tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58080831136974297622024-03-13T15:41:25.862-07:00sweet beneath the leafMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-74805816388202913462015-04-28T11:51:00.002-07:002015-04-28T11:51:23.730-07:00bloggingI haven't been.<br />
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Long stretches of time are not to be found hanging on trees, so I have to hunt for them. But there are a lot of things that I need that time to pursue with intention, like friendships that need upkeep with emails and phone calls, books to read, an almost-one-year-old little boy who needs some real attention (and not just my distracted presence,) kitchen projects that require slightly more ambition than pasta, etc. I'm hoping to pick up iconography again, at least for long enough to start and finish an icon of St. Matthew for my husband, who has been waiting so patiently for three years. All of this with less energy to spread around, due to pregnancy #2 (which is going fine.)<br />
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And telling you what I think in this public fashion is not on the top of my list right now. I miss it, and I think when I look back, I might be sad that there's not much of a record of this time in my life, but then again maybe I won't. I write little nuggets in my pretty planner from the National Gallery (mostly about my son,) and perhaps flipping through that will spark my memory. It won't be as thorough a record of my dreams and thoughts as you might find on some stretches of this blog, but that's okay. Some of my dreams and thoughts are just in there too deep for me to dig out for display to all.<br />
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<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-58629626230992211262015-03-06T07:27:00.001-08:002015-03-06T07:27:18.962-08:00Za'atar breadOnce again thanks to Bint Rhoda, we have added a marvelous Arabic dish to our rotation: <a href="http://bintrhodaskitchen.blogspot.com/2013/04/zaatar-bread-or-manaeesh.html">Za'atar bread</a>. We have been making it (three days in a row) with naan from Costco. Za'atar is a Middle Eastern spice mix that really jazzes things up. It's made with thyme, ground hyssop, and sesame seeds, and has a savory, slightly tart flavor. It might sound exotic but my za'atar bread got rave reviews from a picky old guy with very vanilla tastes, so don't be afraid of it. I had been thinking about ordering some za'atar online to stock my Middle Eastern pantry, but on the way back from an appointment with my midwife, I passed a Middle Eastern grocery and did a u-turn to dash in for some za'atar.<br />
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I asked the nice Iranian lady, "Hi, do you have any... za'atar?"<br />"What?"<br />"Um... Za'atar?"<br />"What?"<br />"You know, it's a spice blend with thyme, sesame, and sumac...." (I fumbled on that one.)<br />"Oh, <i>Za'atar</i>! It's over here."<br /><br />Every time! <br />
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So check out za'atar bread. It is quite a treat, especially if you can find some good tomatoes and cucumbers to fold up inside. (I usually don't buy tomatoes this time of year, but found some good ones at Costco.) It's one Lenten (+ oil) dish that I can't imagine improving with any animal products. That is saying something. Buy your za'atar online at Penzey's if you don't live in a cosmopolitan area like Northern Virginia. <br />
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<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-22478603353810355252015-02-25T08:08:00.000-08:002015-02-25T08:08:08.090-08:00Blessed Lentils to youHere we are again. You're probably about to eat a lot of lentils! Here are some delicious ways to do that.<br />
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<a href="http://bintrhodaskitchen.blogspot.com/2013/01/lentil-rice-pilaf-or-mujjadara.html">Mujjadara</a> is an old standby for us. I had never heard of it until I married Matt. He grew up in an Antiochian church that was 90% Arabs, and this was a popular dish during Lent. The cute little family story I always heard was that his mom was crazy about it and used to call it "mmmmjjadara," but he and his sister called it "yukjjadara." Probably because his mom burnt the onions (on purpose... a strange Lenten craving.) When he told me about it I was intrigued, and just looked up how to make it. My first few attempts were terrible and indeed, worthy of the name "Yukjjadara." The recipes weren't very good, I guess. I always had a hard time getting the lentils and rice to cook evenly. But when I finally found Bint Rhoda's recipe above, it was perfect the first time. Soaking the rice is imperative! <br /><br />It's a very inexpensive dish except for the gallons of olive oil that you should use (I go cheap... Trader Giotto's lowest quality.) The only tedious part is chopping the onions. If you want to make it more of a one-pot meal, you can add some other finely chopped veggies like cabbage or cauliflower. I don't know if that would be strictly authentic, but those vegetables are common in Arabic cooking, so I don't think it's too kooky, and whatever, it's Lent, and you're hungry. This dish is extremely filling and satisfying.<br />
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Last week I decided to soak a bag of lentils and cook from it for a while. The first thing that I made was this awesome <a href="http://chocolateandzucchini.com/recipes/soups/butternut-squash-and-lentil-soup-recipe/">Butternut Squash and Lentil Soup</a> . I used half of a kabocha squash that I already had prepared and otherwise followed the recipe, except that I omitted fennel seeds as I didn't have any. I also used a potato masher to squash the squash a bit, making the soup a little thicker. It's sweet, smooth, and hits the spot on a cold day.<br />
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Next, I lazily left the rest of the lentils on the counter and found the next day that they had sprouted a little bit. I decided to take advantage of God's gift to procrastinators and kept rinsing and draining the lentils throughout the day until I had some pretty nice sprouts going. I found a recipe for a <a href="http://gnowfglins.com/2010/05/27/3-dishes-from-sprouted-lentils/">cold sprouted lentil salad here</a> and as I chopped veggies and doused with oil, I hummed happily to myself, thinking how good it was going to be and how I was going to write this blog post on the subject of Lenten lentil dishes. But the joke was on me when I found the salad utterly horrible and could not finish it without adding sour cream and ground beef. Matt, who is not breastfeeding and pregnant, said he thought it was okay by itself and bravely finished the bowl.<br />
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Finally, I fried the rest of the sprouted lentils with onions, garlic, and cabbage, along the lines of the second recipe on that page. I had a few marvelous tacos with this stuff and one quesadilla. I recommend the taco treatment for fasters (salsa, avocado, cilantro, lime, maybe some rice?). The lentils have a fresh flavor, but also enough savory chewiness to work in the taco setting. I won't say <i>They taste exactly like carne asada!</i> but they are still good.<br />
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It's a good strategy. Have a bowl of sprouting lentils and a bowl of soaking grains (like rice, kamut, barley, or wheat berries) on your counter at all times, and <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/the-pot-and-how-to-use-it">with the help of a rice cooker</a>, you'll probably be able to come up with healthy Lenten meals with a minimum of planning and active prep. <br />
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Now I miss my big bowl of sprouted lentils. Matt got a little tired
of hearing "Well, there's lentils..." every time he was hungry. But I'll give him a little break and try again next week.MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-30816673850207701782015-02-17T07:56:00.000-08:002015-02-17T07:56:17.469-08:00Some good things.<a href="http://www.thefoodofmypeople.com/">The Food of My People is my favorite food blog</a>. We need more food blogs like <i>that</i>, and <a href="http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/">fewer food blogs like <i>this.</i></a> (Oh my goodness, I see that she has her own show on the Food Network now.) TFOMP's recipes are not really easy to follow, because they are written in a narrative form, and there are no pictures, and he's religious about ingredients. But you will enjoy reading his recipes, if you are a certain kind of person like me, and you may learn something. I won't go so far as to say that I <i>made</i> his <a href="http://www.thefoodofmypeople.com/2015/02/blog-twenty-sixth-cauliflower-pasta-two.html">Cauliflower and Pasta Soup</a>, because I included a few abominations. But I wouldn't have made the cauliflower and pasta soup that I did, which was very good, if I hadn't read his "recipe."<br />
<a href="http://bintrhodaskitchen.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-to-stock-middle-eastern-pantry.html"><br /></a>
<a href="http://bintrhodaskitchen.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-to-stock-middle-eastern-pantry.html">Bint Rhoda's Kitchen</a> is my second favorite food blog. Well, maybe it's my favorite functional food blog with actual recipes and photographs and stuff. She's a Palestinian native who rediscovered her heritage in the kitchen when she got into Weston A. Price Foundation methods, which she realized were there all along in the way that her mother and grandmother cooked. She's the only WAPF blogger that I really read anymore, because the rest are just so shrill. I've become a little dissatisfied with this desire of most of the Nourishing Nazis to get back to Traditional Ways of preparing food, but with a typical American vagueness about where those traditions are to be found. It's a little like American converts trying to do Orthodoxy without any contact with Old World Orthodox. You can get it technically correct but there's just something a little off about it, because there's no contact with that living river of tradition. Same with food. You really have to feel sorry for us, because we <i>wish </i>we had Serbian or Korean or Israeli grannies who taught us how to ferment things and rapped our knuckles when we nicked sarmali/malfouf/halupkis before dinner, but unfortunately our grandmothers were very excited about microwaves. (I don't blame them.) Anyway, Bint Rhoda is a refreshingly authentic and positive source of recipes that are part of a continuing culture. Plus, she seems like a very sweet person.<br />
