5. Suzuki's Allegro has to be one of the more insanely catchy pieces of pseudo-classical music around. Our 3 y.o. is going around singing it. This is only making it more difficult to get it dislodged from my own brain.

6. The Anchoress's litany on the difference between an icon and an idol here is beautiful. It is an effective definition. That is, it differentiates by the effect it is having. (Something which is intended as an icon might function as an idol. Our sinful nature tries to warp all good things to idolatry. )

7. The girls and I watched a very strange effect as the sky was getting dark last night. By some quirk of light and cloud, the sky was very dark very low--we couldn't see the normal tree and house line--it was all absorbed in the dark. Up above was light--and the whole things made it look like we had a mountain range out our dining room window, here in suburban/rural Indiana. I glanced up from my dinner and did a double take--I might have once again been driving I-70 on the north side of Denver, with the Front Range in front of me. Beautiful.

7 quick takes: volume 090821: coaching string players

This spring, we started our middle daughter on violin lessons and our eldest on cello. And now 10-12 hours of my week are spent supervising practice and lessons, and driving back and forth. It's worth it.

Seven things I'm learning on how to help your grade schooler have a happy and productive intstrument practice

1. At this stage it's all about posture and muscle memory.
I knew somewhat from potty training how difficult it is to teach body awareness and muscle control to a child. Playing a stringed instrument involves learning to use and coordinate many different muscle groups that most of us never think about. My main job as a parent in helping my girls practice is to be an outside set of eyes and help them be aware of what they need to learn to be aware of. To help them build muscle memory.

2. Be endlessly encouraging.
You're doing a great job. I can see you're really working on that. That sounded a lot better this time. Your teacher's going to be really impressed at your next lesson. You're putting in good practice. I'm glad you let me help you. That's really going to help you.

3. But don't let anything by. At all.
Two or three days of a bad habit can take weeks to fix. Or months. Years? Perhaps--but we haven't gotten that far yet. :) Also, if they learn to take correction and improvement as part and parcel of practice then it's not something unusal or something to get upset at. If I can offer correction in a routine, attentive, even bored manner, then they are much better about taking it as what it is--something to HELP them, a positive thing--rather than taking it as negative criticism.

4. Train the ear.
I was a piano player--hit the right key, and you get the right note. Unless the piano is out of tune, and there's nothing you can do about that. It took me a long, long time to begin to listen critically to my own playing. But string players have to learn to listen critically to themselves from the get-go. They need to hear how the notes relate to each other, not just see it on the page. Am I in tune? How's my tone? They only get 4 notes as gimmes . . . not all 88l.

5. Let them enjoy the music
There's always something to work on. If they want to spend an entire practice playing nothing but "Jesus Loves Me," we can do that. And do it a little straighter, a little more musically each time. In retrospect, one of the things I most regret about my own music lessons was how little I was engaged with so much of the music that I was playing. Why couldn't we have skipped many of those exercises that I didn't find interesting? And those ones that I absolutely loved? What if, instead of being told "Oh, that's too easy for you now, that doesn't count," or "That's not part of your lesson," I'd heard, "Oh, you really love that tune? Let's see what else we can do with that."

6. Keep your temper--and theirs
Getting angry isn't going to fix the problem. Getting frustrated isn't going to help them "get it." Making their practice time a time when they get yelled at isn't going to make them want to practice. In addition, their own frustration and convincing of themselves that they'll "never get this!" doesn't help practice. "Give yourself some grace. Give yourself some time." See #2. Remember . . . if it was easy, we wouldn't have to practice it. Helping my girls learn to work hard at something that isn't easy, that isn't natural, that takes discipline is one of the main reasons that we're doing this. After all, discipline and disciple have the same root. It's about training them in the tools that they will need to tackle all sorts of difficult, frustrating things over the course of their lives. It's about learning to disciple my children.

