Baby gift for Simcha Fisher!
I realize that it’s not very blogging-break-ish that I’m already back three days after the announcement, but this is for a good cause:
Simcha Fisher had her ninth baby this morning, a healthy baby girl weighing 8 lbs., 14 oz. (4.03 kg) and with the superhero name of Benedicta Maribel! A few folks have asked if there’s a way to give her a gift, so I thought I’d do a little online baby shower in the form of a PayPal button for those of you who’d like to join me in welcoming Miss Benedicta with a monetary gift to her parents:
A couple of notes:
- I’ll leave it open until next Friday, December 16.
- Other than PayPal’s nominal fee, 100% of donations will go the the Fisher family (i.e. there is no cut for the Jennifer Fulwiler Boxed Wine Fund).
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Simcha, allow me to use my encyclopedic knowledge of her body of work to give you a sample. I think she’s one of the funniest, most talented writers out there today, and posts like this are why:
I went out to buy a skirt:
First, I try to repair thirty-three years of dressing timidly…with a single purchase. I begin to hunt for something completely opposite from my usual taste, because, after all, this one needs to count! If I’m going to take the radical step of actually picking something out, instead of just mysteriously finding it in my closet, it might as well be interesting, right?
Bristling with confidence and imagination, I rapidly choose four shirts, two skirts, and even a dress, even though I’m still nursing the baby all the time. Everything I pick is clingy, ruffly, and has straps in unusual places. There are unexpected diagonals, and even patterns.
I beam at the attendant and proudly announce that I have seven items! She seems puzzled at my pride, but hands me a plastic “7″ tag. I step into the fitting room, with all the mirrors and lights, and I take off my clothes…
On CLF light bulbs:
Now, I understand that these bulbs are better for the environment, because they save energy. But this is only true for overhead bulbs, because my kids can’t reach them for smashing purposes. Any other bulb in any other light fixture at our house works out to be much, much worse for the environment. Here’s how:
MY KIDS: Ooh, a lamp! Let’s kick it until it’s dead!
LAMP: Smash.
ME: (lying on the couch dying with morning sickness): . . .I didn’t hear anything. . . [promptly manages to actually forget about everything]
LAMP: I guess I’ll just lie here and bleed poison all over your house, you dirty breeders.
KIDS: Yay, let’s throw stuff around!
HUSBAND: Hi, I’m home! Hey, there’s broken glass all over the room. There’s mercury mixed in with the six bags of winter clothes you were sorting, and it’s all over the portacrib. Okay, well, you lie there, I’ll take care of it.
Maternal guilt cheat sheet:
THE OFFENCE:
Realizing that, while your older kids could pretty much work for Catholic Answers as top level apologists, the younger ones are not quite up to speed, catechetically speaking. They are, for instance, under the impression that there are three Gods, one of whom is named “Jeremy.”THE SOLUTION:
Design a two-birds-with-one stone remedial curriculum in which — genius! — the older kids teach the younger kids their catechism, thereby educating the younger ones while giving the older ones the invaluable reinforcement of having to put their knowledge into words. If you are feeling especially ambitious, you might even make them do it, rather than just making a chart about it.Console yourself with the idea that the faith of converts is often so much more vibrant than that of cradle Catholics. Pray that your children will someday convert to Catholicism.
There are worse things than being hot:
This ungratifying system even works, in a feeble way, with a water slide (and the poor kids don’t even realize the water is supposed to be gushing out in a fabulous, fun-tastic wave of SplashAction! What it does is limply burble a little, and they pretend to be puppy dogs, and line up to take turns licking it. I know, I know. This is why I don’t put my last name).
Anyway, the catch is that, in order to get the water flowing down hill through the hose, you have to get all the air out of it.
Yep, pregnant lady stands in the back yard, in full view of the constant line of bored truckers who barrel past our house…suckin’ on a hose.
Evil always wants distance:
Evil always wants distance. But the Incarnate God did not come to us remotely, observing and supervising our salvation from on high. Instead, He came to us. He feeds us, He breathes on us, He makes a mixture of spit and mud and daubs it on our eyes so that we can see.
God always wants closeness. Not the false intimacy of sentimentality and pornography, not the shallow closeness of gratified desires — but the dogged intimacy that does not allow me to turn my face away when I am done.
God wants closeness. I do not say that closeness brings comfort: the closeness that love demands often leads to pain. Christ showed us the beauty of love when He became a man, and then the pain of love when He accepted the intimacy of nails through his hands. This is how we are made.
Making room for the baby (and The Baby):
I responded the same way I do every time I face this particular dilemma: I cried. I couldn’t help it. So much of managing a big family is making order out of chaos—not even making things clean, but just making cleaning possible. And despite the relative sanity of our lives these days, facts are facts: There is just no room. [...]
That’s my plan for Advent this year: making room where there is no room. I have a whole other person who needs space in our house, in our routine, in our lives. What to do? A fresh, breezy room full of spacious shelves and empty closets is not going to attach itself to our house overnight; and I will not become a flawless, holy, worthy receptacle for my savior, the Christ Child, when He comes. I can barely get through a Hail Mary without driving off the road from the sheer distraction, so what can I do to make some room?
Thanks in advance for any donations! And since I’m not on Facebook, if folks could share it there I’d appreciate it.
Blessed Advent!
Where I’m doing my Christmas shopping…
First of all, let me assure you that I did have this idea before I saw The Crescat doing the same thing. I mean, it is tempting to plagiarize all The Crescat’s posts, and my blog would be a lot better if I did, but I really was planning to highlight my favorite family-owned businesses before she did it first. Anyway, be sure to check out her post too.