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The post I linked to above is about stocking a Middle Eastern kitchen. She says that it's easiest just to pick one cuisine and stock for that. I agree, but what would we choose? The strongest ethnic identity in our family comes from Matt's Armenian grandfather, but he didn't cook. I suppose if I had to choose one regional cuisine to cook exclusively, it would be a toss-up between Middle Eastern and Eastern European. Matt is not as big of a fan of beets and pickles as I am, so I suppose it would fall to Middle Eastern in the end. There's a good variety of fasting and feasting food, and with a few extra spices we could slide over into Greek cuisine too. <br />
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GZT shared <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXTcJaI4tv0">this recording of Martynov's Beatitudes</a> in a comment and I am for some reason not able to reply, so I'm replying by sharing it with everyone here, because it's very nice. I discovered the arrangement when I somehow stumbled upon <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzqjhC2OYnM">this recording</a> by the Russian folk vocal group Sirin. I think I still prefer Sirin's version, just because the voices are a little sweeter, but that's just me. Wouldn't it be lovely to arrange it in English and sing it in church? Wait, scratch that. I'm sure the translation would be awkward, actually, and a five minute version of the Beatitudes would require a lot of standing around by clergy and acolytes either before or during the Little Entrance. Better to just learn the Slavonic and sing it to my baby. Matt can sing second soprano. Teehee.<br />
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One other thing. I'm reading <i>Kristin</i> <i>Lavransdatter</i> again, just like everybody else in the world, apparently. I recommended it to a friend and when she talked about how much she liked it, I thought "Yeah! It's great!" and picked it up again. Then my sister-in-law said she was reading it and apparently so is Anna of <a href="http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthogals/">Orthogals </a>fame. Something in the weather I guess. Anyway, it definitely holds up on a second reading, especially after a few more years of marriage and having a child! I was full of dread during the entire first book, thinking, <i>Maybe she won't make all these terrible choices this time....</i> but she went and did it again.MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-71966070622520381882015-02-09T19:02:00.000-08:002015-02-09T19:02:08.694-08:00First post on new blogI've started writing in my new blog about learning and teaching Greek. It isn't very fancy! But here you are.<br />
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http://barbariansguide.blogspot.comMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-23317868827645555262015-02-03T15:31:00.002-08:002015-02-03T15:31:43.380-08:00wintrovertedHaven't posted in a long time because I've been feeling wintroverted. Also because I'm pregnant and I didn't want to say anything yet, but most of what I felt like saying had something to do with that.<br />
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Dumped FB the other day so that I can spend Lent (slash the rest of my life???????) studying Greek, praying the <i>Akathist to the Mother of God, Nurturer of Naughty Little Babies, </i>and just being in my real life more. Also I need to find an absurdly cheap 2 bedroom apartment for us to move into in the next six months.<br />
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Me: Hi, I'd like to find an apartment in the D.C. area.<br />
Apartment finding lady: Cool, what's your price range?<br />Me: <i>(highballing) </i>About $1200?<br />
Apartment finding lady: Okay, are you looking for a studio then?<br />Me: Um... how about two bedrooms?<br />
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Matt reads a chapter of the Bible to us every morning (that's all Squirmy can handle) and we've started reading it in the Septuagint too. I stumble through guessing based on what I remember from the story and he helps with grammar. It's a good way to learn. Of course, I remember a lot from school and I have a very knowledgeable fellow at my elbow, so I can't recommend it to anyone starting cold. But materials need to be prepared for people to be able to do such a thing on their own. <a href="https://theamericanscholar.org/the-new-old-way-of-learning-languages/#.VNFZny5r1yg">This article</a> got Matt and me hooked on interlinear preparations for teaching classical languages. Check it out because I have to go chase my baby away from the stairs again.MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-2461732135736221292014-12-08T19:18:00.000-08:002014-12-08T19:18:10.192-08:00for the record...My six month old son is having some sleep problems; therefore, so too my husband and I are having some sleep problems.<br />
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He's in a crib with one open side, jammed next to our bed. I give him a bath, say prayers and nurse him down between 6 and 6:45. He usually goes to sleep pretty well, and stays asleep until 10 or 11. He wakes up, I nurse him again, and he goes back to sleep until midnight or so. From then on he's waking up every couple of hours, if not more frenquently, only going to sleep again when nursing. He wakes up pretty much for good around 6 and kind of plays by himself in bed if we're still asleep. That part seems fine since I put him to bed about 12 hours earlier. It's just the stuff in between that kills me.<br />
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He does not transfer well from the bed where I nurse him to his crib. Part of that is probably the feeling of the cold crib blanket on his face; sometimes if I lift him up with blanket where we were nursing underneath his body and face, he makes the transfer.<br />
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So I think we have two problems. The first is that he can only go to sleep while nursing. The second is that he wakes up when I put him in his crib. That is as far as my analysis has gotten. Another possible problem is that we are waking him up with our movements (the feeling is definitely mutual,) but we don't have another place to put the crib.<br />
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We tried the Ferber thing for a while, where you let them cry (not scream) for about five minutes, and then go and comfort them with singing or back patting, but not holding or nursing, for a couple minutes, and continue that until they learn that all they get out of crying is a pat on the back. That seemed like it was working for the initial bedtime, but then he would wake up every hour after that until we went to bed, as if he were only sleeping rather grudgingly. (We're sort of in the middle of one of these struggles as I'm writing this.)<br />
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Then we felt terrible and concluded that Dr. Sears was right all along and we should just go with our instincts, which tell us (me at least) to nurse and soothe your poor little baby when he cries, not to ignore him. That feels right in my gut, but I don't know that guts are the only decision-making facuties to employ in parenting. Dr. Sears doesn't really have any answers as to how to stop co-sleeping. Surely after eight or nine kids he should have something to say about that.<br />
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Also, eff Facebook again, I'm so over it. Ain't nobody got time for that. That's my new catchphrase (although it's from an old meme,) and I use it in response to almost everything that isn't essential to loving and taking care of the people I'm responsible for right now. Ain't nobody got time for that.MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-4259081174204329902014-12-03T09:35:00.000-08:002014-12-03T09:35:09.795-08:00New blog ideaSometime a couple of weeks ago I decided that I'd like to start learning Greek again. I studied Attic and Homeric Greek for a year and a half in college, a million years ago, and have made a few sallies in relearning it since then. Matt has kept up with it fabulously and is able to read Plato pretty well now without prohibitive labor, and I am jealous. I'd say I stayed more familiar with it than most of my classmates because right when we stopped studying Greek, I became Orthodox, so it's remained important to me, and I still know enough to make it worthwhile to look up Bible verses and stuff. But my ability to actually read it is long gone.<br />
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I asked myself how this attempt to study Greek again would be different from other unsuccessful resolutions, and somehow I came up with the idea that I should blog about it. After about a week and a half of thinking about it and talking to Matt and my best friend (who was a classics major at Reed after transferring from SJC) about it, I decided that this is what I'm going to do. <br /><br />I'm going to basically pretend that I'm teaching a class in New Testament Greek. I found it very easy to learn Latin by teaching it for two years; the onus of explanation kept me accountable to really understand what I was learning and the schedule kept me on track. I've thought for years that I'd like to be able to teach Greek to our kids, and perhaps to teach it in a school or co-op someday as well. Now seems like a good time to develop the material for a course.<br />
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After studying Greek and French at SJC, and developing courses in Latin and Greek at the Orthodox school, Matt and I have come to believe that the best way to learn a classical language is through a mix of deductive and inductive approaches. A deductive study of a language consists in learning the grammar and vocabulary by memorization and exercises. It usually proceeds in a cumulative fashion, and seeks to eventually provide mastery of all the grammatical forms and concepts of the language. One practices reading the language by translating sentences that are written using only forms and vocabulary that have already been convered. It is thorough, but it is boring.<br />