7. Remember that there's no deadline
We can just keep working at it. There's no getting ahead. There's no falling behind. We're not on a schedule here, and I don't need push my kids or make them push themselves. This is just an introduction and a tool for (hopefully) a lifetime's enjoyment of and participation in music.

quick takes are sponsored by jen@conversion diary

7 quick takes: volume 090724

7 books I'm reading this summer when I'm not blogging

1. The Dresden Files (Jim Butcher): okay, a whole series of books. This summer's fluff. Jim Butcher has a deft hand at weaving a lot of stock Fantasy/Sci-Fi elements with snarky humor and likably flawed under-dog characters. Plop the whole thing in a familiar setting--like an alternate-reality Chicago--and it's easy to see why Butcher's managed to land himself on top of the best seller lists.

2. Watership Down (Richard Adams): Book club book for the summer. A pleasant re-read. I must have been about seven or eight when my dad read this to my brother and me for bed-time reading.

3. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy): The other book club read for the summer. I actually read this when I was fourteen and hated it. Re-reading it at 34 is proving to be a college course's worth of insight into how our life experience informs our reading. I'm not sure if I like it or not this time round. I'm not sure I can even really compare. I feel like I'm reading a completely different book.

4. Story (Robert McKee): A book about writing screenplays that has a lot of material which is directly applicable to novels. My writing classes in college focused on structure at the sentence and paragraph level. They never addressed such things as plot arc and scene selection--those macro-structuring issues with which I've struggled a great deal in my attempts to write. This book is a God-send.

5. Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl (N.D. Wilson): My next book review book for Thomas Nelson. A philosophical, apologetic hymn of awe to a Creator-God who is too great for us to even begin to comprehend. Beautiful.

6. God's Prayer Book (Ben Patterson): A how-to devotional guide for Protestants on the spiritual discipline of praying the book of Psalms. A birthday present from my best friend. A not-so-subtle hint from God.

7. Cicero (Anthony Everitt): A biography of the great Roman orator. An overview of Roman politics that makes our current, corrupt American politics look like a model of integrity.

What are you all reading this summer?

As always, 7 Quick Takes are sponsored by Jen at Conversion Diary

7 quick takes, volume 090515

. . . because blogging is more fun than housework.

1.  In the middle of too many books at once, as usual.  Meaty reading is Michael Horton's Christless Christianity.  Continuing Roman history survey is Documentary perspectives, alternating with Polybius online.  For pure escapism (new) I just polished off the archives of Kevin and Kell (one of these days, I'll have to blog about comics as literature). Pure escapism (re-read) is Anne McCaffrey's Harperhall trilogy (the best work of anything she's done, imho).  The summer book club book is Watership Down (a pleasant re-read).  

2.  Also trying to make a point of reading to my younger two more.  Our oldest, before she could read, pestered for books all the time.  She would happily listen to stories several hours a day, before the age of two years old.  I'm realizing how much I developed the habit from that of putting off reading, and encouraging her to do other things . . . with the result that her two younger, less obsessed sisters get put off more they have coming.

3.  Music practice.  Ack.  Never thought I would be raising strings players.  Now I find myself trying to supervise 45 minutes to an hour of practice time every day . . . trying to encourage my daughters to patience . . . to not scream in frustration and hit things when they don't get it right the first time.  I was never any good at it myself.  I'm still not great.  Whole situation:  very bemusing.

4.  Actually, middle daughter is far more patient that oldest.  Temperment, I think.  Oldest appears to view music as something to be conquered.  Done right.  Looking towards the end result--20 years from now.  Middle is much more able focus on right now.  Middle is also much more able to absorb praise and encouragement . . . if I tell her that she's doing well and making progress, she believes me and is encouraged and keeps working with a good heart.  Oldest (like me), is less able to accept outside validation.  She needs to be able to tell herself that she's doing a good job.  Many lessons from all this, and many more to come, I'm sure.

5.  My good coffee pot broke.  Again.  There seems to be some sort of flaw in this model that makes the electrical system short out at right about a year old.  About a year ago, I had to get my machine exchanged for this flaw.  Now my replacement has died.  Very irritating.  Debating whether to spend $20-30 in shipping to get another $100 model that may die in a year, or whether to bite the bullet and just go shopping for something else altogether.  Or whether I should just live with a $15 machine that makes substandard coffee and learn to drink less of it.  Bah.  Bad options, all of them.

