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You know how God keeps banging on a theme until you finally respond to the knock on the door and let the idea in? This was one of those weekends. We spent it with family, and over the course of three days, I had several really good, thought-provoking conversations about politics, polarization, and the human propensity to classify others as “us vs. them,” and belittle, deride, and otherwise dismiss those who don’t drink our particular brand of Kool-aid.

I return to blogging this morning, joining Ann in talking about how to serve “the least of these.” But after these conversations, it occurs to me: how can we talk about serving “the least of these” when we can’t even stop ourselves from tearing down the people we encounter every day?

They’re referred to as the Mommy wars. Breast vs. bottle. Cloth vs. disposable. Homeschool vs. private school vs. public school. Two kids versus five. Work vs. SAH.

People are really un-Christian about these issues. I’ve been guilty of it, too, despite my best attempts to hold the middle ground. We pass judgment, we generalize, we make assumptions about people’s motivations and choices, without knowing their hearts, without knowing their reasons—and often, without knowing all the facts. My sister-in-law, who works full-time, regularly protests being denigrated as something less than a “real” mother. Protests the assumption that she’s one of those blasted contraceptors, simply because she works. “Honestly,” she said, “I don’t feel like I have a home in the Catholic Church.”

People, she’s right. We’ve got to stop this. And it’s not just the Catholic Church, either. This applies across the board of Christianity.

A man named Tom Strunck, whom I interviewed for an article last spring, made a comment that seems even more important now than it did at the time. He said, “What do we have to follow? The moral law and the laws of the Church. And if you look where those two stop, and everything else starts, God has given us enormous amounts of freedom—a lot of this stuff is personal preference, and a lot of people turn that into absolutes.”

Those artificial absolutes become our own personal idols, if we’re not careful. We’ve got to open our minds and hearts, and approach people with charity—especially on the internet, where it’s all too easy to type in a diatribe and hit “send” because you know you’ll never see the person face to face. If we don’t do this, then all works of charity are really in vain. Charity begins at home.

Originally uploaded by Howie Muzika

It was the fall of my sophomore year of college, and I had been pushing hard to prepare for a competition. Every day I spent 3 ½ to 4 hours in a practice room, plus 2-3 hours in orchestra and wind ensembles. (Good heavens, did I really ever play that much? It’s another life!)

And then, one day, I suddenly realized how stiff my hands were, how much they hurt, how hard it was to make them move—and worse, how long it had been going on before it registered.

I saw an orthopedic surgeon, who handed me samples of anti-inflammatories and warned that surgery was the next step. I consulted a physical therapist, who helped me to understand how bad my posture was. As the weeks dragged on and I saw no improvement, I could feel my dream of a career as a flute performer swirling down the drain.

At this critical moment, I met Esteban. He came highly recommended from a fellow flutist who had struggled with hand troubles. He did sports massage, at that time in conjunction with a chiropractor. I began working with him twice a week.

How can I describe the experience of a clinical sports massage? It is not what you envisioned when I said the word “massage.” It was painful. Very painful. Esteban went for pressure points in my shoulders, neck, arms and torso that I didn’t even know were there; he found spots where a gentle pressure could render me unable to speak—and to make the muscles release, he had to go in deep. So deep that he couldn’t do it all in one day; the muscles were locked up too tight.

Why did I put myself through this? Because by fifteen minutes into the first session, I could tell it worked. Hard muscles that screamed in protest under his thumbs suddenly went whoosh and released into soft, pliable tissue. I felt it happen again and again. My head turned freely, my fingers moved, my body felt foreign in its lightness.

It always reverted to its locked-up state, but as time passed, the knots grew more compliant, less resistant. Esteban found new pressure points to work, gently prying the layers of knots away. And in between sessions, I worked. I did stretches twice a day—arms, neck, shoulders, traps, pecs, fingers. I played my flute.

Those who don’t care for all this alternative, crunchy stuff suspect that chiropractors and massage therapists make themselves indispensable, so you have to keep coming back. But Esteban doesn’t need my business; he’s full up a month ahead of time. His goal was to fix the problem and send me on my way with strategies to keep it at bay. It took a long time, but we got there. By the time I graduated, I had gone from twice a week to once a week to an occasional fix.