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The inductive approach is to simply jump in clutching a dictionary and start reading, largely without understanding at first, but slowly amassing vocabulary and a working knowledge of the way the language works. <br /><br />Our favorite way of teaching is to introduce the grammatical forms systematically as in a deductive approach, but to always spend part of the class reading an original text in the target language (we liked using Aesop's <i>Fables</i>, Xenophon's <i>Anabasis</i>, daily gospel readings in Greek and the Latin Vulgate, and Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i>.) We give the students some of the vocabulary words, expecting them to figure some recognizable things out for themselves, and point out the grammatical forms that they recognize. As we continue, we give them less and less help, and they see the forms they're mastering in action.<br />
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In order to teach in this way, the teacher has to have enough knowledge of the language to be able to pick out the forms and vocabulary to be given, and has to be a savvy enough translator to guide the students in their own translation. It doesn't require perfect fluency and expertise, but I think it would be hard for an inexperienced scholar and teacher to prepare this material themselves.<br />
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So that is where my blog comes in. I will be studying Greek using a textbook (probably the very thorough Hansen & Quinn, although I might look for one specific to koine Greek,) and explain the grammar concepts in my blog posts, as if I were to teach them to another adult, who would in turn teach them to their students. I will also post a portion of some Greek text every day (or with some degree of regular frequency,) with glossary and grammar help appropriate to the level that we've attained in our deductive grammar study. I'm leaning towards using the Acts of the Apostles, since as Matt said, reading the Gospels is just a little too much like looking straight into the sun. <br /><br />The goal is to amass enough material, written at the right level for a reasonably clever and motivated teacher or parent to be able to teach New Testament Greek to their students, with the goal in mind of being able to read the New Testament without much help by the end of a year or something. Ultimately perhaps I will turn it into a curriculum for Orthodox schools. That's a long way off but I want to keep that in mind so that I can be organized as I go along.<br />
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I won't start until January, because the Greek books are at my parents' house in Indiana. But I just wanted to let you know that I'm thinking about it. Any ideas? How about a name for the blog?MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-18830076928221321642014-11-19T21:01:00.001-08:002014-11-19T21:01:28.104-08:00my days are okay.So for some reason, I just have this constant anxiety that I'm not living a beautiful wholesome life every minute of the day. I live most of my life like <i>assuming</i> that I am falling far short of the habits of a virtuous thinker/wife/Christian/mom/whatever else I am, and then spending a lot of energy trying to plan how I can do better. For some reason tonight, when I was reading a blog about unschooling (an annoying term that means way too many things to be helpful,) a light flashed in my mind, or the winds changed or something. I realized that I do what I want to do and what I can do and most of this stuff is totally fine.<br />
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Just as I wrote that, my husband, out of nowhere, looked at me and said, in a surfer voice, "I think you need to <i>squarely</i> confront Heidegger." Shut up, that's not what this post is about!<br />
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Here are the things I usually do, basically in order.<br />
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<ul>
<li>Wake up and wrassle around in bed with my baby in an affectionate manner; change his diaper etc</li>
<li>Stare off into space and think about what's going to happen today while I smell Matt's coffee and wait for him to be done translating Plato or whatever he does so that I can...</li>
<li>Hold the cooing baby while Matt says prayers and reads the Bible</li>
<li>Tidy the kitchen and make breakfast and prep for later meals and make bread</li>
<li>Put the baby down for a nap</li>
<li>Sometimes nap with the baby, sometimes check in with our guy upstairs to talk about work or help him with computer stuff, sometimes make my coffee (which takes a long time because we use the Melitta pour over method) and do work (which is now the fun job of writing!), or drink coffee and read things on the internet or write in my blog or write emails</li>
<li>Go on a long walk with Matt and the baby</li>
<li>Make and eat lunch</li>
<li>Attend to grownup crap if I have to, like things where you have to look at the calendar and maybe get out the folder of boring documents and sigh because it's not really that convenient to do everything online</li>
<li>More working or reading stuff on the internet or petty household concerns while baby naps, playing with him as much as I can when he's not napping</li>
<li>Sometimes I go to the store and usually have fun; I drive to Trader Joe's and listen to NPR or church music or nothing, and I walk about a mile each way to the organic grocery store</li>
<li>Give the baby a bath (his favorite bathtime game right now is called "Clutching my junk and splashing disastrously with the other hand") and say night time prayers with him (Matt is usually at school)</li>
<li>Put him to bed and fret about whether I should let him cry or not</li>
<li>Read a book or blogs or write in my journal about what the baby's up to</li>
<li>Throughout the day, talking on the phone and texting with my sister-in-law (who was my friend before I met Matt and has a two year old,) my BFF (in whose grandpa's house we live,) and a good friend from college who came back into my life when she got pregnant (and had a baby last month!)</li>
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So what else do I think I should be doing? Iconography is not happening right now, I have accepted that. I could read more, but why should I read more than I feel like reading right now? I guess the one thing that annoys me is how much time I spend looking at the iPad. I use it for work, but you know how life is these days. All your crap is on the computer. What time is the store open? When are my library books due? How far is it to Maine from here again? Is there a liturgy on such and such a day? How do you make banana bread that isn't weird Sally Fallon bread? Etc. But I can't really help that. I don't rush to the computer for every single thing. It's ok.<br />
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Now I look at the clock and see that it is 11:57 and I am sure that the virtuous thing to do is go to bed, and I think I will. But I feel pretty good about what happened between 7 am and now.MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-56657556847498169952014-11-15T18:38:00.002-08:002014-11-15T18:45:26.908-08:00St. Catherine<a href="http://oca.org/saints/lives/2014/11/24/103382-greatmartyr-catherine-of-alexandria">St. Catherine's</a> feast day is coming up. Earlier in the fall I sorta-promised a post about her, and I made a lot of attempts to deliver. I even started writing a short story, a new hagiography, so to speak. I had been reading <i>Fear and Trembling</i> and tried to get too fancy in imitating the Exordium. (That's where Kierkegaard tells the story of Abraham many different ways, changing essential details each time to meditate on the story.) It was getting corny (let's just say I spent way too much time reading about the library in Alexandria) so I put it away. I've had a couple of conversations about the St. Catherine problem and I think I might have exhausted what I had to say in those conversations, but I think I'd better just hack it out right here, right now.<br />
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Here's how I came upon the St. Catherine problem. I chose her for my patron saint when I was just a <i>child</i> of nineteen, stumbling into chrismation and baptism in a little Russian parish. I found her in a book of women saints, distinguished to my mind from all the other virgin martyrs because she seemed to be an <i>intellectual </i>woman. I happened to style myself an intellectual at the time, studying philosophy and all the "wisdom of the Greeks," and I was also a Single Lady, so her story appealed to me. I cringe a little now when I think of it, not at all because of anything shameful in St. Catherine (God forbid,) but because the choosing itself was so hubristic. Did I think I was going to be a Philosopher Warrior Princess? Did I think that I would be worthy to "defeat the pagan orators" and convert multitudes by my arguments? It's pretty embarassing, but I think that's how I felt at the time. Let's just leave it this way: She is the patron saint of philosophers, and my study of philosophy was one of the main things that led me to grope awkwardly towards Orthodoxy.<br />
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But I never felt very close to her. I don't know why. Maybe the problem is that I didn't ultimately see myself as a philosopher, and the virgin martyr thing wasn't really that inspiring to me either. Selfish, subjective reasons. I tried painting an icon of her, and it helped a little. During the time that I was finishing up painting my icon of St. Catherine, I read an account of her life which contained the episode, new to me, in which she sees the Theotokos and the Christ child in a dream. In my story, she saw the holy mother and child from behind, but even so, she fell in love with Christ, seeing him as a bridegroom to embrace, a king to reverence, and a child to carry, give birth to, and nurse all at once. (Remember that she had refused all her suitors, on the grounds that none of them were noble, wise, rich, or beautiful enough for her.) In her dream the Mother of God was discussing with Christ his<br />
choice of a bride, and asked if he had considered Catherine. I imagine that her heart stopped with dread, as he turned his little face to her, and addressed his mother. "I have considered Catherine, and she is ugly and unbelieving, a foolish pauper, and I cannot bear to look on her until she forsakes her impiety." Catherine awakes full of longing and shame, and hastens to her baptism. In another dream, the Theotokos gives Catherine as a bride to Christ, and he gives her a betrothal ring, with which she awakes.<br />
<br />