6.  I bought plants this year.  I've never suceeded in keeping anything green alive.  I even killed my aloe plant, which is supposed to be next to impossible.  I bought two lilac bushes for our yard and a few little tomato plants.  We'll see if I can manage to not kill them.

7.  I'm ticked off with the IRS.  I am not going to write about this in detail in this venue, except to say that in surveying what's going on in my life, this situation has a significant place.

7 quick takes is hosted by Jen at Conversion Diary

seven quick takes, volume 090424

the trip to Chicago edition

1.  I did it!  This is an accomplishment for a five (the defining fear of fives is having enough knowledge/skill to be competent to act).  In this case, I sucessfully navigated Chicago's public transportation system to get myself and three small children from O'Hare-land downtown to the Shedd aquarium and back.  I did so without losing any of the children, and I managed to keep us all fed during the day, and my youngest didn't even decide she had to go potty while we were trapped on the over-crowded El, 45 minutes from getting off.
2.  I think my kids even had a good time at the aquarium.  I might feel bad about the three hours out of the day that transit took, except that was clearly as much of a treat as the fish.  There haven't been questions about when we get to go back to the aquarium.  There have been many questions about when we get to ride the train again.
3.   I did it!  I sucessfully followed the directions my friend gave me to drive the hour trip from our O'Hare hotel to her house in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.  I didn't miss any turns, I didn't get ticketed.  I didn't even get honked at.
4.  We had a great day with friends on Wednesday.  It's a wonderful treat when your kids are as good of friends with your friends' kids as you are with the parents.  It means the parents are free to completely ignore the children and let them play while we have our own conversation . . .
5.  I did it--mostly.  I made it back from my friend's house to the hotel in the dark, only muffed two of my turns, managed to work around them anyway without panicking, and didn't actually end up having to run the toll station for incorrect change . . . And anyway, the first muffed turn was really more of an alternate route.  Right?  (I mean, I was told before we headed home "If you miss the turn onto Lake Cook Rd., just keep going and you can get onto the highway off of 12--it just takes longer.")  It was the way that the freeway interchange between 90, 190, and 294 works going south/east that really threw me.  I mean, everywhere else in Chicago, signs that say "O'hare" mean towards O'hare . . . not "we're going to route you directly to the arrivals and departures drop-off point."
6.  Why were there toll booth attendents available to make change at every booth that we passed for four days except for the one I got to at 9:30 at night with two sleeping children in the back?  Why can't they jigger the toll machines to take dollar bills?  Why doesn't the U.S. mint simply decide that it's going to sensibly convert our nation to dollar coins and be done with it?  And if they throw in some of the pretty two-tone two-dollar coins like Canada has, that'd be a nice bonus.
7.  I . . . did . . . it.  When 90 turned into a parking lot in front of us and my wonderful husband got us off the freeway, I sucessfully helped navigate us through the side-roads and alternate routes of greater-greater-Chicago.  

A good trip.  I'm glad to be home, sleeping in my own bed with my own pillow.  I'm glad to be back in my own little midwestern town where 15 minutes in any direction gets you to corn fields and I can drive my standard routes without thinking about it.  And next time will be a bit easier.  :)

7 quick takes is hosted by Jen at Conversion Diary

7quick takes, volume 090403: the we should have been dead edition

Why does a good God allow bad things to happen?  I submit to you that an awful lot of the time he doesn't, and we don't even bother to notice.  God reaches down and protects us, and we call it luck, or just take for granted that nothing bad should have happened.  Yesterday, as my family and I were driving the three hour trip from Indianapolis home to northern Indiana, we saw not one but two accidents involving overturned semi-trucks.  And we pray for travelling mercies so carelessly . . .

Thinking about this today, I realized that I can easily think of two or three incidents for each member of my immediate family--my mom, dad, brother and I--when we easily could have died and didn't.  Seven quick takes:  the our-lives-are-riddled-with-miracles edition.

1.  I was ten years old.  My dad and I, ignorant Midwesterners, were playing on a snowfield in the Colorado Rockies.  We slipped and tumbled down a very steep grade into a whole lot of huge boulders at the bottom.  Result:  Bruises for us both, and a concussion for me.

