I've been looking for a quiz like this for a long time...

Abraham Lincoln You have a Bible and a library
card what more could you possibly need? You
prefer the Charlotte Mason Method of reading
living books for everything: historical
fiction, biographies, real histories, nature
guides, etc. No soon-to-be-outdated textbooks
for you.

What Type of Homeschooler Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Now, if DOB will just remember to stop at the library on his way home. ;-) Thanks to Amey.

The Problem of Tags

Guest Blog by D1

Lately I've noticed that lots of things come with these little white pieces of paper attached, called "tags." They're on everything: washcloths, blankets, playpens, toys. They're ugly.

So I've decided to work on removing them. I think Mama agrees with me, because usually when she notices I've found another tag, she goes ahead and takes it off for me. She can do it faster because she uses scissors. I have to chew on them.

Other times, Mama doesn't notice until I've already pulled the tag off by myself. Then she thanks me and throws it in the trash. I did that to my playpen mat tag. It was a big one, a lot of fun to remove.

A really hard one to remove is the one on the back of my exersaucer. I have to twist way around in my seat to reach it. Plus, Mama doesn't let me play in the exersaucer for very long. But when I get a chance, I like to chew on it. I have it about halfway chewed off now.

Last night I noticed Mama has a tag on the blanket on her bed. So I started to work on it. Mama didn't like this. She seems to think I should concentrate on eating when I'm in her bed. But I don't know how I'm supposed to do that when she keeps so many interesting things--like tags and Papa--in there. Too distracting.

Anyway, I hope if you have any tags at your house, you are working to get rid of them.

Babies and Politics

We took D1 to a political meeting on Saturday. It was supposed to be about 90 minutes--instead, it stretched to four hours. D1 was, fortunately, quite calm about the whole thing, sitting and listening with big eyes as she gnawed on her toys, happy to find there were several people handy who were more willing to play catch-the-falling-toy than Mama and Papa usually are.

Nonetheless, the experience reinforced our decision to back off from politics for awhile, so that we are not quite so obligated to make it to meetings, or quite so obligated to be present and attentive for the entire meeting. At one critical moment of heated debate, I as secretary was taking notes, DOB was chairing the meeting because the two chief officers both wanted to participate in the debate, and I noticed D1 getting the look of concentration in her eyes that every mother sees with dread. There was nothing for it but to let her wait.

We were visited by people running for national club office, seeking our endorsement. One of the ladies had a nine-year-old daughter; the other one had a six-month-old son. They both assured us they had been able to find a good work-life balance. I voted to endorse the lady with the six-month-old; she seemed well-qualified to do the work. And I'm sure if she doesn't get it, she'll have plenty of other political activity to keep her up into the small hours of the morning, after she gets home late from her demanding administration job. But I couldn't help feeling a little sad for a very small boy whose mommy tries to get home in time to tuck him into bed.

We also chatted with a friend who got married recently. Since he asked us the "When are you going to have another one?" question, he was fair game for DOB to ask, "Do you guys have plans for any time soon?" He didn't. There were too many other things he wanted to do right now, and he didn't want to give up all that yet. Maybe someday, but not yet.

It seems like a wise approach. Although if we looked at readiness, we're still not ready to have kids. We probably never will be.

But we took home with us a little person who thinks we're the two greatest people in the whole world.

Catching what's going around

Ten things I've done that you probably haven't:

1. Had a tour guide yell at me for playing with the revolving doors at St. Paul's Cathedral (and I didn't even do it!).
2. Babysat triplets (except I bet Juliana has).
3. Clung to the top of a mountain, terrified of falling off. (I'm just guessing that usually people who are afraid of heights are smart enough not to climb the mountain in the first place.)
4. Spoken to groups of wealthy, well-educated adults assisted by a rubber chicken.
5. Worn as a wedding dress a dress I had previously worn in another wedding.
6. Convinced my siblings to put pencils in their hair, stand together in the bathroom, and shout "Wallaby, wallaby, wallaby."
7. Composed sonnets about business law.
8. Replaced salt for sugar in a sweet bread recipe.
9. Searched through the woods in the dark for the front end of a cow whose back end was sticking out into the pasture. (Toolboy doesn't count, since he did it with me.)
10. Decorated a bedroom in orange and green.

Let me know if you've done any of these things, and post your own list!

Hilarious article

On the bogeyman of "socialization."

My cup runneth over

DOB had a friend who came over at some unearthly hour of the night Wednesday (I was falling asleep by then) to look at the furnace. He determined it had Congressional disease: Lots of hot air, but not doing anything. He managed to do a quick fix that got the house warm again, but said it really needs the whole system checked out and tuned up, a process that will no doubt be tiresome and expensive.

Anyway, sometime after this, the system had a minor explosion of some sort while DOB was watching, and the little overflow that used to drip a drop of water every few minutes has started to do a steady drain. The very nasty cup from someone's freshman orientation, which has served to catch the water from time immemorial, is now utterly inadequate to the task. Instead, we have propped a five-gallon bucket on top of the mop bucket with some cardboard holding it to the right angle. It filled most of the way up overnight.