In the decade since then, he’s helped me with my recurring tendinitis and carpal tunnel, but also with pregnancy and recovery issues. (You have no idea what havoc three C sections in 4 years can wreak on a body. I’ve stopped saying C-sections are no big deal. But that’s another post.) It’s on my mind now because my right wrist is doing the Mouse Hand thing, feeling pretty carpal-tunnel-y. I can’t open a jar of applesauce (not a good sign). So next week I’m headed Esteban’s way again.

If it wasn’t for Esteban and his healing hands, my life would have looked a lot different. If you have musculo-skeletal problems, don’t assume a doctor is your only, or even your best, bet. Find a good sports massage therapist, and prepare to be amazed.

At 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, Christian and Alex left for a Kansas City Royals game. (Baseball, the quintessential boys’ date.) Left at home with two little ones, I had plans of my own. They involved novel revision at naptime and a whole lotta scrapbooking—in front of the chickiest chick flick I could find on our shelves—after bedtime. And in between, some silly play and a carousel ride with my babies.

I’m sure you can see where this is headed. My brain went on strike, and after spending half an hour staring at the same paragraph, knowing something was wrong but unable to figure out what, I gave up on the novel and started Evita on Netflix. And then the phone rang.

“Um, Kate,” said Christian, “I’ve lost the alternator and the power steering.”
“Where are you?”

“Exit 30.” (90 miles away…in case you’re wondering.)

Well. I imagine you can see where this is going. Yup. No carousel. No scrapbooking. Instead, an unexpected trip to Kansas City, with two children who took great exception to being pulled from nap and stuck in the car.

But the thing is…it was a lovely night. We called some former neighbors who recently moved to the KC area, and they rose to the occasion bee-yewtifully. They picked up the boys and dropped them off at Kauffman Stadium; they met me at the highway two hours later to hand me Alex’s car seat; and then—get this—they fixed the truck.

The little ones and I arrived at the stadium during the 7th inning stretch. We didn’t pay for parking, b/c there was nobody left to take our money, and Christian got the door guard to let us in without tickets, considering the circumstances.

Ridiculous as it sounds (considering how many Cardinals games I’ve attended), I’ve never been to a Royals game. The beauty and atmosphere of the place simply bowled me over. I think, in part, it was that gorgeous blue color. I’m so used to equating red with baseball that it never occurred to me how restful royal blue is on the eyes in a stadium setting. And then, there were the fountains.

Plus, they won.

Afterward, we had to search around the parking lot for quite a while (apparently my attempt to take note of landmarks was insufficient), but then we went to our former neighbors’ house—Alex was thrilled to have fifteen minutes to play with his little buddy—and picked up the truck.

A late night…we pulled into the garage at quarter of twelve, which is three hours past my bedtime, especially the night before we have to lead the contemporary group…but a good one. And an unexpected gift.

Linking up with Steady Mom’s 30-minute blog challenge and Emily’s Tuesdays Unwrapped.

1. I got a speeding ticket last night. (Yes, Kelley, on the way home from your house.) It was actually really unfair–not b/c I wasn’t speeding (I’m sure I was; I thought I was following traffic, but it was at the bottom of a very long hill, and a Chrysler Town & Country carries a lot of momentum), but because I’d just spent five miles on the interstate being passed by everyone because I was going at or under the speed limit. Sigh.

2. The officer was really nice about it, but Alex was weeping in the back seat, because he remembered us saying that if a policeman pulls you over you have to pay a big fine, and he’d just been asking for new toys. Money, the use of and planning of, are daily topics in our house now that he’s old enough for “I want _____!” And Christian used this as a teachable moment. He talked to Alex about how we plan very carefully and use our money very carefully so that we can do fun things, but also so that when something bad happens (like a hospital stay, or a speeding ticket), we are able to take care of it without worrying.

3. I’m beginning to recognize the process of aging on my body. Aside from the single stringy gray strand that curls off the top of my head, I feel it in my feet. As in, my left arch burning and aching all day yesterday after running. My running shoes are disgracefully old, but I’ve been delaying buying new ones (see #2). For weeks my arches have burned while I’m running, but it always went away when I took the running shoes off. Not yesterday. Which means that in addition to a speeding ticket, I also have to squeeze new shoes out of my budget. Oh well. Life goes on.

4. My favorite post of the week comes from Simcha, who offers smart-alec answers to people who say stupid things when you have a “large” (meaning “more than two-child”) family. This is on my mind this week as we agonize about when to try for #4. We change our mind daily.