2.  When my parents were newly married their new, nifty little compact was slammed into at an intersection by a much larger truck.  The car was totalled.  If my mom had been wearing her seatbelt, she would have died.  For some reason she wasn't, and was just fine.

3.  My brother, last year, swinging from a rope swing while camping and the knot gave.  He landed flat on his back from 8-10 feet in the air.  Result:  not paralysis or death, but concussion and slight memory loss.

4.  Me, hiking on Isle Royale National Park, a four hour boatride from anything, let alone medical care.  I walked over a hornet's nest.  Got stung.  I'd never been stung before and didn't know what it was--stood there, trying to figure it out, until my dad shouted at me to run.  Some three dozen stings, all up in my shirt.  Good thing I didn't turn out to be allergic to stings.

5.  My brother, again, his senior year in high school.  Driving home through the country, at a rural train crossing without lights or gates or anything.  Accidentally ran the stop sign and made it across in front of the train by about 10 feet.

6.  Me and my mother, when I was four years old.  She was driving my friend and I home from preschool when a sixteen year old driver ran a red light and slammed straight into us.  None of us more than shook up.  (Additional minor miracle/grace of God for this incident:  the accident happened right in front of the house of a nice young mom who invited my friend and I in to watch Sesame Street with her daughter while my mom dealt with the police.  The whole scene is one of my more vivid early memories.)

7.  My brother in college, trying to cross the street back to his dorm with a pizza for dinner.  Hit by car.  Result:  several stitches across the back of his scalp.  And yes, the pizza was fine.  But pretty cold when he and his girlfriend finally got to eat it three hours later.

Lord Jesus, thank you for all the ways that you sustain us that we don't even know about.  Thank you for all the times when it could have been so much worse, and wasn't.    Help us remember that that's you.

7 quick takes hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary

7 quick takes, volume 090320

Hosted by Jennifer @ Conversion Diary

1.  Vicodin:  never again, if I can help it.  Got some work done earlier this week in my mouth and sent home with a prescription for two days of bad drug trip.  May cause dizziness?  Try, "can't walk a straight line."  May cause drowsiness?  Try, "keel over in exhaustion and then dream hallucinatory dreams."  But I'll give it this--any pain was a really long way away.  

2.  We have spring!  I love it.  Actual sunshine and clear skies.  Being able to go out with only a light jacket.  Budding trees.  Enough daylight to actually do something after dinner . . .

3.  Last night I learned how to do stationary lunges.  Without weights.  And still . . . Ow.

4.  Speaking of #2, the kids are going bike-crazy.  5-y.o. has gotten really good without training wheels.  8-y.o. is determined not to let her little sister show her up.  I really wish there were sidewalks in our sub-division and I could let the kids go on their own.  But the crazies (and everyone else too) tears down our street at 40 mph and I just don't feel that they're good enough at watching and listening to be able to bike in the road and be safe doing it.

5.  3-y.o. is jealous of all this.  She cannot keep up with her big sisters even when she is frantically pedalling her tricycle about as fast as it can be pedalled.  Talk about unfair.

6.  Sesame Street seems to have taken good steps this season to address the decline that's happened over recent years.  The writing is smarter, slicker, more creative . . . they've collected some great cameos and used them well.  Now if they'd just get rid of Elmo's World.

7.  At some point, this post of Jared Wilson's needs more extended reflection.  But in the meantime I'll just note that as my dear husband often preaches, legalism is easier than grace.  And being like Jesus means loving those who don't deserve it all the way to the cross.  Christ-following isn't for wimps . . . and "just loving people" sounds real nice until you have to apply it to . . . you know, actual people.

