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Scattergories Meme

I picked this up at A Catholic Harvest, and since the kids and I often enjoy a good game of Scattergories, thought it sounded fun.

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following...They MUST be real places, names, things...NOTHING made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the Person before you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question. Now Go!

Your Name: Christina

1. Famous singer/band: Charlotte Church

2. 4 letter word: Chip

3. Street name: Cherry

4. Color: Carnation Pink

5. Gifts/presents: Cookies 'n' Creme Hershey Bar (from my daughter yesterday!)

6. Vehicle: Chevy

7. Items on a menu: Crabs Legs

8. Boy Name: Charles

9. Girl Name: Corinne

10. Movie Title: Chicago

11. Drink: Cola

12. Occupation: Cashier

13. Flower: Chive (really -- they're quite pretty in bloom)

14. Magazine: Chili Pepper

15. US City: Charleston

16. Pro Sports Team: Cubs

17. Reason for Being Late for Work: Car broke down

18. Something U Throw Away: crumbs

19. Things you shout: Cheese! (when posing for a picture)

20. Cartoon Character: Cinderella

Tagged: whoever wants to, just mention it in the comments.

Faith moves mountains again

This time it was the mountain of my own hardness. I owe a debt to BusyBeeMama for inspiring me. With all the hormones raging, with the depression issues only mostly under control, I find myself self-pitying sometimes. I've recently rehashed in my mind hurts that I received one and two years ago; I've looked at my situation in my town and parish, and wondered why I'm here, and if I've made any progress at all in making this my home. And then I found Busy Bee Mama, whose blog shows one post after another of the kind of strength, faith, and grace I want to emulate.

I am grateful to this person I do not know. I doubt she realizes how her faith spreads healing, even among strangers.

Note to Monkeytot

As a general rule, pouring Kix on the floor, stepping on them, and licking your feet is not considered an ideal way to eat. Would you consider a bowl?

Don't stand too close to Rudy!

I know, the video is everywhere by now... but worthily so.



I don't know about you, but I think I'll keep my distance from this man when he speaks!

There was an old lady who lived in a shoe

Very old, to hear my doctor talk.

I had my first OB appointment yesterday afternoon, and got the litany of risks, most of them age related. "You do realize that there's a drastic increase in the chances of having a Down Syndrome child because of your age?" Yes. "As much as 1 in 260." Yes. "There is also an increased risk of other genetic problems. Are there are any genetic or congenital conditions in your family?" Tourettes, Autism, Aspergers. (Scribble, scribble.) "Is there any diabetes in your family?" Yes. "Who?" I list various family branches and relationships. (Scribble, scribble.) "Do you remember the weights of your previous children?" Yes. 8-12, 7, 7, 8-14, "8-14? David, right? Are you sure?" Yes. (Thoughtful look.) 10-6 1/2. (Scribble, scribble.)

Then the lecture about what to expect. High risk pregnancy, watching it more closely, especially after 30 weeks... if there are any problems I get referred to an OB (my doctor is in family practice), am I sure I don't have any particular worries about this one? Do I want genetic testing? Do I want genetic counseling?

The end conclusion is that the doctor is more worried than I am. I'm less than two years older than I was when the last pregnancy began, and I have no reason to think that 40 is some magic cutoff line between a healthy and an unhealthy pregnancy. I'm marginally older, and I believe I have marginally more risk. Frankly I'm more concerned with the risk of an upcoming c-section than I am with the risk of a baby with problems.

I'm also not terribly concerned that someone -- even a doctor -- think I'm old.

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
(William Butler Yeats)

My love has not fled. How can I be truly old?

Last Night's Dinner

Sorry, please excuse me, but I just feel this need to gush. I was so very pleased yesterday evening.

Two of my kids made dinner. The 18 year old boy made better-than-ordinary grilled cheese sandwiches (with good, 12 grain bread, fresh tomato slices, and a variety of tasty cheeses), and helped me pick out salad ingredients. The 11 year old girl also helped with salad ingredients and made the salad. They were both really good. After dinner, the 16 year old girl made dessert, strawberry cheesecake bagles.