5. Call this one news of the weird. (Really weird.) Nettle Cave, an Australian tourist attraction, is going to offer tours in Klingon. Yes, I said Klingon.

6. I also owe a couple of programming corrections. My post on health care earlier this week generated a lot of comments…here, on FB, emails–even a phone call from my mom. Gerti alerted me that I had my dates wrong. Though adults with pre-existing conditions have to wait till 2014, kids are covered when plans renew after September 23rd.

7. I also received an email from a gentleman who shared this study of the link between prenatal diagnosis and abortions in Europe. This is actually just the abstract; the upshot of it is anywhere the government supports prenatal testing, there is a higher # of abortions for children with special needs diagnoses. This buzz goes to show that in the big picture, the issue of health care is far too complex to have a black or white, good/bad kind of analysis. Nonetheless, I maintain that sitting around doing nothing because the issue is too big is simply not a moral option. There’s no way it’s ever going to be perfect, but we can tweak it as we go–as a certain Congressman Chris Smith is trying to do on the issue of taxpayer funding for abortion.

Whew…it’s been a Kate-on-a-rampage kind of week. Time for a nice, no-drama weekend!

Here are a some real gems:

“…all parents spend more time today with their children than they did in 1975, including mothers, in spite of the great rush of women into the American workforce. Today’s married mothers also have less leisure time (5.4 fewer hours per week); 71 percent say they crave more time for themselves (as do 57 percent of married fathers). Yet 85 percent of all parents still—still!—think they don’t spend enough time with their children.”

“(Children are) a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to s***.”

“And couples probably pay the dearest price of all. Healthy relationships definitely make people happier. But children adversely affect relationships. As Thomas Bradbury, a father of two and professor of psychology at UCLA, likes to say: ‘Being in a good relationship is a risk factor for becoming a parent.’

Studies and articles like this always irritate me. How do you measure “happy,” anyway? “Happy” is a mood. “Happy” depends on the day of the week, the hour, sometimes the minute. It depends on whether you’re fighting with your sister, or coming off a fun day at the beach. Reducing the lifelong experience of parenthood to this tiny sliver is worse than ridiculous.

Plus, these sorts of stories are based on people’s perceptions, which are then turned into reality. This is another thing I hate about political “news.” During an election cycle, we don’t hear facts about issues or stances; that would be too complicated, too prone to bias. No, we hear the results of polls, because obviously what people THINK is the truth actually IS the truth. (Puh-leeze.)

So I was somewhat mollified to see that (buried halfway down the article), they shared this:

“Seven years ago, the sociologists Kei Nomaguchi and Melissa A. Milkie did a study in which they followed couples for five to seven years, some of whom had children and some of whom did not. And what they found was that, yes, those couples who became parents did more housework and felt less in control and quarreled more (actually, only the women thought they quarreled more, but anyway). On the other hand, the married women were less depressed after they’d had kids than their childless peers. And perhaps this is because the study sought to understand not just the moment-to-moment moods of its participants, but more existential matters, like how connected they felt, and how motivated, and how much despair they were in (as opposed to how much stress they were under): Do you not feel like eating? Do you feel like you can’t shake the blues? Do you feel lonely? Like you can’t get going? Parents, who live in a clamorous, perpetual-forward-motion machine almost all of the time, seemed to have different answers than their childless cohorts.

Somewhat, because you still have to draw the obvious conclusion for yourself: that fleeting “happiness” is not the whole story. Parenthood is stressful, for sure, and sometimes it seems like the rewards are ephemeral. But if you can step back and look at the big picture, it makes all the difference. Sure, this morning as I type I have a 16-month-old whining and whimpering, trying to sit on my lap and take over the keyboard.  And a 5-year-old sulking because I told him he couldn’t wear his Superman pajamas all day (he’s been wearing them for 76 hours already). Is that annoying? Uh, yes. Do I like stubbing my toe on chairs and stools, tripping over stainless bowls while I’m trying to cook? Not in the slightest. In fact, I throw temper tantrums about it all the time.

But in twenty-five years, when my kids are grown, I’m not going to be stuck on this day’s annoyances–this day’s, or any day’s, for that matter. I’m going to be thinking how rich my life is because of them.

This is why I get so irritated when the girl at Kidz Court looks at my chaotic family of three little ones and says, “You’re crazy.” When did we lose the ability to think and plan long term? When did the passing pleasure of the moment become the only standard by which we judge life?