8.  Bonus Quick Take:  As an intelligent, thinking, trying-to-be-responsible adult, I've felt that I really ought to try to understand this whole economic/financial thing going on with our country right now.  Mostly as I wade through articles and explanations though, I find it alternately incomprehensible and boring.  But today's xkcd is enlightening.

seven quick takes, volue 090313

things that make me happy edition

1.  Euchre, in its many variants.  Especially 5-handed.
2.  Sour Cream Pound Cake * 
3.  Scrabble on Facebook--except, of course, when I've got a fistful of one point tiles.
4.  Re-reading a good book.  By my definition, it's not a really good book unless it's better the second time.  And the dozenth.
5.  Lolcats
6.  Artwork on my walls and mantle.  I'm thankful every day for those with the call, skill, and patience to add beauty to our lives.  My father, Ando Hiroshige, He Qi, Vincent Van Gogh, Ruth Lampi and others.
7.  Dvorak's Sixth Symphony

*from All-American Comfort Food

1 1/4 cups butter, softened
3 cups sugar
6 eggs.
3 cups flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 8 oz. carton sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1-2 tsp. other extract**

Grease and flour 10 in. bundt pan.  Cream butter and sugar.  Add eggs one by one, beating well.  Combine dry ingredients.  Add to wet alternately with sour cream.  Add vanilla.  Pour into pan.  Bake at 325 for 90 minutes.

**  for whatever flavor you want to make it.  The cookbook suggests almond, but I don't like almond.  I've succesfully used this cake as a base for coconut, pineapple, and rum pound cakes.  

If you want to be really decadent, glaze it:  1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, and 1-2 tsp flavored extract.  Boil 1-2 minutes.  Loosen cake from pan and pour over.  Remove cake when glaze is soaked in.  

7 quick takes is hosted by Conversion Diary.  Like you didn't know that yet.

seven quick takes volume 090220

The double seven edition:  seven days, seven lessons

Friday again already?  Where'd the week go?  Lessee:

Saturday:  Valentine's Day.  Two of three kids low-grade ill.  Cancelled date.

Sunday:  Church.  Congregational meeting.  Something else.  Don't remember what now.

Monday:  Call from preschool mid-morning.  Middle child threw up.  Not as better as we thought.  I do much laundry.  Husband out of town visiting parishioner due for open-heart surgery.

Tuesday:  Oldest is balky about going to school.  Decide to keep her home.  She's not behind.  Then she balks about missing school.  I take her in to school mid-morning.  I get my only work-out of the week.  Husband out of town in stressful presbytery meeting most of the day.  I disinfect house from weekend's bug.

Wednesday:  Oldest is really and truly sick this time.  Stays home.  I pack the truck with cardboard and soup cans drop at the recycling depot.

Thursday:  Husband off to funeral of a different parishioner.  Truck battery won't start.  Deal with AAA.  And the mechanic.  With the truck still packed with recycling.  Husband goes out of town again for post-surgical visit.  Session on anger in parenting class at church proves timely.  I have not managed to keep my temper today.

Friday:  truck back.  Verdict--bent latch in the glove box.  The light wasn't turning off.  That's . . . pathetic.  Bill--$118 for labor.  Ack.  Well, I suppose our mechanic has his taxes to pay too.  Timely call from good friend.  (Exercise--yay!  Okay, didn't expect that to make it in again this week.)  Music lessons.  Over-stressed husband catching whatever the kids have had all week.

Lessons learned this week:
1.  On the P to J scale of the Meyers-Briggs inventory, I knew I was J, but I thought I was less J than that.  I want things decided.  Planned.  I realize that I am not easy-going . . . I just plan a fair amount of flex into a schedule with small kids.  Make no mistake--it's a schedule, and when the chaos passes the allotted amount of flex, I start to freak.
2.  As per the Kevin Leman curriculum we're using for our parenting class:  anger is the response to things not going as I expect.  Wow--that sounds . . . um, selfish.  
3.  When I don't spend time in prayer things go south in a real hurry.  Starting with the length of my fuse.  All that nice stuff I like to think about myself . . . credit where credit's due.  Holy Spirit.  Not me.  I think it's a really good thing God grabbed me early.  I think he needs all the time he can get.
4.  I hadn't realized the degree that I was letting this "getting enough exercise" thing drift off its focus.  It was supposed to be in service to the rest of my life--so that I'd have the strength and health that I need to live the life God's called me to.  Also, an exercise in obedience.  The degree to which I was getting upset about getting my exercise skewed tells me that it's maybe becoming too much of an end in itself.
5.  And that I've been forgetting my early reminders to myself that it's not about results.  My job is to work at it, in obedience, to the best of my ability.  God's job is the results.  Or not.  To keep sane about this thing I need to let the chips fall where they may in terms of results.  Why was I upset about this week?  Because I've been excited to see a little in the way of actual results and don't want to lose it.  I forgot that though this week screwed up my plans, it didn't screw up God's . . . and the results are not mine to control or own.  
6.  Prayer.  The results are not ours to control or own.  
7.  Chocolate malts are one of God's great blessings in life.