I found this story very compelling, but still did not feel very close to St. Catherine. Having married a nice Orthodox guy (who actually is a philosopher deep in his bones) a few years after baptism, I got pregnant a few years after that, so virgin martyrdom was no longer open to me. In my pregnancy I remember feeling that my mind was so ... soft and fuzzy, and that I felt overwhelmingly <i>embodied</i>, so that abstract thought seemed miles too high for me. I contrasted the warm fertile principle that I felt ruled me with the cool rationality with which my husband so naturally makes his way. And I still didn't feel that I could call to St. Catherine for help, because I identified her with the abstract male way of thinking. What did she know about pregnancy? About nourishing a child? About creating something with the involuntary secret power of your body and blessing it every second with your heart? Her distinctions were in the realm of the mind, contemplating the cosmos. My body was pulling me down to earth, where I had to think about things like stuffing my face to feed my baby. I did find myself praying to the Mother of God more often than before, almost more reflexively than to Christ himself.<br />
<br />
But Catherine, in all her wisdom, knowledge, rhetorical skill, and general put-togetheredness was still distant, until after my child was born. I was chatting with the other Youngish Wyves and Moms of my church, and someone mentioned that she and her husband liked the name Catherine for a girl, and someone else said "Isn't she your saint, Mallory?" and I said oh yes, she was a wonderful saint, although I had recently almost been wishing that I had a different one (forgive me, St. Catherine!) because she was the patron saint of philosophers and... "crap! That's not all! She's also the patroness of... <i>nursing mothers?</i>"<br />
<br />
Yes! It's true! But it is very weird. The reason for her patronage of nursing mothers is that when she was beheaded, not blood but milk flowed from her neck! <i>Ah, well, that explains it...</i><br />
<br />
So what's the deal? Why on earth does milk flow from her neck? And what is a nursing mother supposed to learn from St. Catherine's life, given that her method of secreting milk is so very, shall I say, unorthodox?<br />
<br />
I've been pondering this for a while, and here's what I think. First let's review why it's weird. Of course the miracle is strange in itself, because it is outside of the natural order of things. It's also weird because Catherine is a virgin, and has no experience with nursing babies. Moreover, she is a philosopher, and one common criticism of philosophy is that in a way, it's barren. It can critique and examine things, but doesn't produce anything new, or really "do" anything at all. It's associated with abstract, universal, big ideas, but not so much with particulars, the material world, and immediacy. It's pretty usual to identify the transcendent realm of philosophy with the male, and the immanent world of practical crap with the female. So it's weird that Catherine, a philosopher and a virgin, produces milk, which is the way that a female body nourishes the body of a child. Very weird. But usually, in holy stories, if something weird happens, it is in order to instruct us in The Way Things <i>Really</i> Are. <br />
<br />
Another weird thing about the miracle is that the milk flows when Catherine's <i>head</i> is taken off. Now, this might be a stretch because I know that the ancients did not locate the mind in the head, but rather in the chest. But nonetheless, Catherine was a renowned orator, and that happens by means of the mouth, which is on the head, which she lost. So the nourishing milk appears when the organ of her fame is removed. That could mean two things about The Way Things Really Are.<br />
<br />
The first possibility is that we have to kill rhetoric and philosophy in order to be a fountain of life. I reject this possibility because first of all, it can't be universal. Check out St. John Chrysostom et al. It also implies that St. Catherine was somehow wrong to be a philosopher, or that she practiced it in the wrong way. But her wisdom and powerful speech brought many of the governor's scholars and attendants to Christ, and it is the reason that she was sent to her martyrdom. So I don't think "Kill philosophy" is the message about The Way Things Really Are.<br />
<br />
The second possibility, which my husband saw before I did, is that the removal of the head did not give way to the nourishing flow of milk, as if the presence of her powerful mind had been obstructing the flow, but that the milk was there all along. What if this maiden were not so cold and rational, but rather teeming with kindness and life? What if her chastity was not barren, but fruitful beyond mere biology? She is not Athena, virgin goddess of wisdom, armed like a soldier, with flashing grey eyes. Her philosophy was not cruel and proud, but "shows us the heights of humility." <br />
<br />
I had it all wrong. How could I have forgotten that Christ is the child of, and so has special love for virgins, and that God always brings fruit from patient, barren branches? Catherine is like the rock struck by Moses which quenched the thirst of the Israelites. She is a fig tree which offers fruit to Christ even though it is not the season. Of course, she is like the Theotokos, who is both a Virgin and a Mother. The milk that flows from Catherine's neck teaches us that in truth, this is The Way Things Really Are. Philosophy, far from being barren and removed from "real life," is rather the love of God and all his creation, surging through us like sap from a tree, which drips out sweetly when we are pierced, revealing this life-giving virtue to the world. Virginity is fruitful.<br />
<br />
That is something that this philosopher-turned-mommy needed to hear. Holy Saint Catherine, pray to God for us.MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-82323018257811266282014-11-10T18:47:00.002-08:002014-11-10T18:47:40.756-08:00Popping inI see that I did not make many posts in October. I guess I ran out of things to say for a while, and then got out of the habit of thinking bloggically. I'd like to keep it up, for a couple reasons. It's a fun way to keep in touch with friends, it requires that I examine and develop my whimsical little thoughts more rigorously than Facebook does, and Matt thinks that I can use this blog to <i>Take Back Philosophy from the Philosophers!!!</i> I will put that on my to-do list, babe.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, <a href="http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/11/immediacy-the-ways-of-humanity.html">this lecture</a> on Immediacy by the matriarch of St. John's College, Eva Brann, might help to explain why I would want to do that. It's definitely about SJC and might seem like it's for insiders, but she delivered it at a conference on the liberal arts which was attended by many Muggles, so you should get something out of it even if you don't care about my weird college that I never stop talking about.<br />
<br />
I would love to get off of Facebook again. But where would my little one-liners go? Yesterday I thought that I would write each little joke on a post-it note and stick them on the literal wall. Matt can put stickers on the ones that he likes. I don't need much more approval than that.<br />
<br />
One does get lonely, though, in what I've come to call The Baby-Cave. This weekend I reconnected with old college friends on two occasions, and I think I can ride that high for a good week or so. It takes some effort for this little old country girl and her cranky baby to brave the poor signage and sometimes hellish traffic of the DC area, but it is always worth it to make contact again with friends who <i>know</i> me. It almost brings me to tears each time to finally see and hear these friends who are so much more than memories attached to a name and a little picture on my computer. In the presence of each of these friends, I feel vibrations in some tiny corner of my heart that has been silent for several years. Thank God for real people being real.<br />
<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-40670926657996438142014-10-07T09:08:00.000-07:002014-10-07T09:08:05.413-07:00every little thingI am reading a book called <i>Christ and Apollo</i> by William F. Lynch. Matt asked me if I liked it and I said that I liked the ideas, but not necessarily the way they were expressed. I think it's because it's something called literary criticism, which I know next to nothing about, and I don't like things that I don't know anything about. (I am aware of this fault of mine, and when I see it, I say "My dogs are barking!" in reference to Socrates' description of the spirited part of the soul as a guardian dog, who barks at people that he doesn't know, and welcomes people that are familiar to him. Once you start looking for that dog, you see him all over town, including at your front door.) I find the writing basically boring, but the ideas are interesting.<br />
<br />
Lynch identifies two tendencies in approaches to art (specifically literature) which he says have significance for the way we live our lives. One is towards the "Christic," the incarnational embrace of the definite, of particulars, of time, of our limited experience. The other approach is "Apollonian," in that it seeks the absolute, the infinite, the heavenly, and wishes to discard or "transcend" the limitations of human experience in order to achieve, in a word, divinity. Lynch, a Jesuit, of course does not reject the pursuit of "insight," as he calls it, but maintains that it is to be found in attention to and even adoration of the details of the material, temporal human experience. <br />
<br />
It reminds me of one of my favorite bits from Dante. In Paradiso, St. John the Theologian questions Dante on the history of his love for God and his ascent to Paradise. Dante has been drawn upwards by his love for his girlfriend, Beatrice (who is in Paradise,) as well as his veneration of his patron poet, Virgil, but St. John presses him even further to confess where he first learned to love, and Dante answers:<br /><br /><i>I love the leaves wherewith enleaved</i><br />
<i>is all the garden</i><br />
<i>tended by that eternal Gardener.</i><br />
<br />
Not only does each single leaf point to the whole of creation, but in some way each part contains the whole, so that Dante's love for each Created Thing is really a love for all Creation. I like that. It is an apt description of what I think constitutes Good
Art, and it seems to me to be a healthy attitude towards life as well.<br />
<br />