“I think this boils down to a philosophical question, rather than a psychological one,” says (Tom) Gilovich (of Cornell U). “Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?”

Most importantly, I have a choice in how we choose to approach the individual moments. With or without children, there will always be irritations in life, but there will also be moments of heart-stopping beauty and incredible grace. And often, they are the same moments. The baby who’s trying to type my blog post in Baby-de-gook is also holding his hands up and padding toward me with a grin that makes my insides go gooey. The kid sulking about Superman jammies is also taking time outs to giggle at being tickled. In these moments that swing so wildly, I get to choose which part defines my mood.

I won’t always choose well. But I will always have the choice.

The day we talked, I got to pick her brain on the subject of overparenting, and the way that the choice not to use contraception affects our outlook on parenting. Although we were talking Catholicism, I think her reflections will resonate with Protestant and Catholic alike.

KB: Is there something about the choice not to contracept that causes a shift in the way couples choose to parent?

KH: I do think it makes a big difference. Just looking up a couple of articles on the one-child policy in China brought it into focus. In China they’re talking about the “little emperor syndrome.” Since this is the only child they’re going to have, parents focus all their time and attention on that child. You have two parents and four grandparents catering to one child. Six adults, all trying to figure out how they will help that ONE child afford a house. Now they’re referring to these little boys as the Brat Pack, because instead of learning the normal things that a child needs to learn, they’re being catered to.

Sometimes in the States you’ll hear people having only one or two children talk about “premium” children. They’ll use negative images about larger families, like “we’re not having a litter of kids, or a crop of kids, were having premium children.” To NFP parents, they are priceless children. They’re a gift from God, so we have a responsibility to raise them well, but not to have them be the focus of our lives.

The secular view is: I only want to have one or two children because I can then give them everything. My husband overheard this couple on a plane, with a six-month old baby. Scott got into conversation with them. He said, “Is this your first child?”

“This is our only child,” the husband said. “We’re gonna give her everything.”

And my husband said, “Except siblings.” The secular world thinks of the THINGS, the room to themselves, the toys…but they’re very lonely children. Some of them don’t have very many cousins, aunts and uncles, so the family structure that would help them be well-rounded Christian people isn’t there. There are those who substitute things, and they think they’re doing what’s best for their kids.

KB: Does the fact that we practice surrendering to God’s will and trusting in God’s timing predispose us to resist the urge to overparent?

KH: As Christians, the center of our lives needs to be Christ. Do we need to be responsible for their safety? Sure, but ultimately I’m not the one in control—God is. And our perspective on contraception is that God is the one in control. And we’re acknowledging that.

For example, germs. If you have one or two children, you can go out of your way to protect them…but they may grow up to be sickly adults because they weren’t exposed when they were young. When you have lots of kids, you can’t do that, but they may be healthier later.

It’s important to be responsible for their care, but God is asking us to be faithful in parenting. One of the challenges every parent faces, whether Christian or not, is different shading between our children and ourselves. We can feel that their success is our success and their failure is our shame. I think the Catholic perspective on parenting is more balanced. Yes, we have an influence on their success or failure, but if we begin to equate their success or failure with ours, then were not putting the correct emphasis on God.

Does that mean I can’t reinforce my child’s obedience? Of course I can–but I can only do so much. Beyond that, I have to trust in God. God is going to teach them and challenge them through other people, not just me. I think of those parents who map out what Ivy League school their kids are going to attend based on what preschool they send them to. They’re confusing their identity.

I think that a Catholic view on parenting is much more balanced. Of course, we all bring our own weaknesses and strengths to parenthood. One of the differences between the Catholic view of family and the secular world is the marriage relationship. The primary relationship is our marriage; and from that, our children are our next priority. It’s very important that we care for children and serve them in the ways that we need to, but we can’t make them the center of our life, because that’s where God needs to be. And ultimately if we put the priorities in order, we’re serving them better.

KB: Does the Church offer us any guidance? What about Scripture, saints, etc.?

KH: In I Corinthians 8:1, Paul says that knowledge puffs up; love builds up.
The Church teaches us that responsible parenting is being open to life. The world will pit having children vs. being responsible. So many of these beautiful Church and papal writings don’t pit one versus the other. I don’t know any parent who would say they DON’T want to do the best thing for their kids. If that’s our primary motivation, then we need to trust the wisdom of the Church that what is best for our children includes our openness to life.