7 quick takes is hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary.  

7 quick takes, volume 021309

The "post length comments I could have left on other people's blogs edition, or the "How easy is it to spend an entire Friday reading the 7 quick takes round up?"

1.  one of the best Valentine's Days dinners my husband and I ever had was February 12th.  Like this year, the 14th was a Saturday and you just know that the restaurants were going to be nuts Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  We were living in Vancouver, BC, a great foodie town.  Thursday I had just a rotten day at work, don't remember why now.  My husband took one look at me and told me we were going out.  We headed up into downtown and landed at this incredible Tuscan place on the water--and had the entire restaurant to ourselves.  Okay, so maybe three other couples came through in the course of our entire dinner.  But we had it all--perfect atmosphere?  Check.  Best table next to the window over the water?  Check.  Head waiter with nothing to do, in a good mood, cracking jokes and educating us about the menu?  Check.  And oh, yeah.  This incredible crusted free-range chicken that I still remember as the best chicken I've ever eaten anywhere?  Yeah.   Jen's #7

2.  Things that should always get cleared from pockets before doing the laundry:  Kleenex, thumb drives, crayons, pay checks, earrings, handfuls of driveway gravel (courtesy the rock-obsessed toddler).  Lerin, #7

3.  The "Why I love My Husband" Edition--what a great idea!  Why I love my husband:  he's endlessly encouraging and appreciative of whatever I'm putting my hand to, and endlessly encouraging about the fact that life is in process.  If I've managed to clean, he appreciates it.  If I haven't, he rolls with it.  Whatever I cook, he loves it (even if he doesn't love the new recipe, he loves trying new foods, so he loves that I made something new--and only the ones he actually likes get repeat appearances).  And if I all of a sudden realize that it's 5:15 and I haven't gotten any farther with dinner than having a package of still-frozen meat sitting on the counter, and all that I want for dinner anyway is a chocolate milkshake, he's happy to go out for hamburgers and milkshakes.

4.  I've seen several people noting that today is a Friday the 13th.  I've always had good associations with these--my parents got married on a Friday the 13th in 1969.  They're coming up on 40 years this year.  Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!

5.  I sort of wish that there was some Protestant equivalent of Daily Mass.  

6.  Project for this week:  taxes.  I'm somewhat inspired and somewhat initimidated by all those people bragging about how they've finished theirs already.  And I know that doing them won't be all that bad once I get started . . . but like a lot of other things, it hasn't happened this week.  It seems that I've got the mental/emotional energy to deal with one or two out-of-the-ordinary things in my week.  This week, it was a weekend road trip and getting the truck in to get checked against a recall notice.  Next week, maybe it'll be taxes.  And working on getting music practice integrated in as one of the ordinary things that I don't need to think about.  I think I need routine more than my kids do.

7.  and now for something different . . . have I mentioned the lolcats Bible translation project here before?  I'm quite sure the whole thing is seriously sputten, but it does have this--it can surprise you into paying attention to passage that you may have heard so many times before that you've paying attention to what it actually says.  So in honor of Valentine's day, take a look at the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13.   Nao faithz an hoepz an luvz r hear, theses threes, but teh bestest iz teh luv. srsly.

Oh, yeah.  7 quick takes is posted by Jen at Conversion Diary.

7 quick takes, volume 090130

1.  Thank  you Kate for the picture on the left.  It's made my week.

2.  You can watch my dad on TV!  Episode 2808, Lumberjack Fan Carving.  In my entirely biased and correct opinion, his work is pretty cool.