I was thinking about this when I was pushing Scott in his stroller. I thought about how good it is that Orthodoxy teaches us to love Creation through the many, many "blessings" that we do for all of its parts-- people, plants, food, bodies of water, homes, even man-made things like cars. A blessing affirms and even commands the goodness of things. I wondered if there was a blessing for strollers, because I am terrified of Scott rolling into the road. I tried to remember if I had ever seen an Orthodox blessing for animals that were not currently being eaten in roasted or cured form, because I was about to pass the Episcopalian church where I had seen signs for weeks advertising the Blessing of the Animals (which prompted me to make a wicked joke in my head about not being able to tell if Pride Week came in October this year, or if it was just the Blessing of the Animals at the Episcopalian Church.) And lo and behold, as I passed the church, I came upon a circle of people with dogs, listening to a priest read the bit from the Gospel about the sparrows of the air and the lilies of the field. Scott and I rolled up to listen and watch the priest bless each animal with holy water. I was a little bit skeptical and even prepared to make more somewhat mean jokes to myself as I approached, but I couldn't help smiling and feeling my heart melt a little bit when I heard the priest say:<br /><br /><i>"Butters, be blessed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."<br />"Peanut, be blessed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."</i><br />
<i>"Coco, be blessed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."</i> <br />
<br />
I'm not sure it's strictly Orthodox, but I said "Amen."MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-41265239671249738522014-10-01T18:14:00.000-07:002014-10-01T18:14:05.696-07:00wheels within wheelsYesterday I bought Scott a big box of Huggies. It cost $23.99 for 80. They are really, really good. We had been talking about getting disposables for night time because the bigger he gets, the more pee he makes, and the more he soaks the bed. We've tried every combination of cloth diapers and intensely absorbent hemp inserts, but he always prevails. He has been sleeping on a towel so that we don't have to wash the sheets and mattress cover every dang day, but I hate that because it gets all bunched up. Thinking about buying disposable diapers made me very sad, because I know that they just end up in a landfill and will never, ever decompose, not in a million years. So I put it off, and then the other day when we went apple picking, I left him in his diaper for too long, and when we got home, he had a nasty rash. All the cloth diaper configurations rub him in exactly the same place, and there was no way to make him comfortable (except just letting him go sans diaper, which I did for as long as possible.) So my sadness about hurting my baby defeated my sadness about hurting the planet and future people and animals and I bought the Huggies. And now for the next 79 nights I won't wake up in a puddle of urine. That's nice.<br />
<br />
Women who take care of the home, especially when children are in it, are constantly dealing with the immanent, material world-- the world of chopping vegetables, doing dishes, folding laundry, making the bed again, cleaning up pee and poop and vomit and snot, giving haircuts and baths, fixing broken stuff, buying all the things that you need to perform these actions, etc, and repeating all these things often. There are so many little decisions to make and actions to take all day long, and in all of them one is trying to make the best use of material resources that she possibly can. For some, that just means doing the cheapest thing. Others add "the quickest thing." Many add "the healthiest thing," and increasingly, people are adding "the thing that least screws over the environment." I try to hit all four of these criteria and it is rather emotionally draining. Having very high ideals about eco-friendliness and health makes it awfully difficult when the money and the time are both so short. Here is a diagram to illustrate what I mean. This is just about food (which is the biggest one because I have to make choices about it like, every hour.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFe0tg6QxwzUuaGa5mny8-qBN4_7euo47f_0SSO4Spe9qYLs5NGqTBk1MOJ_GkuPqUgt9goNuae-DoDtKZOKQ-jLdZI9jGSkTB953b64qpj8ycna6dJNvRCI3WNtZqQn0aeVtQSnAgAH3a/s1600/diagram+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFe0tg6QxwzUuaGa5mny8-qBN4_7euo47f_0SSO4Spe9qYLs5NGqTBk1MOJ_GkuPqUgt9goNuae-DoDtKZOKQ-jLdZI9jGSkTB953b64qpj8ycna6dJNvRCI3WNtZqQn0aeVtQSnAgAH3a/s1600/diagram+2.jpg" height="608" width="640" /></a></div>
<i>Not pictured: Lenten food (don't even get me started) or tasty food, because given my preferences, I believe that it's a subset of healthy food</i>.<br />
<br />
There are flaws with this diagram-- when you have four or more circles, not everybody can sit next to each other, so there are some scenarios which will not fit on the diagram at all (like something that is healthy and affordable, but not eco-friendly or easy/quick, such as many meals cooked from scratch using grocery store ingredients in lots of plastic.) And obviously I had to reach for something ridiculous to illustrate food that is healthy, but not eco-friendly, easy/quick, or affordable. But it serves to illustrate my thought process with <i>every dang</i> grocery store purchase or recipe selection, and now you can see where most of my anxiety comes from. I think it was easier for moms when all they had to worry about was affordable and easy, because they didn't really question whether the food in the grocery store was healthy or not, and nobody cared about the pelicans. But my god, the future of the human race depends on whether or not I am too selfish to make my own glue from flour and water and Death rattles a little closer to our door with every box of sugary granola that I just keep buying these days.<br />
<br />
I went to church today with Scott for the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, which is the patronal feast of the church we've just started visiting. I found it so peaceful and refreshing to cease my calculations and take a break from the game of hopscotch I've been playing between these circles. Peace and joy are floating somewhere above them, and I keep thinking I'll reach them if I can just build my house in that middle section, but more likely I just need to walk away.<br />
<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-64737172696637856412014-09-30T14:37:00.002-07:002014-09-30T14:37:51.910-07:00they couldn't reach it<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3EMtoD1Fi3mQiYOx60fPA_U_UewUJzvGjXULnqwOLtzfbg9I3cxdcwPVKMIVKy9Vc16UstTsjxUMpKhidiPuq58zhtNq2Z_aCx7AycE2seZJqlBqIJn8YYg0DaTmd_Ruc1Q4CvO9gSxYQ/s1600/apple+picking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3EMtoD1Fi3mQiYOx60fPA_U_UewUJzvGjXULnqwOLtzfbg9I3cxdcwPVKMIVKy9Vc16UstTsjxUMpKhidiPuq58zhtNq2Z_aCx7AycE2seZJqlBqIJn8YYg0DaTmd_Ruc1Q4CvO9gSxYQ/s1600/apple+picking.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Οἶον τὸ γλυκύμαλον ἐρεύθεται ἄκρῳ ἐπ᾽ ὔσδῳ<br />
ἄκρον ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτῳ λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπνεσ,<br />
οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐδύναντ᾽ ἐπίκεσθαι. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-22216652646286472102014-09-25T18:50:00.001-07:002014-09-25T18:50:42.790-07:00<b>Matt:</b> You are a leaver of food! You left three spinach leaves on your plate at dinner tonight.<br />
<b>Me: </b>(laughing) You were counting my spinach leaves?<br />
<b>Matt:</b> I wasn't counting them, it's just that three is the smallest easily recognizable number besides two.<br />
<br />
(We laugh some more because we think that's funny.)<br />
<br />
<b>Me:</b> Oh, except for one, right, haha...<br />
<b>Matt: </b>(stops laughing) <i>One is not a number.</i>MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-39097654745647147142014-09-23T08:46:00.001-07:002014-09-23T08:46:27.981-07:00Haus keepingThis week I got 21 views from Romania, 19 from France, and 5 from the U (still!) K*. Be ye robots, or be ye men? I am dying to know. <br /><br />I think a lot of people get to my blog by Googling little bits of Shakespeare or recipes or Orthodox buzzwords or "classical education," and they click on my posts thinking they're going to learn something. Sorry! Welcome to my brain!<br />
<br />
Also some people might get here through <a href="http://orthogals.com/">Orthogals</a>, which is terribly flattering (thanks O-gals!,) but just so you know, I'm just a 26 year old new mom with a liberal arts B.A., a keyboard, and no agenda. I'm an Orthodox Christian but this is not an Orthodox Blog so don't expect to find my podcast on Ancient Faith Radio. I started the blog a long time ago to practice writing and I kinda got excited about it again a couple of years ago. Sometimes you'll catch me writing to my friends from home because I forget that strangers are eavesdropping! I don't give a hoot about formatting beyond basic legibility and I rarely post pictures so I hope you like Garamond size 12. <br />
<i><br /></i>
My title, "Sweet beneath the leaf" is a bit from Virginia Woolf's <i>Jacob's Room</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>The words we seek hang close to the tree; we come at dawn and find them, sweet beneath the leaf.</b><br />
<i><br /></i>
That's all! Husband is out in the glorious crisp September sun with baby, I've got to seize the day and shower.<br /><i><br /></i>
<i>*Could one of these ppl** be Auntie Seraphic!!!??</i><br />
**<i>When I spell "people" that way I intend it to be pronounced as the Monks of Valaam would pronounce it.</i>MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-89835053322627217292014-09-17T18:29:00.002-07:002014-09-17T18:33:52.063-07:00The Foolproof Soup MethodSoup, I think we can all agree, is awesome. Soup happens a lot during colder months, and for Orthies (as my little sister used to call us) especially during Lent. It is easy to make and a great way to enjoy random things in your refrigerator and to bring together enough nutrients to make a complete meal in one dish. Why am I telling you all this stuff you already know about Soup? Becaaaause, I used to have a completely distracted approach to Soup, wherein I just kinda threw stuff in the pot at random intervals and would often end up with veggies of diverse mushiness floating in a watery mess. But I got tired of that and now I have perfected a method of making Soup which I use so often that I just do it automatically, with results that everybody usually likes, even during Lent.<br />
<br />
