Arwen/Elizabeth

Serious This Time

I'm not having a great couple of days.  I have The Cold from Hell and feel like I've been hit by several heavily-loaded semi trucks.  To avoid spreading this plague, I can't make any play dates for Milla and me.  My sister and Daniel are out of town, and the weather has been in the 40s and rainy, which means we've been stuck in the house all day, and will be stuck tomorrow as well.  It is dismal.

However.

This post by Emily is entitled "Perspective," and hoo, boy, did it give me some.

Friends of Emily's have a daughter - coincidentally also named Emily - who is just a little younger than Camilla, and they have just found out that she has cancer.  Aggressive cancer, on her brain and spine.  She's been through surgery, which went as well as could be expected, but she's got a long road of chemotherapy and possibly more surgery ahead of her, and they don't know what will happen.  It's a parent's worst nightmare.

On top of that, the family discovered little Emily's brain tumor while they were on vacation.  In order to keep Emily where she is to receive the best possible treatment, they've got to rent an apartment and live fourteen hours from home, on unpaid leave of absence from their work.

It blows my mind to imagine dealing with a seriously ill child.  But to have to worry about money - not just medical bills but the basic necessities of life - on top of that?  Unthinkable.

Please click through and read Emily's post about her friends and their beautiful little daughter.  And please, please, please, if you can possibly afford it, click the Donate button she's set up and give a little to help the
nightmare this family is going through be, at the very least, a slightly less stressful nightmare.

I'm going to be pinching my own pennies so that I can give as much as possible over the coming weeks.  Even more importantly, I'll be praying for little Emily and her parents and her doctors.  I hope you'll do it too.

And tomorrow when I'm stuck in the house with my blessedly healthy daughter, I'll be remembering how good I've got it.  You can bet I will.

So Random Your Head Will Spin

Bryan has been traveling a whole heap-load this year.  Thursday night he got back from yet another trip to DC, and Friday he called from work to inform me that he's got to go again next week.  Yippee.  This will be his seventh round-trip since January 1st, meaning he'll have made it halfway to special elite frequent-flier status IN THE FIRST QUARTER of the year.  He made the elite status in 2006, just barely, but it was no big deal then because the trips happened when I was pregnant and too busy getting our money's worth out of our Netflix subscription and deciding which of any number of completely disgusting foods was the least offensive at that exact moment to notice whether my husband was around or not.  Then in 2007 he did not have to travel all that much - only eight trips, and all after Camilla was six months old.  (I didn't remember exactly; I looked it up on his frequent flier account just now.  I do have a mind somewhat like a steel trap but I am not that crazy.)

Fortunately this coming time Camilla and I are probably going with Bryan.  I tell you what, I pray every day that Bryan's guardian angel does his job well because I am SO not cut out to be a single parent.  I love Camilla to pieces and we certainly have a very strong attachment, but if I don't get to hand her to her father when he walks in the door and go hide in the bathroom with my logic puzzle book for at least five minutes... well, I start to lose it a little bit.  Plus, our bedtime routine involves Bryan putting the baby down, so when he is not home and bedtime comes around she is all "Why are you messing with me?" and crawls around the bed refusing to go to sleep until I am ready to pull big chunks of my hair out and throw it at her.

Ahem.  So now that I've proven my eligibility for Mother of the Year, let's move on.

I think I mentioned a while back that I've finally found a hair stylist I like.  Anastasia is hilarious and not too much older than me although she does have four children, and our conversations are always awesome.  And even more importantly, she is uber-talented at what she does.

To refresh your memories, here is what my hair looked like before I shortened it (also, bonus of cute babies before they turned into hell-raising toddlers):

But since I hated the long and never wore it down, this is what it usually looked like:

Blech.  Blah.  Bliddly.  And all that.

Then I got it cut and also played with the color a bit, which is why I look vampire-ish here (photo weirdly cropped to exclude friend who wishes her picture not to appear on the Internet) (also, aforementioned hell-raising toddler: she looks so old!):

Pretty good.  I mean, I was generally happy with it, but it still allowed for my hair, which tends toward stringiness, to pop out the occasional string.  See over my left eye?  And there was no disguise for the dreaded baby bangs, which have been the bane of my hair existence since they made their appearance a year ago.