3.  I'm sorta geeked over the announcements of the 2009 Caldecott and Newbery Award winners.  New books to get for--my kids.  Right.  They're for the kids.

4.  If I had time and energy to kill on post-graduate studies, one of the master's theses that I'd like to write is the argument that much of the best literature these days is being published in the YA category.  I think that one of the reasons that this is so is because there is still pressure to keep literature aimed at 10-13 year olds clear of "adult themes" and "adult content."  In other words, an author can't write voyeuristic, profanity strewn, pulp and have it sell just on that basis.  YA writers actually have to write good stories.  

5.  Barna Study:  1 in 3 "Christians" say Jesus sinned.  Um . . . do they not even understand that that defeats the point?  Theology, people, theology!

6.  English departments all across the U.S. would be better off if they just admitted that modern lit-fic is just another genre, and not morally superior to all the genres out there.

7.  my children are home today on yet another snow day, and I'm completely baffled.  We had no new snow the other night.  It's not warm, exactly, out there, but 10 degrees now with a high of 18 this afternoon and a 30% chance of snow hardly seems to warrant cancelling--and the roads were fine when I was out on them last night.  I especially wish that if there was going to be a cancellation that I could have found out about it when I still had a chance to go back to sleep, and hadn't gotten up, had 2 cups of coffee, fed my daughter breakfast and had her getting ready to go while I called to check on her car pool before I found out about it.

7 Quick Takes Fridays are hosted by Jennifer F. at Conversion Diary

UPDATE:  My kind husband pointed out that my take #6 had the exact same link as #5 . . . that it did not, in fact, pull up the fascinating article by Julian Gough that I intended to reference.  That's now been fixed.

seven quick takes, vol 090116

because I suppose I ought to be posting something . . .

1.  Like half the others doing quick takes, I'll note it's cold!  -20 F here this morning.  Which is something like -35 C, for those of you who live north of the border.  Bleh.  Granted we had weather this cold every winter for the years we were living up in the Rockies, but the air is dry there.  It feels a whole heck of a lot colder with 70% humidity in the air than it did with 15%.  And produces things like frost on the inside of our back door.  (Photo courtesy of my husband).

2.  I will never, ever, ever again take three small children, by myself, out to go swimming when it's this cold.  Okay, so the pool is inside and heated.  There's still the getting there and back, and freezing wet kids trying to bundle back into snow gear in the locker room and the wet hair freezing between the door of the Y and the truck.  What was I thinking you ask?  Well, that after being cooped up inside from the cold, they'd need something to do.  I was right about that.  A swimming expedition was just not the right something.

3.  Our current book club book.  The last time that I was this aware that there was a subtext for a book and that I was really missing it was when we read James Joyce for my one of my college lit courses.

4.  Jen F. has noted the health benefits of steel cut oats in passing.  Has she bothered to mention how much more tasty and interesting they are than normal rolled oatmeal?  I hadn't realized that the Scottish oatmeal I'd fallen in love with during my semester overseas had been that good for me--maybe that had something to do with the 15 lbs. I lost that semester.  Well that, and the 20 miles a week that I was walking because I was too broke to take the bus.

5.  I might as well be homeschooling this week.  Tuesday, 2 hour delay for the snow.  Wednesday, early release for the incoming storm.  Thursday and Friday cancelled for cold.  The public schools sure aren't bothering to educate them this week.

6.  I was decently pleased with how the CSI writers handled Grissom's departure last night.  And if they can manage to keep Marg Helgenberger and most of the others the show may actually benefit from this long term.  I'll miss the character, as I miss Jorja Fox's Sara Sidle, but at this point it feels to me that the writers played fair with the story arc.  As long as the flagship CSI doesn't turn into the sort of travestry that CSI: Miami became I'll be happy to keep watching.