There are two really important flavor components in my soup routine. One is to use <b>excellent bone broth.</b> Chicken broth is very cheap, easy and versatile. I make mine in the crock pot (like <a href="http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/01/24/recipe-overnight-chicken-stock-in-the-crock-pot/">so</a>) with the carcass from our biweekly Sunday chicken roast. It's a cinch and hardly takes any time at all. I always include the neck (and feet if I have them, even though it makes the crock pot look like it is full of witches) as it contains gelatin. The silky texture imparted by gelatin is desirable and<a href="http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/broth-is-beautiful/"> it is said</a> to be a very healthful component of good broth. Of course this very important flavor Soup flavor component is not Lenten, (although I have seen on one exciting church calendar that during Cheesefare week you may cook with "meat drippings," so consult your conscience/priest on that one.) If I am cooking for fasters, I sadly forgo the broth and use water. You can make Lenten shrimp broth using shrimp shells but I have never really saved up enough to do that. I used to make vegetable broth with scraps but in the final analysis I felt that it tasted like compost.<br />
<br />
That (what? compost?) brings me to the second very important flavor component: <b>the spice roux</b>. If you want your Soup to be very flavorful, it's not enough to dump paprika <i>et al </i>into the whole deal at the end and have them floating around aimlessly. You must first fry the spices in oil, so that each little molecule of oil becomes a flavor bomb. I also recommend grinding your spices fresh in a mortar and pestle if you have the time. Sometimes I don't have the time anymore. If you are a very observant faster you don't do oil on most days during Lent, so ... your Soup is going to be a little crappy because you can't use either of my tricks. <br />
<br />
I do all of this in a big dutch oven that we were given as a wedding present. It's great to do everything in one pot.<br />
<br />
Here is the order that I follow when making Soup.<br />
<br />
<b>1. Spice Roux</b><br />
Heat your choice of delicious healthy fat (coconut oil, butter, lard, olive oil, tallow, bacon grease) in the bottom of the soup pot. Toss in any ground spices that you want to use (turmeric, paprika, cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, that kind of thing.) If you are using dried herbs, they can be fried as well, but fresh herbs you will save for the end. I stir the whole deal quite a lot over high heat (unless I'm using butter, which burns easily.) At first it will be a dryish paste, and after enough cooking it will just look like a puddle of fat again, but colored according to the spices you have used. <br />
<br />
If you are browning meat chunks or reheating leftover cooked meat, you can just do that in this flavorful oil. The same goes for pre-cooked or soaked grains like rice or barley. If you are cooking meat that is going to give off a lot of oil, you can do that first, set aside the meat, and make a spice roux in as much of the drippings as you would like to save.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I will put a little flour in the spice roux, so that the soup will become more of a stew. You end up with basically gravy and it's great. <br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>2. Sauteeing/Sweating</b><br />
Now turn the heat down a bit to sautee onions, garlic, celery, and/or ginger. You're coating these veggies in your delicious spice roux and then imparting their flavor to the oil. NB: I sometimes include the garlic in the spice roux, and sometimes I just dump it in with the veggies.<br />
<br />
<b>3.</b> <b>Things that need to boil</b><br />
Now add your chunky uncooked vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli bits, carrots, parsnips, squash, what-have-you,) beans, uncooked grains (I recommend soaking these overnight as well if you think of it, because they'll cook more quickly,) frozen stuff, or noodles.<br />
<br />
<b>4. Liquid</b><br />
<b> </b>Add your excellent homemade chicken broth or water, salt using intuition, and bring it to a boil. You'll have to be the judge of when to turn it down to simmering and how long to let it simmer. Taste for seasoning.<br />
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<b>5. Fragile elements</b><br />
Twenty minutes or so before you need to eat the soup, throw in any greens that basically just need to be wilted, like kale, spinach, or chard. Cauliflower doesn't take very long to cook if it's chopped small. Any pre-cooked veggies can go in here as they just need to be re-warmed. Coconut milk or any dairy can be stirred in now to warm. Fresh herbs should be added right before you serve, or allow diners to garnish their own bowls. <br />
<br />
<b>Et voila, you will be hailed as a Divine Soup Giver.</b><br />
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I prefer almost every kind of soup with yogurt or sour cream.<b> </b>Bread is a must. (Have I talked about <a href="http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/">Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day</a> lately? Even I can do that, and I have a baby and I'm a hopeless scatterbrain.) <br />
<i><br /></i><i>Bone appletights!</i>MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-1454939717376983462014-09-16T09:18:00.000-07:002014-09-16T09:18:06.646-07:00For Hannah, who gave us this camera<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgHF6O50DXrTpuhlbR4qOseMSJJpAXiIOdV-0b10sGPykrR1TK_Ou6T_jNb7VY9vZxwYIFc_h5NnxXcoW5vARPH8a-76aWrlDqlh7b5q3Ni3u1QJpeyMJSKCIKEe9jWBDAwkcQv2Me_em5/s1600/DSC09370.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgHF6O50DXrTpuhlbR4qOseMSJJpAXiIOdV-0b10sGPykrR1TK_Ou6T_jNb7VY9vZxwYIFc_h5NnxXcoW5vARPH8a-76aWrlDqlh7b5q3Ni3u1QJpeyMJSKCIKEe9jWBDAwkcQv2Me_em5/s1600/DSC09370.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The entrance to our apartment, in the back of the house. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOjVjJba4c9SkKfGaUIq-Y9epIn491wf3TzyPDh7i6Hkla30M_RQ5wvRY9u-eykjXMc3e2Vr-BdI4OYaIvPwNnpF88pJ8v0tBNY0pA22MTSsTjaCsKv3gzq2EjLTZ9gn8CxhcAYWyMdq1k/s1600/DSC09371.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOjVjJba4c9SkKfGaUIq-Y9epIn491wf3TzyPDh7i6Hkla30M_RQ5wvRY9u-eykjXMc3e2Vr-BdI4OYaIvPwNnpF88pJ8v0tBNY0pA22MTSsTjaCsKv3gzq2EjLTZ9gn8CxhcAYWyMdq1k/s1600/DSC09371.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our little patio, which grows lovelier with every dead mosquito.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2L0AOBvi-7YowAMu9IflV5VQaFePJD9X-Y6g7_-JqrLNizZqGyg4753xkLMdN60zlob-9xnAWj0MAnG0czuBA6En_EQhU3Tl85i_wFd_-1QGAm2ZhBhJJ9ghjSVDRVSdq8sUeOXDiNRmE/s1600/DSC09372.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2L0AOBvi-7YowAMu9IflV5VQaFePJD9X-Y6g7_-JqrLNizZqGyg4753xkLMdN60zlob-9xnAWj0MAnG0czuBA6En_EQhU3Tl85i_wFd_-1QGAm2ZhBhJJ9ghjSVDRVSdq8sUeOXDiNRmE/s1600/DSC09372.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The front of the house.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCwyKNlHAguudiiApDPVt2SktwOe2b_JW4BnmH95xxdTHg2vp5O1nb-VqimT5xPgNZVCdBOx68_mQGTyD_0302lpEPLJ10JlznJhzpShXK3Gwleo5HLw6fkn8ES_FJ8gkJGKec20WCm0Uh/s1600/DSC09373.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCwyKNlHAguudiiApDPVt2SktwOe2b_JW4BnmH95xxdTHg2vp5O1nb-VqimT5xPgNZVCdBOx68_mQGTyD_0302lpEPLJ10JlznJhzpShXK3Gwleo5HLw6fkn8ES_FJ8gkJGKec20WCm0Uh/s1600/DSC09373.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Porch</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeYpZ8nGJXAJ-KtYhjmWhghkFDWw3E6fgcYWMrmIMa-xJ4Yh1JuifBTlusjS5_s70AkVWTh_SY_SafndSq1Nx-QrXHTepcgaiyh7B4amRNvY3Cq3dBdsgrx5DomDG0Zs9rhxEH6PNx9KVD/s1600/DSC09374.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeYpZ8nGJXAJ-KtYhjmWhghkFDWw3E6fgcYWMrmIMa-xJ4Yh1JuifBTlusjS5_s70AkVWTh_SY_SafndSq1Nx-QrXHTepcgaiyh7B4amRNvY3Cq3dBdsgrx5DomDG0Zs9rhxEH6PNx9KVD/s1600/DSC09374.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Living room of the Man Upstairs. He is kind enough to share it with us.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMt8u61i3gITcDz_teFNyAuxEdu7A_a2hheOUOXnsXikRFSgvrUlA1ltgYmLE8d-D-DMDwOuzVwGs9uy0wvfs2ImE3pKBmYnfDPJd_F2lLGJUrQkRwHUEnRvWlAq-8IyuqCgMiFQCiMk2h/s1600/DSC09376.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMt8u61i3gITcDz_teFNyAuxEdu7A_a2hheOUOXnsXikRFSgvrUlA1ltgYmLE8d-D-DMDwOuzVwGs9uy0wvfs2ImE3pKBmYnfDPJd_F2lLGJUrQkRwHUEnRvWlAq-8IyuqCgMiFQCiMk2h/s1600/DSC09376.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The kitchen, which I am always changing. I like the galley set up.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3fia4uOfsz_zJ8FRG3BjzYHuBkVhwwB4Nx_3Bs2eECUW9rMBDKUn5tyxDbtlQOqor0SgcwNOoBuduUZDckvRmw-PsvtaCXBnUjrktGyou9fFTgdmougTGXKhi_zb0-Y__5wVR90TgyG7n/s1600/DSC09377.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3fia4uOfsz_zJ8FRG3BjzYHuBkVhwwB4Nx_3Bs2eECUW9rMBDKUn5tyxDbtlQOqor0SgcwNOoBuduUZDckvRmw-PsvtaCXBnUjrktGyou9fFTgdmougTGXKhi_zb0-Y__5wVR90TgyG7n/s1600/DSC09377.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My dishwashing view. Except I don't wash the dishes too much, since we have a dishwasher. This violates my principles of Simplicity and Elbow Grease but it does make life easier.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSy2SX_1Q6oSYWG6zdnyJOFbwCzz_9OFPE8sIT57ipxopFsBh6sSLfI-AbEnxRszddcmjLTzkhGUyM0Ox3ZNxqcLqCvgTAF3DUQcy0j7SMnD_fuFdwewGLgSaZWiP28C3WGMlJ1vWYUpjA/s1600/DSC09306.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSy2SX_1Q6oSYWG6zdnyJOFbwCzz_9OFPE8sIT57ipxopFsBh6sSLfI-AbEnxRszddcmjLTzkhGUyM0Ox3ZNxqcLqCvgTAF3DUQcy0j7SMnD_fuFdwewGLgSaZWiP28C3WGMlJ1vWYUpjA/s1600/DSC09306.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Um, this is out of place, because it's in Pittsburgh.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif7aqW-vgJJobiP8YxIenOfd6rgteGse5iBo-ru22wl5D5zYX0_LFivY3EiEzaF2f2A5kblzEkLXCtwg-Vx4jP-x7i7p3wsPFx3iK8lA576BrbG5kNjKojm9MLxZbvo4PcU-sAS8Mj4ZAF/s1600/DSC09314.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif7aqW-vgJJobiP8YxIenOfd6rgteGse5iBo-ru22wl5D5zYX0_LFivY3EiEzaF2f2A5kblzEkLXCtwg-Vx4jP-x7i7p3wsPFx3iK8lA576BrbG5kNjKojm9MLxZbvo4PcU-sAS8Mj4ZAF/s1600/DSC09314.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and bubs on the patio</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj19i0U_RjYpoRf1bYynDA2pHKFv-IdCPLg2xMf8LrIlUAn06lRlxsOurDze7QlmbdK1my9Q-o_InnG6ArymSIq9fuDVQfwpFFg7SSe3vqGe2UJKbW7y7zoknzsqMZngrazVOKJ-OShagwE/s1600/DSC09349.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj19i0U_RjYpoRf1bYynDA2pHKFv-IdCPLg2xMf8LrIlUAn06lRlxsOurDze7QlmbdK1my9Q-o_InnG6ArymSIq9fuDVQfwpFFg7SSe3vqGe2UJKbW7y7zoknzsqMZngrazVOKJ-OShagwE/s1600/DSC09349.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The approach. I will die on the stairs, I know it,</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Add caption</td></tr>