My stylist wasn't really aware that I was unhappy about these things, since she styled my hair beautifully using various styling products to hide the baby bangs and wasn't aware that I tucked it behind my ears, thus allowing the development of the strings.  However, this past visit I finally mentioned my grievances, and she stepped right up.

Bam!

Double bam!

Shorter pieces in front keep me from being tempted to tuck my hair, and my stylist also emphasized the importance of using plenty of hairspray (or "liquid texture" or whatever that stuff I have is called) which has helped.  Also, real bangs have made the baby bangs disappear!  Anastasia assures me that bangs are on the way back in, and I am choosing to believe her because, um, I have them now.  Too late to do anything about it if they're actually *so last year* or whatever.

Also, new color!  Banishment of the vampire!

Okay, enough about my hair.

Oh, actually, one more thing: Anastasia is a newly-single mother who is trying to build her hairstyling business from the ground up.  She is mondo-talented and her rates are very reasonable, so if you suspect you might live in my area and are looking for someone to cut your hair, drop me an email.  I love Anastasia and really want to help her out.

Speaking of helping out, Bryan has agreed to watch the Billa so that I can go to the library unencumbered.  This is a huge treat, especially since I gave up fiction for Lent and have not yet made a library trip since the dawning of glorious, glorious Easter.

Enjoy the end of the Octave and have a chocolate bunny for me!  I prefer dark, at least 60%, but you may eat whatever sort you want, because I am generous like that. 

Kisses.

Weird Eater

I am a lifelong Weird Eater.

I should mention right away that my parents are not to blame for this.  My mother has always provided her children with a variety of healthy food choices.  If you walked into her kitchen right now to make yourself some lunch, you'd have at least ten reasonable protein options, the makings of a wicked salad plus countless other fruits and vegetables, and all the tortillas/rice/crackers/cereal/homemade bread you could eat.  And Mom always encouraged us to eat a balanced diet.  In fact, when I was in elementary school I was the only kid I knew who had to follow a distinct set of guidelines in lunch-packing: a protein, a carbohydrate, a fruit, and a vegetable.  There was also a quarter taped to the outside of the bag with which to buy milk: no sugary "fruit drinks" for us.

I know my mother is reading this, so I feel compelled to confess that when I was in fourth grade there was this girl whose parents apparently didn't provide her with milk at home, and every day I would trade her my milk for her high-fructose-corn-syrupy artificially-flavored Hi-C or whatever it was.  Now you'd have to pay me to get me to drink one of those nasty things, but to a nine-year-old for whom Froot Loops and Mountain Dew were forbidden fruit, it tasted delicious.  Sorry, Mom!

Anyway, when I say I am a Weird Eater I don't actually mean that I am an unhealthy eater.  I have made my share of bad food choices in my life - like when I was in eighth grade and instead of packing a lunch, I saved my spare change and every day at noon I ate a bag of Lays Sour Cream and Onion potato chips and a can of orange juice from the Minute Maid vending machine.  Sorry again, Mom! - but these days I eat a fairly balanced diet.  I'm certainly not subsisting on French fries and Diet Coke over here, or anything.

No, what I mean by Weird Eater is that I have strange likes and dislikes, and strange methods of consuming food.  For example, when I was a child I used to eat mashed potatoes with my fingers.  But I didn't just scoop them into my mouth, I shaped them, using my fingers and my tongue, into specific shapes before actually eating them.  It was truly disgusting.  And in my pre-adolescence I went through a stage where I would eat my morning bowl of Kix one tiny sphere at a time.  I'd pop it into my mouth to wet it on the outside, then pull it out and squish it flat, then eat it, enjoying the juxtaposition of the slightly moist outside and the dry, crumby inside.  Of one single, centimeter-in-diameter Kix (Kik?).  I ate each bowl of cereal this way, and it took me over an hour to do it, which is why I got up at 5:30 every morning.

I always wanted an older brother, but it occurs to me that it's good I didn't have one, because he probably would have bopped me one.  And with very, very good reason.

