Shower Thoughts: Ants, Buddhists and Super-Rats

As you may know, I work from home full-time-ish (which is to say that I get paid for part-time work, but my production-driven job takes me full-time time to complete, so I'm obviously a winner). This has its drawbacks, like rarely seeing people other than my own little family, and its HUGE advantages, like being able to stay on top of the laundry and being able to shower, alone, when I feel like it. (Hallelujah.) And I do most of my blog-post-dreaming-up in the shower. And shiz can get weird.

So.

Just now I was taking a shower and spending too much of the time allotted drowning ants (again), and I got to thinking: what do Buddhists do about infestations? Do they just live with them? I mean, I guess my little ant shower-crashers are basically harmless, so I'm sure a Buddhist would have left them alone rather than washing them down the drain with a maniacal supervillain laugh -- I spend a lot of time alone, remember? -- but what about, say, Buddhists who live in NYC?

What about cockroaches?

WHAT ABOUT THOSE DISEASE-SPREADING SUPER-RATS?!

7QT: 2 October 2015

1. I did a victory lap yesterday on our successful night-weaning, and it bit me on the rear with a quickness. The little booger screamed for hours last night, and being well-rested already feels like a distant memory.

2. I have the itchiest inner ears in the whole entire world. I'm starting to think I'm allergic to something I consume on the daily because... Okay, so you know how when people in movies have allergic reactions, they always start knuckling at their ears?



Hitch does it right about 0:50 in case you have no earthly idea what I'm talking about. I want to do that all the time. Or stick pointy things in there and dig around. It is not good.

3. We're looking for another new rental. We had hoped to be long gone to our new life in San Antonio by now, but it's taking its time happening. (We're waiting to do this in God's time, but after a bunch of very hopeful signs waaaay back in 2012, He has started to take His sweet time about it.)

I'm not going to tell this whole story because these Takes would cease to be Quick, but the takeaway is: please pray for us that we find something with more space for less money. (Stop laughing.)

4. It's soup weather! I'm making soup this week even though Michael claims to hate soup. Really, what he hates is plain chicken broth. I have never put mere broth in front of him, and whenever I make soup he likes it, and then promptly forgets that he liked it and goes back to "hating soup." Does anyone else's husband pull these shenanigans?

5. I turned on an old episode of Chopped while I write my 7QT and then put on my face and one of the chefs just said he plans to "take as many risks as he can safely take." That just makes me laugh and laugh.

6. Anybody got a good recipe for gluten-free chocolate cake that will be like cake and not like fudgy brownie? Keira's birthday is next weekend, she requested "chocolate cake with spickles" (sprinkles), and a couple of her cousins are gluten-free. I've been trolling Pinterest and I've found some things that look promising but I'd rather make something that's been vouched for by someone. I'd do some test cakes but then we'd have to eat them and I am fat enough thank you.

7. Facebook has really been getting me down recently. I wish there were a filter for political nonsense. I just want to see people's kids, funny memes and life events, and I'll even happily check out what you're eating! I just don't want to read about how I'm obviously soul-less because I disagree with you about gun control and abortion. Get on that, Zuckerberg. (Alternatively, can we all just agree to keep politics on Twitter?)

Second kid... First night-weaning.

Sweet Declan.

Sweet, sweet Declan.

Sweet, sweet, baby terrorist Declan.

In his first nine months of life, he had slept through the night a (scant) handful of times, but his typical MO had been getting up once or twice in a night. Neither Michael nor I were happy about it, but we were getting through. Some nights he'd get up more than twice, and we were less happy about that, but we weren't broken.

And then.

Last Friday night, Declan got up FIVE TIMES between 11 pm and 5:45 am, at which point he decided he was up for real. I'm a pretty poor sleeper myself, so I only caught snatches of sleep in there somewhere. I spent Saturday in a haze of tired, irritable funk.

Saturday night, he started wailing at 11 pm again and my heart fell. Due, probably, to our poor night's sleep the previous night, Michael didn't wake up right away. During that time before my husband would have gone lurching to Declan's crib, my thoughts raced around.

I heard my mom in my head, telling me, "If you're not training him, he's training you."

I thought about all the reasons I hadn't cracked down on him sooner: he's a twenty-four pound behemoth -- and didn't get that way by accident -- so he's probably hungry; his eczema is flared up really badly and I know from personal experience that the one sensation you can't sleep through is "itchy"; he's teething so hard; he's prone to night terrors like his sister, and I can't tell sometimes if he's having one or if he's just mad; he's such a lazy lump of a baby that he doesn't know how to get himself into a comfortable position; he has never so much as paused in his screaming during the fifteen-to-twenty minute periods of trying to wait him out before; he's going to wake Keira; Keira got up a lot too, for a while, but she stopped on her own.

I thought about whether any of that justified five wake-ups in a single seven-hour period. Every night for the rest of my life, potentially.

