Embrace The Suck

"Beauty goes beyond mere necessity.  Grace, gracefulness, graciousness take us beyond mere necessity  to a place of delight, even joy." Br. Mark Brown, SSJE There's a lot I can say about my Sweetie.  He makes me laugh.  He holds me when I cry. He tells good stories. He's mostly a good driver, except when I'm backseat driving and yell, "Look out!"  He likes to read. He likes to write. He's organized in a way that I will never be. He loves cats. Dogs too. But there's a soft spot in his heart for big gray English Blue cats. He's never met a potato chip he didn't like, but he prefers Wavy ones. He's a volunteer Guardian ad Litem. He's patient until he's not, then he blows up. The good part about this is, it doesn't take him long to be is okay again. (Unlike me who lets things fester) He likes back scratches. He doesn't say anything when I sleep in late … really late. Or steal most of t...

Five days behind. No way to catch up. I'd like to say it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but that would be a big fat lie. I've tried. I've really tried. It's just not happening. Or it wasn't happening until this morning when I was making the bed. I'd turned on the TV which was still set to PBS from last night. Sesame Street was on.  Elmo's Countdown to Christmas, to be exact, but I didn't know that til the end. And I didn't know until now that's been around since 2007. See what you miss when you don't have little kids around the house. I tuned in late. The Elf in charge of the Christmas counter downer was trying to convince Oscar the Grouch to help with the countdown. I'd like to think I haven't been as grouchy about Christmas as Oscar. There's a chance, however, that given a few more undone tasks I might have to find a garbage can to hang out in. The counter downer drops, the numbers go flying all over wh...

Note: This took two days and lots of edits. me I'm not sure how I've missed only three days but I'm 4 SSJE words behind. Expand. Focus. Experience. Become. Each of those words would take considerably more thought than I have energy for tonight. I couldn't have written much yesterday. I was already feeling very sad about some things when I heard about the Taliban shooting up a school in Preshawar, Pakistan. I'm just not sure there is anyway to put a joyful spin on something as horrific as that. There's nothing in those 4 words I could tap into for meaning of such barbaric craziness. Today's quote from gratitude.com made as much sense as anything I could come up with. Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them. Rabindranath Tagore Yet even those words, good as they sound, would have little meaning to 100 school children being gunned down. Does someone really think that one can be fearless in facing such atr...

This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas.  The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart,  but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good."  Pope Francis I haven't put together a jigsaw puzzle in years. There was a time not so long ago that a puzzle always sat in some stage of completion on the dining room table. Sometimes mom would sit at the table for hours, looking at the pieces and only fit a couple of them together. Then someone else would walk in, usually Dad, take a quick look and neatly connect three or four pieces into each other.  Today's SSJE word is expand , which follows on the heels of risk and act . The words go together like pieces of an Advent puzzle. The month is half over and I'm just catching on! After one risks doing something in a different way, or acts on a new idea, the natural progression of things would be the expansion of one's horizons - physic...

I can't tell you where the last couple of days have gone. I wish I had more to show for them. I'm not doing so good at posting every day. The SSJE's words for yesterday and today are act and risk . I think they could easily be two sides of the same coin. If once you decide to risk, action is the next step. Or maybe when you decide to act, it involves a risk. The other night Sweetie and I watched a documentary on Netflix called Nicky's Family .  It gave me goosebumps, made me cry, and made me wish that I would be so brave. The gist of the story, which you may have heard already, is that Nicholas Winton, "a L ondon stockbroker, born into a family of German Jewish immigrants rescued 669 children, most of them Jews, from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. They came to Britain in eight transports. The ninth was canceled when Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The 250 children destined for it journeyed instead into the inferno of the Holocaust." ( Roger...