7.  Was it one of you seven links folks who suggested paying kids a quarter a load for folding and putting away their own laundry?  I've been thrilled with how eager to help my 5 and 8 year olds are at this pay scale, and how good a job they're actually doing.  Throw in a quarter a day for my eight year old to take care of the cat's litter box needs and they are well on their way to earning the money they need to buy their little sister that expensive birthday present they want to get her.  And mom's happier too.  I'll second a lot of what Jen F. had to say about her help from the girls this summer--I didn't realize what a control freak I was, or how much actual help I was not accepting.

Hosted, as always, by Jen@Conversion Diary

7 quick takes friday

1.  I think something died in our dishwasher.  It was a nice quiet machine last week.  Now it sounds like a piece of construction equipment with digestive problems.

2.  I can make my daughter's day just by letting her "press the button."  Dishwasher, coffee pot, whatever it is.  It gives me hope that I'm not completely screwing this parenting gig up.  

3.  I am shopping for a basic tea pot.  Big enough to hold several mugs worth.  Ceramic or pottery, under $75, maybe with a pretty picture of flowers or something on it.  I thought this should be easy.  Turns out it's not.  I hope that the intended gift recipient is not reading this, though the way that the shopping is going, it probably won't matter anyway.

4.  Count me among the crew of those who have ZERO Christmas decorations up yet.  Project for today:  get the family room cleared of all the things that need to go into storage so that there's room for the Christmas stuff to come out.  (Though that's been the project of the day every day this week).  

5.  But maybe it'll get done today, because I'm actually sort of caught up on laundry today!  (A rare, fleeting occurence).    And I'm only knee-deep in dishes, not neck-deep.

6.  I'm loving all the recipes cropping up in blog-land this time of year.  My personal contribution is Honey Butter, an easy no-cook gift.  My husband says that he thinks at the wedding feast in New Kingdom, we'll take turns cooking for and serving each other . . . working our way through all the great cuisines and dishes of all times and places.  Yum.  

7.  I think preschools ought to go back to using slates and chalks for writing practice.  I'm rather horrified at the amount of paper that comes home--daily!-- with my preschooler that goes right into the recycling bin.  I'm mentally multiplying that by 180 school days and 30 children at our preschool alone . . . 

HT:  Jen at Conversion Diary

UPDATE:  I should have expected that Amazon would be the place to go for teapots, as well as for everything else in the world these days.  I'm quite pleased with the results of that Christmas shopping venture!

7 quick takes Friday

nod to Jennifer--hey, I can do that!

1. Reading / re-reading Italo Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller." (I never actually made it all the way through the first time.) Brilliant. Dense. Post-modern. Funny. Anyone else out there read it? What do you think? Which of the 10 starts of stories there would you most like to know the rest of?

2. Battling the stomach flu at our house. It's taken out two of the three girls and me. Makes it hard to get ambitious.

3. John Stackhouse has a good post up today on humility. Intersects nicely with some of what Philip Yancey writes on the subject. And some subjects I've been thinking about from a lot of angles. What do we get to take credit for?

4. Had a long talk yesterday with a Unitarian Universalist. On looking a little more closely at the history and principles of this religion I find it to be so syncretistic as to be incoherent and non-sensical. And more sadly, I find it to be merely yet one more version of works-based legalism--I'm good enough, you're good enough, if we just try to find it within ourselves to be good enough . . . there is little room for thoughtlessness here--one might even say, childishness. How much more a Father in Heaven who invites us to come to him as children, knowing that our little attempts to put a dent in our own selfishness truly accomplish nothing--like subtracting a handful from infnity . . .

5. I really dislike laundry. It seems to me the most Sisyphean of household tasks. And in our house, the only place to fold is the dining room table, which means that there's a whole lot of other picking up that I have to be on top of before I can even start the laundry. I am inevitably and continuously behind. Especially when there's a sick toddler in the house.


6. There's another mom at my daughter's preschool building an igloo from old gallon milk jugs at hot melt glue. It's pretty cool. Here's an example of someone else doing it. (Ours isn't done yet).

7. I liked this Pearls Before Swine.

I'm increasingly disturbed by the obsession with weight in our culture, and America's focus on image as opposed to health. What if Cathy really were as trim as shown in this strip and still the neurotic, obsessed maniac we've seen in the comic pages for decades? Sadly, it's very plausible.