By the time Michael awoke, I had decided that unless we were reasonably sure this was a night terror, we were going to wait him out. We pulled up the video monitor feed and watched him for a while. During a night terror, he usually thrashes and tosses with his eyes shut tight, but this night he wasn't doing that. So we were more-than-reasonably sure that it wasn't a night terror.

He screamed, no lie, for at least ninety straight minutes. I almost had to physically restrain Michael from going to get him. He sounded so mad, bordering on panicky. I prayed for discernment, and for God to give me the strength to do this if it was the right thing.

He calmed himself a couple of times in that ninety minutes, but he would start up shrieking again within five minutes. I considered listening to an audiobook with headphones to drown him out, but ultimately rejected it because I felt I needed to listen in case he started to choke or something. I switched back and forth between Declan's camera feed and Keira's camera feed (#modernparenting), trying not to worry that Keira had pulled her covers up over her head in apparent, totally justified annoyance.

I was a nervous wreck. Michael was worse. At one point, he almost stormed out of our bedroom door to get Declan from his crib even as I told him he couldn't. I may have resorted to threats to get him to get back in bed and leave him alone. (I mean, maybe I did. I was sleep deprived so I can't be sure. ;))

Finally, he exhausted himself and went to sleep. Four hours later, he ramped up again and screamed for at least another hour. At 7 am when he started fussing, Michael brought him to me and I nursed him in bed and we dozed together for another hour.

Each night since it's gotten better. We haven't gotten him out of his crib since that Friday into Saturday overnight of terror. Last night, praise be to Jesus, he slept twelve hours without a peep.

The hardest part was the feeling that if I were just a better mother, a more patient mother, this wouldn't be necessary.

But ultimately, children want boundaries, and a night with five wakings wasn't any better for him than it was for me. The last few days he's been 200% happier. I've been 2000% happier.

Thanks be to God for that.

Blessed Brunch

This past Saturday, I was blessed to attend a Blessed Brunch (facilitated through Blessed Is She -- and if you're not signed up for the daily devotionals, you should be!) hosted by the lovely Mary Lenaburg. I have been a reader of Mary's blog for a while, so getting to meet her was a real treat for me. And finding out that we're neighbors was an even bigger treat!

I have to tell you: going to this sort of event is way outside of my comfort zone. I tend to project a confidence in groups, and I know I seem so outgoing... But I'm actually quite shy. I love new people, but I make them approach me first. And thanks to a vicious case of bitchy resting face (I kind of hate that term, but I haven't ever heard a better one to describe just how unpleasant I apparently look from a distance!), people rarely approach me.

When I saw that Blessed Is She was encouraging these Blessed Brunches all around the country, and that one was being held in my town, I was still hesitant. After all, Fairfax is enormous and getting from one side to the other can easily be forty minutes in the car. And I have a nursing baby, who wouldn't do well in that sort of environment, during naptime, mostly because he only nurses well in the quiet now and he absolutely refuses to sleep in public.

And and and, excuse excuse excuse.

Something made me go back and look at the list of upcoming brunches again. I realized that the fact that there was one even potentially up to forty minutes (or an hour, depending on the DC metro area's infamously awful traffic) from home was close, compared to the opportunities for ladies in some parts of the country. On the same night, while browsing Pinterest, a "suggested pin" popped up: "How to make friends as an adult." AND THEN, the next morning, I happened to be reading a blog I've never read before and saw a picture of a book entitled Women Are Scary: The Totally Awkward Adventure of Finding Mom Friends. Around the same time, I saw that Mary had posted on the Blessed Is She Facebook group some more details about the brunch she was hosting, and I realized that her house would not be forty minutes away. More like five.

And I said, "All RIGHT, God, I get it." I RSVP'd immediately.

I have almost no friends from high school or college who are Catholic. In fact, I have almost no friends from high school or college who are not hostile to religion -- the curse of being a scientist and having friends who are scientists. I work from home and thus don't have that many opportunities to meet new people. My best friend, who's both Catholic and a mother to littles, moved to Texas before my children were born. My family is all in Pennsylvania, which is not very far from Northern Virginia but is also not around the corner.

I have felt like I've been parenting -- and Catholic-ing -- in a vacuum. I'm involved in the music ministry at my parish, but the ages skew significantly older, and anyway since Declan was born I've been unable to attend choir practice because it falls exactly at bedtime. Someday he'll be done nursing and I'll be freer to move about in the evenings, and I'm simultaneously looking forward to and dreading that time. For the time being, my life is work, and weeknight dinners as a family, and time spent with the kids before they go to bed, and family time on the weekends.

Most of the time, I don't even notice that I haven't had a social life in years. But when I do notice, it hits me like a ton of bricks.