There’s a psychiatrist up in Canada who treats kids with lots of dark thoughts. There’s the sense in these kids that it was a good thing they were conceived when they were, because otherwise they might not be here at all.
If we will yield to the Lord and the Church, we will discover how good it is for our children to have other children. I think of older couples who say they wish they had had more children, but now it’s too late. The time to be open is when it’s possible.

My mom had her last baby when I was sixteen, and she said it this way: “I know I will be an older parent when he’s young. But you are all so close, I know you will all care for him.”

KB: As you might imagine, considering my interest, we also talked about Down syndrome. Its pretty common, though of course not universal, that once you have a child with Down’s, you’re done—as if parents throw their hands up in defense against the fear of being overwhelmed by more children, because that one child requires so much more to accomplish the basic necessities of life. Mrs. Hahn took a different approach. She told me about a friend of hers, who has a child with Down’s. That friend responded by saying, “It makes me want to have more children. I know I’m probably going not to outlive my child, and this way his siblings can care for him.”

I know that conventional wisdom would react badly to that—as if the only value for a younger sibling of a child with special needs is as eventual caretaker, a person in service to a more fragile older sibling, a la My Sisters Keeper. But I think that misses a couple of important points.

First, this perspective only exists in combination with a deep love of and openness to life. And secondly, this is what family is about: taking care of each other. I don’t see anything wrong with parents who take into account the lifelong welfare of all family members while they’re making decisions about family planning.

Mrs. Hahn goes on to say,

KH: That’s part of the irony of the Gospel being lived out in normal life: it may sound more logical to stop everything and focus all the resources on one. But I can think of a family where the next child challenges and encourages the older sibling with developmental growth.

Parenthood gives us a chance to really trust the Lord: whether we’re able to conceive, whether we’re able to bring them to term, whether there are disabilities to deal with…we’re really not in control.

On the other hand, we do know a lot of parents feel the impulse to overprotect. It is responsible to pause and consider: Is there something good and holy in that impulse?

When we try to live the Church’s teaching we can sometimes fall into the trap of Catholic guilt and think we have to offer everything up, that we can’t ever say, “This is too hard!” Sometimes its really overwhelming, and we have to find the friends who will encourage us and pray for us.

Note to CCL members: look for more with Kimberly Hahn in the September/October issue of Family Foundations.

You might remember that last year a group of us put together a bill to mandate coverage of “habilitative” services for children with special needs. This extremely frustrating process has shifted me from a default status of “big government=bad” to support of national health care.

Consider this:

• A child who has a stroke on the birthing table will receive whatever therapies s/he needs throughout his/her life. But a child who has a stroke in utero, even a day or two before labor begins, will be denied the same coverage.
• Likewise, if Alex (Heaven forbid) suffered a fall and received brain damage that made it necessary for him to receive ongoing physical, occupational, or speech therapy, he’d get it. But Julianna, who already faces an uphill battle for learning anything (aside from being cute, which she gets naturally ), gets denied based on her diagnosis of Down’s.

As long as we were covered by First Steps, we got what we needed. It is a great program. But it only goes to age 3—and Julianna didn’t even walk until 2 ½. For 2 ½ years, we threw all our effort behind the basic gross motor skills, with OT and speech taking second place. This is the natural order of learning. But by the time she walked, we had less than six months to focus on speech therapy. Six months, when it took 2 ½ years to teach her to walk.

At 3 ½, she receives one hour a week of one-on-one speech therapy from the public schools. And although her comprehension is within twelve months of normal, she’s not even as far along as Nicholas (16 mo.) in speech production. She doesn’t know how to control her muscles. She can’t even babble the back of the mouth sounds (k, g, etc.) The only solution is speech therapy, and a lot of it. Can the school give her more? Probably. We’re certainly going to ask, come fall. But through insurance, we’re just plain old out of luck, because she has a pre-existing condition—namely, Down syndrome.

And we have good insurance. Insurance that served us well, as long as we had somebody else providing therapy.

This is the inequity—dare I say, the discrimination—that the Children’s Therapy Act seeks to address. But even knowing that grassroots-level legislation takes years to get passed, the complete and total lack of responsiveness from the political leadership was disheartening, to say the least. For weeks on end, we deluged the speaker’s office with calls to assign the bill to committee. We called senators, trying to get someone to listen to us. No response.