Along with my horrendous food-consumption techniques, I was also a picky eater.  Apparently as a toddler I would eat anything, but that changed as I got older and when I was a child I would not eat the following items, except as well-disguised ingredients:

eggs
cheese
yogurt
butter
custard or pudding of any kind
olives
green peppers
pretty much any vegetable except carrots and peas, including
salad
fish, except under extreme duress

As an adult I will eat most of these things, although I still don't like yogurt/custard/pudding (it's a texture thing) and I consider green peppers to be The Devil's Own Peppers Which Poison All They Touch.  I can eat olives but wouldn't do so voluntarily, and I only like cheese and butter when they're melted and eggs when they're poached or fried. 

However, I will happily eat sushi and escargot, among other things, and will try almost anything unless I can tell by looking at it that the texture is going to gross me out (brains) (or headcheese) (or, okay, pretty much any offal).  Still, I don't consider myself an unusually picky eater.  I just happen to be picky about things that other people are not picky about, notably the cheese and butter.  When I was in high school I got major flack - my friends were such punks - for not liking cheese.  One friend in particular seemed personally offended that I could eschew the gelatinous dairy products most people love so much.  "It's un-American!" he told me.  And I got his point.  I like the idea of cheese, I really do, but unless it's hard enough to be crumbly, an actual piece of raw cheese is just... squishy and sticky and unappealing to me. 

Then there's the butter.  When I was a kid I would refuse to pass the butter at the dinner table because I didn't want to touch the dish and risk getting the tiniest bit of butter on my hand.  As an adult I realize that this was insane, but as a child my distaste was real and - I believed - sensible.  I mean, butter is solid fat!  It was only reasonable to be suspicious.  And although I've gotten over my irrational fear of it, I still would never spread butter on anything unless it was going to melt completely.  I know, it's weird, but it's me: Weird Eater.

What are your food hang-ups?

Easter Must Come

I don't believe I've ever blogged on the evening of Holy Thursday before ("Liveblogging the Triduum" seems strange somehow) but tonight I'm home with a sleeping Camilla - rather than at Eucharistic Adoration as was our pre-baby custom for this night - and I'm meditating and feeling like writing.  And where better to do it than here?

Holy Week has always been a powerful time for me, Holy Thursday and Good Friday especially.  The commemoration of the Last Supper and Our Lord's Crucifixion touches me in a way no other celebration of the liturgical year does. 

This is no accident, I am sure.  Jesus's Passion and its fulfillment in His Resurrection are the center of the Christian faith.  The Eucharist which He established at the Last Supper is the heart of His Church.  He came to earth specifically to accomplish our salvation by these means, and without His redeeming death and resurrection we as Christians would have no life within us, and nothing to celebrate.

But before we may celebrate the joy of Easter we must go through the agony of the Passion with Him.  This is the lesson that many Triduums, and that countless meditations on the sorrowful mysteries, have taught me.  I can't skip the painful glory of eating Christ's body and blood at his table.  I can't skip His struggle to bend His will to the Father's, can't skip the painful fact that the Father's answer to Jesus' desperate plea was "no," can't skip "Not my will but Thine be done."  I can't skip the betrayer's kiss, the arrest, the scourging, the endless excruciating Way of the Cross.  I can't skip the crucifixion itself: the mocking, the final cup drunk on the cross, the last breath, the soul rent violently from the body.  I can't skip the pain of the disciples at their Lord's death, and I can't skip their wait for his return.

I can't skip those things and claim with any right the joy of Easter.  Of course, I can't rightfully claim the joy of Easter by my own merits anyway: I am utterly unworthy to touch the hem of His cloak, let alone rejoice as His child at His Resurrection.  But if I don't commemorate this Triduum with my whole heart; if I don't embrace my cross, take it up and follow him, then I have not only proved that I am completely unworthy to rejoice in Easter, I have proved that I do not even desire to rejoice in it.

Being a Christian is a strange calling.  I must live the sorrow of this life, take up the crosses ordained for me, while rejoicing always in the truth that Christ has already conquered death, that He freely offers everything I need to become perfected and live in eternal happiness in union with God Himself.  The first is a grim, dirty reality; the second a glorious mystery so beyond my comprehension that I often find myself turning away from it, focusing instead on the grimness of the reality.

That is wrong, of course.  It is true - as I have realized countless times in the darkest moments of my life - that in Christ's Passion is the example I need for my own living here on earth.  But what is also true - and I am often too busy watching my own feet to see it - is that the Passion is fulfilled in the Resurrection, and therefore it is meaningless without the Resurrection.