So there I was, scared to death, on a beautiful Saturday morning, on Mary's back deck with 20+ strangers who ceased to be strangers immediately. Everyone brought something to share -- and, of course, there was enough food for four times as many women! -- and Mary provided a beautiful spread, coffee, tea, and some cold beverages. Mary's husband (who is a saint for letting everyone invade!) led us in an opening prayer. Everyone filled their plates and chatted while we chowed down. Then we went around the table and introduced ourselves to the group. After that, we had a free-flowing group discussion about community. I may have openly wept. (Okay, I definitely openly wept.)

It's such a blessing to meet so many like-minded women of faith! I had to be the first one to leave, after getting an SOS text message from Michael (poor Declan was late for his nap and completely over waiting for Mommy to come home and nurse him!), but I could otherwise have stayed indefinitely, getting to know more of the ladies better and filling up my soul. I didn't get any pictures myself, so you'll have to check out the hashtag we designated on Instagram (#blessedbrunchfx). There are only a couple because everyone was too busy bonding to do much documentation.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Mary for hosting, and to Blessed Is She for making it possible.

"What punishments of God are not gifts?"

So I've been thinking about Stephen Colbert. He's often held up by Catholics as "our guy" in the world of political comedy because he's open -- and talks frequently -- about his Catholicism.

But I've always felt rather disappointed by him, personally. His tenure on The Colbert Report featured him, in character as an over-the-top right-wing blowhard; as a genuinely right-wing person myself, I found it annoying that I could nod along with his take on a situation until he took it a step too far. And he always took it at least one step too far.

In fact, that was the point: to discuss conservatism in a faux-approving way, but to reach the most obnoxious possible conclusion; to make conservatives into a caricature of a bigoted, selfish Scrooge McDuck. This formula was guaranteed to make the Comedy Central audience, still on a high from Jon Stewart's conservative bashing in the previous slot, sneer.

{I'm not sure it would be quite so harmful if an alarming proportion of my generation didn't get their news exclusively from Comedy Central. Get a grip, fellow millennials.}

Furthermore, he was known to espouse some pretty un-Catholic positions (ugh, I feel dirty even linking to The Huffington Post!). I just can't really get on board with Colbert as a Catholic we should be holding up as an example.

But then every once in a while he says something beautiful that makes me understand why Catholics do it. Consider this excerpt from an interview with GQ recently, talking about the loss of his father and brothers in a plane crash when he was young:

He was tracing an arc on the table with his fingers and speaking with such deliberation and care. “I was left alone a lot after Dad and the boys died.... And it was just me and Mom for a long time,” he said. “And by her example am I not bitter. By her example. She was not. Broken, yes. Bitter, no.” Maybe, he said, she had to be that for him. He has said this before—that even in those days of unremitting grief, she drew on her faith that the only way to not be swallowed by sorrow, to in fact recognize that our sorrow is inseparable from our joy, is to always understand our suffering, ourselves, in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity? Imagine being a parent so filled with your own pain, and yet still being able to pass that on to your son.

“It was a very healthy reciprocal acceptance of suffering,” he said. “Which does not mean being defeated by suffering. Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness.” He smiled in anticipation of the callback: “ ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ ” he said. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that's why. Maybe, I don't know. That might be why you don't see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It's that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”

I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.

I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn't mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”

He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I'm grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.’ I felt so guilty to be grateful. But I knew it was true.

“It's not the same thing as wanting it to have happened,” he said. “But you can't change everything about the world. You certainly can't change things that have already happened.”

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. This is an absolutely breathtaking reflection on the nature of suffering. I could never have articulated that; I can appreciate it, I recognize the Truth of it, but it's beyond my ability to verbalize. He's clearly smarter and more articulate than I am.

And that, I think, is where my problem really lies:

He's smarter than I am. He's more articulate than I am. He certainly has a larger field of influence than I can ever expect to have. And he's using it to do more harm to the Church than he's doing her service. More people will have seen him bashing the Supreme Court judges who opposed the gay "marriage" ruling than will likely see him waxing poetic about God's gift of suffering in our lives. More people will remember him as a faux conservative bigot than as a Catholic.

I understand that not everyone has the courage to be counter-cultural. As a Comedy Central news-comedian, Stephen Colbert was expected to carry water for progressivism. It would have been an act of sheer foolhardiness to come out in opposition to the legalization of gay "marriage" if he wanted to keep his job at Comedy Central and his upcoming gig at CBS. And maybe it's not moral cowardice at all: maybe he genuinely thinks that the Church is wrong in her steadfast opposition to gay "marriage."

She is not, and that is why I find him to be disappointing and an unworthy role model overall. Even if his reflection on suffering and gratitude brought me to tears.

Because someday I won't remember exactly how my two-year old used to count:

"One, two, free, four, fibe, six, seben, eight, nine, ten, eweben, twelbe, firteen, fifteen, nineteen, twelbe-teen..."

The. Greatest.