I contacted a former state senator, hoping for advice on who might be open to listening to us. Instead, I heard how insurance is not supposed to cover ongoing needs; insurance is supposed to be for short-term, emergency care, and we should not be putting mandates on private companies. I wanted to strangle him. Political philosophy is all well and good, but not when it holds us hostage. Because folks, there is not another good option.

A health insurance company can negotiate a rate with providers. A family can’t. It’s not because the therapists are unwilling; it’s just not allowed. That means that where an insurance company pays a fraction of the fee, families pay the whole freaking thing. Every time.

We know of people who have sold their homes to pay for therapy. People who have turned down good jobs, preferring to stay in low-paying ones, because Medicare does cover therapies. People who have gone into debt to meet their child’s needs.

How is this just?

This is why I put my support behind federal health care. Because as of 2014, it requires that insurers provide coverage equally across the board, regardless of “pre-existing condition.”

Now, I know the arguments. High taxes, socialized medicine, general governmental incompetence. I get it. I do. I’ve heard from people who lived in Canada and loathed the system, saying it was absolutely useless. But I’ve also heard from people who lived in Canada and said it was fabulous. Likewise for people in Europe, who come here and are appalled by our for-profit health care system. No system is perfect; somebody’s always going to be upset. But I truly, honestly believe that most of the backlash against “Obamacare” is about political power and fear of change.

What about abortion? Well, here’s the thing. Abortion, horrific and loathsome as it is, is not going to be legislated away. Not now, anyway. We as pro-life Christians would be far better employed changing hearts and minds than banging on a door that simply cannot be broken down right now. Through Theology of the Body, through natural family planning, through support of unwed mothers, we can change the world. Because where hearts and minds are, laws will follow.

One final thought. Parents given a diagnosis of Down syndrome during pregnancy are presented with a world where their child will be discriminated against every day. If parents can’t even trust their health insurance to help them get needed care for their child, how can we be surprised by a 90% abortion rate?

Oprah’s magazine, for instance. This month, it’s called “THE BIG DEAL ISSUE!” And the cover brags, “Everything Oprah’s wearing is under $100!”

Now, I don’t know about you, but just because an item of clothing costs less than $100 does not put it in my definition of a great deal. For instance: $44 earrings.  $95 bracelet. $55 watch. (Do you notice what I haven’t gotten to yet? Uh—CLOTHES?) The entire ensemble adds up to $570. And I don’t even think it’s remotely pretty. Fess up, ladies. Does anyone spend this kind of money on casual clothes? I think not! What universe is this magazine crew living in, anyway?

(Or am I the odd woman out here? Pray tell!)

Every month, O magazine makes me crazy with its pages and pages of “things we love,” not one of which is priced in a range that makes it even remotely interesting to me, even if I liked them, which I almost never do.

And yet, every month in this magazine, there is something wonderful. Usually it’s an essay. This month it’s Martha Beck. Her article is called “The Joy Dividend,” and in it, she talks about a philosophy for spending money. The centerpiece of her strategy is a box that looks like this:

Fairly self-explanatory. She says you spend good money on things you both need and LOVE (“LOVE” being far more than mere “love”), pinch pennies on things you have to have but don’t love, and then splurge on category 3 with whatever’s left, and skip the impulse buys that load your life with junk you don’t even really care for.

It’s not a perfect system, mind you. The missing link in this system is giving. She addresses retirement and savings, but not charity. I suppose you could argue that charitable giving falls into the “need” category, but I don’t know anybody who would put that in category 1 (be honest—you do it because you’re supposed to, because it’s the right thing to do, but don’t you spend that money a hundred times in your head?), and as for category 2, charity is certainly not something you should be pinching pennies on.

But aside from that, I adore this philosophy—enough to write a blog post on someone else’s idea. . How liberating is it to realize how much of what we spend money on falls into category 4?

1. I’ve been having one of those weeks again. One of those weeks where I found myself out of balance, focused myopically on writing, unable to sleep at night for being wound up about it, and spending far too little time being wife and mom. Any time this happens to me, it calls into question the whole vocation, makes me doubt whether I’m really supposed to be writing, or whether I need to stop trying to live in both worlds.

2. And then, out of nowhere, a week like this. A royalty check, payment for an article, completion of a really good query class, two queries and a personal essay sent out into the great beyond, a not-quite-rejection from a literary agent, and to top it off, forward motion on my new flute collection with GIA. Talk about a celestial message that the struggle for balance is worthwhile! If every week was this good on the writing front, I’d be making a living at it. Then again, I probably would never sleep.