Suffering has meaning.  This is true.  But I am often so focused on that fact that I forget why this is true.  In fact, suffering is not a good in itself; quite the opposite.  Just as Christ's suffering is an evil which attains meaning in the Resurrection, the suffering in my life is an evil which attains meaning in the good which results from it: my perfection.

I meditate on the mysteries of Our Lord's suffering and death, but I do so always with the knowledge that Easter is coming.  It is the light that makes the whole thing bearable.

In my own dark times, I often look forward to an Easter of my own imagining, some earthly thing in which I believe happiness lies.  So far, because of God's mercy to me, these Easters have always come, but each time I have found to my dismay that they are not Easters after all.  There is always something more I desire.

My own Easter will not really come until - God willing - I am ushered into His presence.  I must by His grace remember that, and remember to hope for it above all else.  Then as I take up my cross and follow Him my own life will become ever more a participation in His, and fit me for a new life in which I will participate eternally in His Life.

And if that motivation is what this Holy Thursday has to offer me, I'll take it.

A blessed Triduum to you all.  And when it is Easter: rejoice!

Breaking Out

We co-sleep with a crib-sidecar arrangement, so it's not safe for us to let Camilla be awake when she's alone in the bedroom during naps or before her parents come to bed at night.  Because of this, we helped her learn from an early age that if she fussed a little upon waking up, Mama or Daddy would appear immediately, so there was no need for her to go crawling around the bed endangering herself.  These days when we hear her awaken we go into the bedroom to find her sitting upright in the crib grumping about the amount of time she's being forced to wait.  Don't her lazy parents know she's been up for ten seconds already?  Whatever.  But at least she's not hell-bent on silently crawling to the edge of the bed and throwing herself over before we've even realized she's awake.

She generally cries noncommittally until she sees which parent shows up.  If it's me, she starts clamoring to nurse.  I always make her say please, mostly because there's nothing more adorable than a small groggy toddler saying "peez?" plaintively in the dark as she winds her arms around my neck.

Because we try to discourage too-frequent nighttime nursing, Bryan usually goes in to Milla, but the other night she awoke 9:30-ish and over the baby monitor - rather than her crying - I heard her asking to nurse.  This caught me off guard so I went to the bedroom right away.  She was sitting up in the crib, sure enough, but leaning over the monitor, speaking her request clearly to the glowing green light.  It was like she was at the Mama Drive-Thru, ordering her usual.

The girl knows what's up, is all I can say.

Speaking of darkness, isn't there anyone else out there who cheers when Daylight Savings Time comes around?  I love sleep as much as anyone and hate to lose an hour, but by the time I'm enjoying my extra hour of daylight on Sunday evening, I'm already happy about the change.  When Congress passed the bill last year extending DST, I was incredibly excited.  Actually, I don't see why we can't have it all the time.  Why not?  Our evenings would be so much lighter!

Of course, I'm guessing I'd feel differently about this if I had a baby who liked to get up at the crack of dawn (now an hour later than it was last week!) rather than my girl who sleeps in with me.  We slept until ten today, even though Milla went to bed at eight last night.  However, she's cutting another tooth and woke up approximately fourteen times in the night, so don't envy me!

Life has been good here at Chez ABC lately.  We've been out of town every other weekend for eight weeks, which takes its toll on my blogging, but we've had a lot of fun. 

I'm very proud of myself because I had a skiing breakthrough this past weekend.  The day we arrived up north, my sister and I were sitting in the lodge with the kiddos watching our husbands ski down a black-diamond hill on the front of the slope, one I'd never skied before because I was too scared.  And I realized: I can ski as well as my brother-in-law.  I had the skills to ski that hill.  The only difference between him and me was that he knew he could do it, while I thought I couldn't.

So the next morning I went out and did it.  I skied that hill three times, and it was no big deal.  I could have done it last year, or the year before; I just didn't have enough confidence in myself.

Later I told Bryan that my big black-diamond breakthrough had come while I was sitting in the lodge and he gave me the eye he always gives me when he thinks I'm being silly.  But I stand by my story.  And now I'm wondering what other things in my life I have the ability to be doing, but am missing out on because I don't have enough confidence in myself.  Can you all think of anything?  For me?  For yourselves?