The salad had ordinary bagged salad mix, to which we added mushrooms, grapes, mustard greens, sugar snap peas, green onions, garlic greens, and celery. The exciting part is that the mustard greens, sugar snap peas, green onions, and garlic greens came out of our garden.

For dessert, we found something we'd never seen before: a tub of ready-to-eat cheesecake filling. We put that on blueberry bagles, and sliced our home-grown strawberries on top.

I just can't say enough what a thrill it is: It isn't even summer yet, and already we're loading our table with homegrown goodies. In another few weeks we'll be adding to the strawberries, snap peas, onions, garlic, and mustard greens with three kinds of peppers (from very hot to very mild) and more than half a dozen kinds of tomatoes.

It's hard to see a garden and not stop to give thanks. God is a generous Lord!

That New Pill

I don't know how many times I would have jumped at the idea, when I was younger, to take a pill to make my periods go away. Now that I'm older, they've come out with such a pill (a contraceptive) and I'm less enthusiastic. In fact, I'm a little worried. I know everyone has already hashed out the contraceptive arguments, so I think I'll gloss by those for now, not wanting to repeat what has already been said. What I really want to say is that there is a whole list of reasons that taking a pill to stop your periods sounds like a bad idea.

1. The pill is a contraceptive. Every contraceptive method has a failure rate, and the most common way of knowing when a contraceptive has failed is by a missed period. A woman on this pill may go a long time before she realizes she's pregnant. In the meantime, she is not getting prenatal care, she is not likely to know her due date, and the pills may be harming her unborn child. Where a chance of pregnancy exists, the idea of eliminating the most common method of pregnancy detection seems at least unwise.

2. The period exists for a reason. It is not an illness to be corrected, and in fact for a reproductive age woman not to have them can cause health problems. Especially if the body thinks it is pregnant (which is how this and other typical birth control pills work), the endometrium lines the uterus for implantation and nutrition. Without periods, this endometrial lining cannot wash itself out and refresh. I very seriously doubt that the long term effects (like 5-20 years) of this pill on the endometrium and uterus have been fully tested. I have a strong suspicion that in a decade we'll be seeing a whole lot more Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and bacterial infections, as well as damage to the uterine wall from old endometrial tissue.

3. Most women who go on hormonal contraceptives want to have babies someday. Again, I doubt sufficient testing on long-term use and future fertility.

If anyone knows of any studies on the long term repercussions of this pill, I would be grateful if you could point me to them.

Note to Monkeytot

You are not two yet. Get up off the floor and stop screaming.

The Library and the Bookstack

I know bloggers: both the readers and the writers tend to be book people. "Other" people have a bookshelf, maybe a bookcase. Book people run out of wall space for their bookcases. They have a basket of books and magazines on the back of the toilet, and a short stack of books lying on the end table. The bigger stack on the nightstand needs sorting, because too many books have been begun and not yet finished.

There's the library, that delightful gallery and marketplace you browse through as you drink your coffee in the morning. You gaze at title upon title and muse about when you will read this and why you should read that. It's the eleven year old's candy store. You look and look, but you really only have the ability to choose one or maybe two at a time.

Then there's the stack.

The stack is the nitty gritty, the true love for the book lover. The stack is what you actually begin to read, maybe sink yourself into with passion or muck yourself through with duty. The stack is the stuff that, after hours of gazing at a bookstore or your own bookcases, you actually chose to pick up. When you had to narrow your selection, the stack was what you couldn't resist.

The stack says something about you. It says what you enjoy, or what you value. Sometimes it says where you place your sense of duty. Even the size of the stack makes a statement about you: are you realistic, or a dreamer? Do you finish what you start?

Around the blogosphere, you see a lot of "What I'm Reading" sidebars. I'm finally going to jump on the train... as soon as Blogger fixes the problem that is making it impossible to make changes to the template. I'd love to know what you're reading, too.