Yesterday got away from me. I slept through most of it. When I woke up I attempted to make Peppermint Bark. My sister makes it every year. Not making it has been my tradition for about 3 years in a row. I have good intentions.  I buy the white and dark chocolate chips and candy canes. I even go so far as beating the peppermint sticks into red and white striped crumbles. FYI - even if the chocolate candy doesn't get made, beating the heck out of something in a plastic bag is good for holiday stress. Determined that this would be the year I went the distance, I began by melting the chocolate chips in an improvised double boiler. My mom used to have a double boiler. I don't know what happened to it. Funny how I still find things to miss about my mom. I stirred the chocolate until it was melted and smooth. I spread it out on a  cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, then stuck in the fridge to harden. Easy peasy. This would have been the perfect time to multi-task by frost...

I've been on my feet almost all day. My hands have either been wrist deep in flour and sugar or hot water. I don't know how many dozen cookies I made. I do know it's barely a drop in the bucket compared to what I used to do. I didn't bake anything last year.  My son blames my daughter's no carb diet. No carbs = no cookies, even at Christmas. Now there's someone with willpower. I'm trying to remember the days when baking all day brought me joy instead of exhaustion. I think there's something missing when only one person is in the kitchen doing the work. Perhaps instead of listening to NPR all afternoon, I should have played 3 Dog Night's version of "Joy to the World."You know, Jeremiah was a bullfrog ….. I think a day full of baking should have some booty shaking in it. Too bad I just thought of it. Today's SSJE word is "respond."  I feel myself responding to some un-joyful news with my typical ride in on a white horse to s...

Note: As if to prove my point about not knowing my Bible people so well, Joy left a comment to tell me that that I had Mary and Martha mixed up. Martha was the doer, Mary the listener. Oh well, I guess I made my point! me I can remember being asked in a church study group what woman from the Bible would you be? Not being a student of the Bible, I was hard pressed to think of any biblical women that I might resemble. Eve? Not that much of a rule breaker. The Virgin Mary? Not that Holy. Ruth? I'm a follower, for sure. At the time I probably picked Mary who, unlike her sister Martha, was all about making things nice for Jesus when he visited. Yup, that would have been me. I like being on the outside or in the kitchen. Close enough to hear what's going on, but not in the thick of things.  What I didn't know, until I started getting Ronna Detrick's weekly emails, is there are a lot of women in the Bible - some with names, some without - whose lives were barely recorded a...

 My sweet, Bella is going through a separation anxiety stage. She always smiles when she sees me, and is agreeable to "go outside" with me,  but she keeps pretty close tabs on her mom is all times. By dinner time, I'm usually only good for "potty time."  Last night Mom and Dad were at a meeting so I, aka MeMe, was in charge of dinner.  Let me just say that feeding the Russian army might be easier than feeding this child. "No, No," said the petite child who suddenly developed Herculean strength and almost tossed herself out of the high chair.  The adage of the horse and water works for 2 year olds and milk as well. She was having none of it. Poor thing was in total melt down mode when her mom came home to change for a party.   No dummy, Bella, knew if she clung to her mommy, mommy couldn't go anywhere without her. Tension and anxiety were in the air. In an effort to distract her, we all walked to the garbage drop down the hall. When we noticed ...

Too tired to write. May angels guard you as you sleep. Merry ME

“Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”  ―  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Well, so much for perfect blog attendence. I completely missed yesterday. I had thoughts throughout the day about joy, and the SSJE advent word "imagine." I just never got my act together enough to write those thoughts down to see if they made any sense. I'd have to say pretty much the same thing for today. Except today my excuse is that I was making bears instead of writing. I cut myself some slack when I read Alana Sheeren's Monday Mantra and asked her if I could copy it. I readily admit that it was this picture that caught my eye. But as I read on, I agreed with everything Alana said.  Who hasn't had those moments when we wish for Martha Stewart to pop in and work her magic with the decorations and in the kitchen? And who hasn't melted into a puddle of tears when their kindergartner brings home a glue and glitter covered piece of art to go on the very un-Martha tree? Who hasn't looked at their tree years later, after the kids are gone with kids of th...