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MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-67470222184659166912014-09-15T09:31:00.004-07:002014-09-15T09:31:54.028-07:00I have several posts in the "hopper," or "pipeline," (or "chute... tubes.....?" as I called it, when I asked my dad how his sales were doing) which I hope to finish, but finishing is harder for me than starting. I'll tell you what they're about.<br />
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1. A post about St. Catherine of Alexandria, which is turning into a short story about St. Catherine of Alexandria. The question driving both of these examinations is: <i> </i><br />
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<i>Why, upon her holy demise by beheading, does milk run from her neck instead of blood? </i><br />
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Something about fruitfulness of virginity and the contemplative life, despite the charges from the World that philosophy is barren.<i><br /></i><br />
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2. Pictures of our apartment, for the enjoyment of friends who are not on Facebook.<br />
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3. My foolproof instructions on making soup in a certain way, from which I never deviate.<br />
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4. Various anecdotes. These might never see the light of day.<br />
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5. Emotional navel gazing stuff, especially about worrying.<br />
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I write a lot in my mind as I'm walking, rocking, nursing, etc., but it's hard to sit down and pound it out.<br />
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Here's a little quote just for fun.<br />
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<i><b>Me:</b> So and so's wife is a very chic girl. She is the manager of an Anthropologie store.<br /><b>Matt, in total sincerity:</b> Is that the store that sells various... topical... agents.... for diseased skin?</i>MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-36499943813969061032014-09-03T12:35:00.000-07:002014-09-03T12:35:31.246-07:00the five Ss of NOT getting your baby to sleep<br />
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SMACK his little buns with increasing vigor because this <i>used </i>to work<br />
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SWEAR under your breath between shushes<br />
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SIP a stiff one<br />
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SMOKE a fat one<br />
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SURRENDER to the realization that this just might not be a sleeping day<br />
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don't call DCS; these are all jokes (except the last one!)MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-12871550741198768472014-08-27T18:39:00.001-07:002014-08-27T18:39:23.189-07:00titles are for normal peopleThere is a very corny poem on my midwife's bathroom wall:<br /><br /><i>Cleaning and dishes can wait til tomorrow</i><br />
<i>For babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow</i><br />
<i>So dust balls be quiet! Cobwebs go to sleep!<br />I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.</i><br />
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I told you it was corny! Imagine it on a sampler. It's catchy, though.<br /><br />
My first week of staying-at-home-being-a-mommy by myself will be over tonight when Matt gets home, because he only has to go to school Monday through Wednesday. The first two days were not bad; I resolved that I would set my sights on no higher accomplishments than getting the baby to nap and nurse as much as possible, and that meant that when I did sneak away to unload the dishwasher or feed myself or go to the bathroom I felt like a big success. I even had some nice long sessions of reading (<i>Aristotle East and West</i> by David Bradshaw in the morning and George Eliot's <i>The Mill on the Floss</i> in the afternoon, both excellent) and drinking coffee (bad! bad! but good...) while I rocked him in his car seat on the porch, with the overhead fan blowing the mosquitoes off-course. I felt slightly decadent but part of adjusting to this job is being okay with sitting around.<br />
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Actually, I've realized that it's pretty important to not just be okay with it, to not just excuse yourself for your apparently leisurely attentions to your child, but to own them. You <i>have </i>to sit there and hold this child, so why torture yourself by resolving to jump up and Do Something Productive as soon as his eyelashes stop fluttering? You are nourishing and comforting somebody else who can't do anything for himself. That's good in itself, and if you get to devour a book or binge on a podcast, then that's a bonus. Forget the dishes.<br />
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So those days were good. But today was bad. This morning I abruptly handed the grouchy baby to Matt and said "I have to take a shower. You take him."
I expected to hear screaming when I turned off the water, but I poked
my wet (successfully no-poo'd!) head out of the bathroom door and found Matt serenely reading Plutarch's <i>Life of Dion</i> aloud to Scott as he sweetly slumbered on the bed. They were even holding hands. <br />
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So I expected it to be a nice peaceful day while Matt was gone, but it has been miserable. Bubs has been fussy about nursing for a few days now, so that I've
somewhat flipped my protocol. Instead of nursing him to sleep, I'm
sleeping him to nurse. If I can rock or walk him to sleep, he nurses
before he wakes up fully, or I can sometimes slip him a nip while he's
still conked out. The problem today was that I couldn't get him to
sleep! The poor baby has been crying in the most weak little pathetic hungry tired fashion all day, shaking his head and grimacing when I offer him the breast, and making the saddest little lip trembles when I set him down. Finally I took him on a walk in the wrap, through a little wooded park nearby, and he fell asleep before I left our yard. I walked a long while but by this time I was very hungry and tired as well, so I gave him an early bath and with not too much screaming I rocked him to sleep, and there he angelically whimpers next to me now. He probably won't wake up except to nurse again until six a.m. or so. <br />
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My fifteen+ hour day of nearly constant fretting is now done and I think I deserve a beer. I always think I deserve a beer. We've become religious daily beer drinkers since becoming parents. I mentioned to Matt that perhaps we should cut back on this what some might call frivolous expense, as a 12-pack of non-donkey-piss beer per week adds up to $50 or $60 per month. He gravely rebuked me. "It's really important." I perceived my error and agreed that here I would not scrupulously scrimp. What price sanity?<br />
<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-82734525607004369722014-08-19T07:26:00.001-07:002014-08-19T07:28:41.256-07:00second natureAt my very last "girls' night" in Crawfordsville with the other young to youngish Orthodox wyves, which was conducted mostly on my floor amidst boxes of books and dishes, I suggested for conversation the topic of Habits. I had recently re-read Fr. Thomas Hopko's <a href="http://holycrossoca.org/newslet/0907.html">55 Maxims for Christian Living</a>, and noticed that the word "regularly" shows up a lot (in addition to words like "practice," "discipline," and "always,") and then noticed that even where it doesn't, of course it's implicit that all these imperatives ("Be," "Do," etc) are progressive and so the reader should understand that these things are to be done as a matter of habit. <br />
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With new beginnings in a new home on my mind, I was reminded then of a saying that Fr. JB of XtS in Chicago attributed to some Gregory or another during a homily when we visited last fall. I can't quote it exactly but the gist of it was that although every day is a good day to make a new beginning, there is no time more perfect than autumn to start a new good work in Christ. Something like that. So I suggested that we talk about habits generally, and specifically what we'd like to begin anew this fall. I was naughty and beset by many moving woes, so I didn't do the homework and think about the habits I wanted to start, and we just talked about the 55 Maxims, which was good. But now we're here in our new home, mostly settled in, and I'm ready to start laying some track.<br />
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It seems to me that human beings are mostly made of habits and that is why it is so exciting to think about starting new ones. It's like a makeover. You really can make yourself into the person that you want to be. Is it Aristotle who points out that when we know how to do something effortlessly through practice, we call that our "second nature?" I don't remember. I like that because it recognizes that we have two natures-- the raw material given to us at birth, and the form into which we can sculpt that material.<br />
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Enough babble. I'm a bear of very little brain right now so I'll just tell you the habits that I want to start this autumn.<br />
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<strong>1. Baby/Family routines: </strong>We've found that Scott Maximos is much happier when we do the same thing every day. This is how the day is shaping up for him:<br />
<ul>
<li>Matt changes his diaper when he wakes up. Daddy is a little goofier than Mommy about this so it's a fun way to start the day. </li>
<li>Prayers, which Bubs actually seems to enjoy. He likes to look at the icons and listen to our voices.</li>
<li>Nursing while Daddy reads the Bible</li>
<li>The rest of the day is spent in little naps, nursings, accompanying me in the kitchen or sitting on somebody's lap while reading. We try to get in a big nap in the morning and one in the afternoon. The more he sleeps and nurses, the happier he seems to be.</li>