Without further ado, here are some of my favorite small businesses that have wonderful products. I have either personally done business with all of them, or have heard good things from people who have. And I haven’t received any compensation for promoting these businesses — I just like them.
Faith Calendars
I love, love, love my Catholic day planner I got from them, and use it every day.
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Saintly Sisters
I’m so excited about getting one of these for my girls this Christmas. I just can’t decide between the Sisters of Life doll and the Dominican Sisters one.
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Axis Mundi
I want one of everything at the Axis Mundi Esty store. It’s some of the prettiest jewelry I’ve seen, and so the fact that much of it is faith-based is a great bonus!
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Monastery Greetings
One of my favorite thank-you gifts is to send someone a box of dark chocolate made by Cistercian nuns, but Monastery Greetings has tons of other products made my convents and monasteries as well.
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Mystic Monk Coffee
In addition to their delicious coffee, the Carmelite Monks behind Mystic Monk Coffee also make yummy, gift-worthy treats like chocolate-covered espresso beans and chocolate-covered caramels.
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Trendy Traditions
The customer service at Trendy Traditions is as great as their products — love this shop for rosaries and other customized religious gifts.
I’m sure I’m going to think of some great ones I forgot as soon as I hit Publish, but these are some favorite stores I thought of off the top of my head. Feel free to promote other small businesses in the comments!
The month in pictures
Between Halloween, All Saint’s Day Mass and the John Paul II Center benefit dinner last night, I don’t have time to write anything today. So how about some pictures from October?
The Texas Alliance for Life benefit dinner was a highlight. There was a huge turnout, and Lila Rose gave a fascinating speech about her history of pro-life work. (That’s Abby Johnson introducing her in the picture below.)
Pretty much everyone we knew was there. I sat at a table with some good friends from our parish.
After the event wrapped up, some of us relocated to the bar to continue the evening. I enjoyed chatting with Elizabeth Lange, the Development Director for the Catholic Center at the University of Texas; Elizabeth McClung of the Austin Coalition for Life; Live Action blogger Jewels Green; and Unplanned author Abby Johnson.
I also loved talking with author Kris Detrow (on the right, with Jewels Green on the left). There was a crazy woman in the background, but we had her escorted out by security.
Just to make sure the craziness reached epic levels, it just so happened that that was also my day to cook for our priests as part of our parish meal ministry. To make things easy, I got them some meals from this local place called Mel’s Meals, where they make fresh, healthy, homecooked meals for delivery. (The stuffed dates are my new favorite dessert.)
Fall is the tail end of our long birthday season around here. My 97-year-old grandfather isn’t able to get out to do shopping, so he made my daughter a batch of mini cookies using a recipe he created himself.
The kids loved them, of course, and it was so nice for him to have a way to give back.
Then Monday was Halloween. We carved a pumpkin using a kit with a design template, and I was amazed at how well it turned out!
I forgot to do anything about a costume, so I went with my old standby: Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction. All it requires is a white shirt, black pants, and a black wig, so it’s perfect for me. Not nearly as creative as my neighbor the cowgirl.
My husband got out his favorite costume, of course. Only he was too tired to do it right: He didn’t feel like finding his black turtleneck and long black pants to complete the look, and kind of slacked off with the stuffing that makes the fabric smooth. I warned him that nobody would take him seriously.
(By the way, this is exactly why I don’t usually use his first name on the blog: It’s slightly disconcerting to clients when they Google their attorney’s name and see pictures of him dressed up like a giant banana.)
I can’t believe November is already here! I hope you had a great October as well.
Getting older…getting younger
This post was originally published on April 9, 2008.
My husband and I came across some old photos the other day. It was fun to take a trip down memory lane as we glanced through our pictures from a 2003 vacation, but I was surprisingly caught off guard when he made the passing comment, “We look a lot younger there!” We happened to be looking at a photo of me, and my initial reaction was to think:
I was younger there?
I did a quick double-take and noticed that I was indeed chronologically less old when I stood on that street in Prague. Yes, of course, what was I thinking? This photo was taken five years ago. I was not only younger, but also a few pounds lighter and more “carefree” with fewer responsibilities. And yet, the picture registered as if I were looking at a picture of an older, heavier, more burdened version of myself. How could it be, I wondered, that I could be five years older, fifteen pounds heavier, and have all the responsibilities of a wife and mother who just had her third baby in three years, yet look at this old picture and feel younger, lighter, and more free now than I did then? The one-word answer is this:
God.
Here’s the longer answer:
Sometimes I come across old pictures that bring back memories of times of difficulty; usually, as was the case with our 2003 vacation photos, old pictures bring back memories of laughter and love and good friends and good times. But one universal feeling I have when I look at photos from more than a couple years ago, no matter whether they were taken in times of challenge or joy, is a sense that this picture was taken in the wilderness. It’s a sense that, regardless of the actual location of the photo, I was standing in a no-man’s-land of trouble and even danger; that, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was carrying burdens I didn’t need to carry and wandering directionless across rough terrain when there was a marked path waiting for me. To the girl looking back at the camera, I feel like calling out to her, “Hang in there!”
In the past couple of years since the beginning of my conversion I’ve gotten a couple more wrinkles, some new gray hairs, and am starting to feel some aches and pains that weren’t there before. Technically, I’ve gotten older. But I’ve also come to believe in God, and have begun to understand that my only purpose here is to know, love and serve him. And if to be younger is to be more full of life, more willing to love, less burdened by cares and worries, and somehow closer to the beginning of it all, then I am younger now than ever before.