7 Quick Takes

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I forgot to share this picture last week. When it’s been a snow day and my nerves are shredded to the last thread, my husband takes the kids outside after dark and does this:

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I gave an interview on Lent at This, That and The Other Thing on Ash Wednesday, and that morning I was also on Relevant Radio’s Morning Air program. I had hoped to share a direct link to the interview, but it looks like you just have to go through the archives to hour three on the 22nd of February, and even I am not egotistical enough to think everyone wants to go through all that on my account. 🙂 However, I was very happy with how the interview went, and midway through you get a peep or two of Michael cooing, which is kind of fun.

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And here we go again…Michael is coughing and not nursing. I’m not entirely sure (I’ve lost count), but I think he’s on his eighth or ninth virus in his first twelve weeks. –but only the second major one. I’m just praying that this time he and I are proactive enough to keep him strong enough to get through it without yet more doctor/hospital drama. 😦

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Speaking of illness…you’ve all been hanging on the edges of your seats, waiting for an update on the ear infection, right? It has now been two full weeks…one round of Amoxicillin and one round of Z-pak. And yesterday was the first day I have not had to use any painkillers. Which is not to say that the pain is all gone, because it’s not, and I still have partial hearing loss and my ear remains blocked. But the pressure is off, and I have recovered some of my hearing.

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I’m reading G.K. Chesterton and really enjoying it. The other day I almost leaped out of my chair shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”…only I couldn’t because there was a baby attached to the breast. The quote I was reading was this one, and it seems to me so very, very appropriate for this time of presidential elections, political posturing, and angst over contraceptive mandates:

“It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist; or to charge a denier of immortality with the infamy of denying it; or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong, by proving that he is wrong on somebody else’s principles, but not on his own. … we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours.” (from St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, by G.K. Chesterton)

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I don’t know if we can have any impact on the HHS ruling or not. It certainly won’t hurt to try. But I truly and honestly believe that this is our wakeup call to remind us that we can’t talk Catholic doctrine on this subject and expect the world to pay one iota of attention. There are lots of practical, “worldly” reasons why NFP has so much more to offer than chemical bodily manipulation, and that is the only way we can get people’s attention. And pointing out those reasons is a good reminder that faith and reason are inseparable, not antagonists. One of the things that stuck in my mind when we were doing our retraining for CCL was the idea that practicing NFP changes hearts.

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It’s been a busy writing time lately…I’ve been working with WLP on two more octavos and a flute collection (Christmas this time), and in the last week or so I received an acceptance from GIA on a separate flute collection, plus official approval of my third book with Liguori. This one will be on Ordinary Time, and centered around the Beatitudes–how to take those pithy little sayings and make them “actionable.” (That’s my new favorite word for matters of faith.) This weekend, I’m signing books at my home (i.e. childhood) parish, which is exciting, too–I finally get to do something for the parish and school that raised me, because I’m going to give a portion of the book proceeds to the school. Busy times, but good.

Now…off to pump, so at least I stay healthy while Michael is not eating. 😦