<li>A bath with Mommy after dinner, pajamas and a big long nurse while Daddy reads something out loud. I was having a bit of trouble following <em>Tristram Shandy</em> by ear since it is famously composed of about 95% parenthetical digressions. Matt picked up a Trollope novel yesterday at a bookstore so we'll try that. Bubs falls asleep and we sneak away. I nurse him throughout the night when he grumbles but he doesn't wake up much. </li>
</ul>
That's it. It's amazing how much easier it is to take care of him and get other things done when we follow this routine.<br />
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<strong>2. Yoga: </strong>It's dumb, whatever, but I'm starting to feel like a senior citizen in my knees, and yoga is pretty gentle on the joints. I went to a yoga class every day for one semester in college and it was the first time I ever felt fit and strong and brimming with health that was over and above my youthful vim. It's the only workout I know how to do, so that's what I'm going to do, damn the torpedoes. We have a sweet little patio in a green jungly yard where the baby likes to sit and watch me wiggle clownishly. I can do a little every day and counteract some of the effects of gravity on my spine, which have been exacerbated by baby toting.<br />
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<strong>3. Learn some dang French: </strong>This is ridiculous. I am 26 years old. It's time. Two of my younger siblings are fluent or conversational in another language (in my defense, that is because they spent time in their target countries,) and it makes me extremely envious and, as you can see, defensive. I'm going to do a little Duolingo every day (I only stopped because of a computer problem at work last year,) and surely there is some website that hooks up language learners for conversation? If not I will Skype my Francophone bro, although I think we know each other so well that I'd probably understand what he was saying in any language. One other idea is to learn Deutsch along with Matt, but I do not need to add another smattering to my collection.<br />
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That's probably enough new habits. Somehow this short list doesn't express everything that I want to be. The grandpa we're living with noted that I am always doing something in the kitchen and asked me if I was an ambitious person. I said that I wasn't ambitious in the sense of moving forward or upward, but that I was dead set on maintaining peace and equilibrium in my life. There are a lot of little habits which cultivate serenity and balance, which are probably best summed up in those Maxims above, but which are invisible and interior.<br />
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Crying baby, bye!MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-73417175863440326742014-07-31T06:19:00.003-07:002014-07-31T06:19:53.427-07:00Something my friend said a while ago which pairs well with the post below:<br /><br />"I was perfect before I had kids."<br />
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The big news is that Mary remained perfect.MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-65290199068036635852014-07-29T06:42:00.003-07:002014-07-29T06:42:57.886-07:00A few weeks before wee Scott was born, I was listening to a lot of Search the Scriptures with Dr. Jeannie Constantinou, in particular the talks on Deuteronomy. She tends to go off on tangents, which I sometimes like better than the actual Bible study part, because she gets all riled up and becomes more of the sassy Presvytera Jeannie than the professorial Dr. Constantinou. Anyway the last rant that I listened to lasted for a couple podcasts, and concerned the matter of ritual impurity, specifically that of women. She firmly stated that there is no such thing in Christianity. There are no unclean animals or people anymore. Menstruation and childbirth do not defile a woman and make her unfit to touch holy things. (You do not have to abstain from communion when you are menstruating!) She takes a look at the prayers for a woman returning to church after childbirth and while there is talk of cleansing and defilement in these prayers, they are clearly asking for God's grace in purifying the woman spiritually, not physically. What she said next struck me: The new mother needs to pray for spiritual cleansing because she's been away from church for a long time and probably has done some sinning.<br />
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I have thought about that a lot since Scott was born because HOO boy she was right. You might look at a new mother and think it's all rainbows and little baby kisses etc., and it is certainly very romantic much of the time, but it's also an emotionally tumultuous time, and there are a countless occasions for bitterness, anger, self-pity, remembrance of wrong, envy and pride. New parents can get very depressed and frustrated because while every minute is worth it, the "it" that every minute is worth is difficult.<br />
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The Mother of God is becoming my best friend in a new way. I really,
really need her help, and she always comes through. When I returned to
church I was struck by the familiar praise: "Without
corruption/defilement you gave birth to God the Word." I never thought
about that much before; I assumed that it simply referred to the
biology-defying miracle of the Virgin birth. It does, but now I see how
miraculous it truly is. The Theotokos did not merely bear Christ while
remaining a maiden physically, which is amazing in its own right. More
astonishingly, she became a mother without becoming a crazy bitch. She
resisted all of those temptations to post-partum despair and bitterness
and hoped in God, even though she knew this would happen: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDcTSHFRef48darEJ4-zE81RzRsFG620Wik2kGY73zrmtml88Erks91mzAEtjjdRrTsbiz2YYG0X-8n47tMAMRVc987VoxtKevV0k2gplr57KhPUyZ8N7pn_yuKmPDcqLdpdQ9hMINfq_4/s1600/theotokos+seven+swords.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDcTSHFRef48darEJ4-zE81RzRsFG620Wik2kGY73zrmtml88Erks91mzAEtjjdRrTsbiz2YYG0X-8n47tMAMRVc987VoxtKevV0k2gplr57KhPUyZ8N7pn_yuKmPDcqLdpdQ9hMINfq_4/s1600/theotokos+seven+swords.jpg" height="320" width="265" /></a></div>
<br />We have this icon (one like it anyway) and I used to think it was maudlin, but now I find it very comforting. My heart is outside of my body now, squirming in a cradle over there, and anything could happen to it. ("Please God, don't let the eagles get him like they got Johnny G." -Anne Lamott) But it's all already happened to Mary, and she made it.<br />
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The thing that I hope you understand about the Mother of God is that she isn't a goddess. There would be no hope for me if she were. She was a woman, and because she gave herself completely to God, she fully realized her potential, and became exactly the person she was created to be. The thing you should always remember when you think about the Mother of God is <i>If she can do it, I can too.</i> <br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808083113697429762.post-2123047366793408092014-07-28T19:35:00.000-07:002014-07-28T19:35:04.137-07:00It has been a crazy pleasant summer here in Indiana. I've hardly broken a sweat. We've had only a couple of weeks of heat and humidity, but the rest of the summer has been all big fluffy clouds, awesome thunderstorms, and cool breezes.<br />
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We were taking the air this afternoon, which was exceedingly fine, and strolling around our usual haunt, the Small Liberal Arts College just blocks from our home when my throat clenched up a bit and I realized that we don't have very many strolls and hauntings left in that place. I've been buzzing around there since high school. I used to sing in the community choir and take cello lessons in the fine arts center, my brother graduated from there, and the library has been Matt's and my sanctuary whenever we've stayed with my parents. We walked home through the little playground across from our apartment, where I used to play with some friends I had when I was five or six.<br />
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We had just gotten back from the baby's checkup at the doctor's office where my mom took me when I was a baby. I showed Scott the wooden beads and big wooden play clock on the wall that I remember playing with from a very young age. The doctor is a different one than the guy we used to see, who was the backup for our midwife, who dug a piece of toothpick out of my foot when I was eight or so, and who is now our representative in the State House. But this doctor is an old family friend from church and homeschooling days. He had taped a calendar photo of Arches National Park on the ceiling above the examining table, and I pointed it out to Scott and told him that I had been camping there with the doctor himself. I used to think I was going to marry his son but I didn't (although we did go to prom together twice.) I still hang with his daughter and wife.<br />
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Every step I take in this town is executed with unthinking confidence, because I'm walking on personal and family history. I was gazing at my baby today and realized that he was cradled in a rocker lent from my friend who's the doctor's daughter, wearing a hand-me-down onesie from a church friend, and wrapped in blankets made or given to us by still more friends from church. <br /><br />I'm excited to move and optimistic that things will generally be good, but I get a little scared when I think about how that cradle full of blankets wouldn't be there without our friends. Heck, we wouldn't have any furniture either. I know we'll make friends, but there will be so many new things happening. New house, new city, new church, new circles of friends, grad school, new stages for the baby, new jobs, etc. Someone once told me that you should only allow yourself one huge life change per year. But you just can't plan that kind of thing. Love and babies can be surprising.<br />
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<br />I'm rambling, I know, and mixing metaphors here and there. The baby was mega fussy after getting his DTaP shot today (that's what we instantly blamed anyway) and now I deserve to go drown in a beer and my exciting novel. ("Oh, my, GOD!" I said this morning after an eventful section in the book. "What's going on?" "I can't possibly explain it, it's too eventful.") <br />
<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10804920112755692828noreply@blogger.com0