3. Okay, enough about writing. I’m curious, folks—who out there still has movie rental stores nearby? Because all of ours closed. All but the one locally-owned one that has no parking b/c it’s downtown. Anyway, being movie lovers with three small children (which means that we hardly ever get to the theater), we have been driven to something we always thought we’d never do. We joined Netflix.

4. We always thought Netflix would be one of those things that we never deemed worthwhile—like cable TV. We keep basic cable—the kind of cable that they don’t even advertise because their standard package is “family cable.” But after we gave up TV for Lent for a couple of years, and saw our life shift for the better, we called the cable company and said, “Hey, whatever happened to that basic package? You know, the $15 one?” Yes, we miss out on a lot. But the more TV you have, the more you feel compelled to watch, and TV is really not a very good use of time. And it shields the kids from a lot of commercialism, too.

5. I always looked at Netflix that way. I mean, how many movies do you need to watch in a month? If you’re going to be socked with a monthly fee, you feel compelled to watch a bunch. But I have to say, I’m sold on it. We’ve more than used our money’s worth this first month, finally getting to watch the last season of Alias (we watched them all on videos, borrowed from friends, but never got to the last one…life intervened) and playing 1940s Superman videos for Alex on the computer.

6. Julianna’s summer school ended yesterday, so now summer begins in earnest. No more cute schoolbus moments till fall, and then Alex will be going to school, too. Six weeks. Wow! They say in parenthood, the days drag and the years fly. I think that about sums it up.

7. I have a babysitter this morning, so I get to go out to the nature area and sit this morning. I definitely need to find some stillness. And then, I will come home and work on adding 4000 words to my novel. Sounds like a good day. Let’s get on with it! Have a great weekend, everyone!

1. On Wednesday morning, we actually got going in plenty of time to get Julianna to her language preschool. Until Alex discovered he was missing a shoe. Not his shoes. A shoe. We turned the house upside down, but we could not find that shoe. Knowing that my two non-verbal children could easily have hidden it (like the cornstarch and the icing from my cake class), I gritted my teeth and attempted not to shout at him as he got his hated yellow Crocs on and went out to the van. We now had eight minutes to make a fifteen minute drive. And in the van, Alex discovered…his shoe.

?????????????????????

2. We got Julianna to school and I rushed her inside. As I patted her bottom to get her moving into the classroom, I noticed a cute little butt crack showing. Uh oh, I thought, her diaper’s slipped. And so I reached down to pull it (and her skort) up. And discovered…you guessed it. No diaper. She was wearing her cute polka dotted skirt, and no diaper. Can we all say, What the….?

3. Then Wednesday night I went shopping for a new swimsuit, my old one being stretched out from nursing the last two children. More proof, as if I needed it, that clothing designers definitely do not make clothes with me in mind! When it was all over I came home with a size 14 top and a size 10 skirt, and Christian nearly choked when I told him it cost $47…and that regular price was $75!

Takes 4-7: The Virtue of a Virus (or: an illustration of our status as total techno lllllooosers!)

4. Last week, our computer freaked out and we had to send it to the omputer wizards, who took about twelve viruses off of it and loaded new malware onto it.  We brought it home expecting good things, but didn’t really notice a difference in processing/interface speed.  Then last night, up popped the message again, in the middle of nothing at all–as in, I wasn’t even working at the time; I came over to the computer to find the message: “Cannot open file (gibberish).exe. File is infected.”

5. Christian set the software to work. It found 7 more infected files, which for some reason the computer seemed reluctant to delete. Once he finally got rid of them, he realized why: We no longer had internet access. (Sigh.)

6. Two hours and a long call to Century Tel later, Christian got the internet up and running again. And in the process, he and the customer service guy had a discussion about whichlights were and were not lit on our DSL box, and why the shortcut to connect to the web wasn’t working. The guy said, “What do you mean? This is DSL. You don’t need to dial up.”

The long an the short of it? After THREE YEARS of paying for DSL service, we finally have it! Our jaws hit the floor when we started surfing the web, and saw the difference in speed.

7. The moral of the story? Sometimes a virus is a VERY GOOD THING. The pathetic part of the story? That we’ve lived here three years with what amounts to dialup on steroids, and we LIKED IT because it was so much faster than what we had before!!!!