In other news, the distiller is throwing fits again and refuses to run without dumping water all over the floor. This has made the water situation rather difficult, but DOB's family is bringing water when they can.

So between all that and the usual diaper duty, I guess I'll devote my day to trying to keep dry.

If you want to waste way too much time

Go visit the NameVoyager, an interactive graph of the top 1000 baby names in America for the past century. A fascinatinating place to look at social trends and gauge your family's relative trendiness in choosing names. (My parents tended to be just a bit behind the curve; DOB's were all over the chart). And if you really like names, be sure to check out the blog, too (link at the bottom of the page), with trend forecasts and tales of weird names. The author's book also looks worthy of checking out, as she categorizes names by what connotation they have and what circles they are trendy in, not just origin and history.

An interesting experiment: type in the first names of twentieth-century presidents. Up until the seventies, there's a spike in that name during that president's term. (Except John, which really couldn't get more popular.) But since the seventies, people don't seem to name their children for politicians anymore.

And on the unusual name combinations (what were their parents thinking?), some real people I have met or read about:

Roxanne Trees
Candy Bouquet
Harry Carey

Legalists and Anti-legalists

There are people who have broken free from bondage to rules and regulations into a genuine walk with God. This is cause for great rejoicing. And the cautions they have about legalism are usually worth listening to, tied in as they are to the reality of Christ living in us.

There are other people, though, who proclaim their freedom from legalism, yet something still seems amiss. They drone on and on about the evils of this rule and that rule. They are full of critiques (and no charity) for this group and that other group. They're happy--zealous--to exhibit their freedom to do X, Y, and Z. And if you (for whatever reason) happen not to do X, Y, and Z, well, you must be one of those judgmental legalists, too.

I've always had trouble putting my finger on exactly what was wrong. What they said about legalism might be true, and no one could doubt their antipathy for it, but why did their words and actions still seem so . . . legalistic?

I think I finally hit on it. The error of legalism is thinking that by our own actions and observance of rules we can gain justification, sanctification, or the fruit of the Spirit. Observing rules does not make us any closer to God. But neither does breaking rules make us any closer to God. The error of what I might call "anti-legalism" is thinking (subconsciously, I think) that freedom in Christ is found by going out and breaking whatever particular set of rules you were brought up to observe. But the focus is still on the rules, not on Christ.

Isn't that what Paul kept trying to warn us about? "Neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision availeth anything, but a new creature." If you're still obsessing about the rules, whether you're for or agin them, you're still missing the boat.

Lark News has a report that shows where this type of thinking leads. ;-)

The heat is not working right this morning. Though you can't tell, that's snow out the window. Actually it still feels pretty comfortable in here to me, but D1's hands are so cold. And I can't find that other slipper.

A Telling Conversation

QOC: I thought we were getting busy.
DOB: (Standing still, gazing off into space) I am busy. Don't you ever need to think about what you are about to do?
QOC: (Looking puzzled, shakes head)
DOB: Never mind, that was a stupid question.

Dean Socrates

As he's developing his theories of how to educate his ideal philosopher-kings, Socrates has realized he has a problem. If you take people who have been taught certain things are just and right all their lives, and then lead them to question those things (as part of the process of leading them to a truer understanding of ultimate truth and justice), they are liable to give up attempts at finding truth altogether and just go out and party.

Hence, the college/university and all the problems that have been associated with it for, oh, the last several hundred years. Take people at the stage of life when their passions run the highest and their judgment runs the lowest, remove them from the influence of their family and community, and cause them to question everything they have been taught. What would you expect to happen?

Most institutions of higher learning have taken one of two approaches: crack down with strict rules and Gestapo-like enforcement; or ignore it and hope nobody dies. Actually, there's generally at least some of both, and neither of them really works.

Socrates decides to do something else altogether. He just won't let anyone study philosophy until they are thirty, have worked for awhile, and are a bit more sane.

The idea certainly has its merits, but, alas, we don't live in a communal paradise and there is no one to watch the kids and pay the bills while more mature people ponder the Great Ideas. There is some hope, though, that with improvements in communication and distance learning, we can integrate higher education with real life in a more productive way.

In the meantime, should I put Plato aside for the next four years?

I killed off all the Romans

What obsolete skill are you?

You are 'Latin'. Even among obsolete skills, the
tongue of the ancient Romans is a real
anachronism. With its profusion of different
cases and conjugations, Latin is more than a
language; it is a whole different way of
thinking about things.

You are very classy, meaning that you value the
classics. You value old things, good things
which have stood the test of time. You value
things which have been proven worthy and
valuable, even if no one else these days sees
them that way. Your life is touched by a
certain 'pietas', or piety; perhaps you are
even a Stoic. Nonetheless, you have a certain
fascination with the grotesque and the profane.
Also, the modern world rejects you like a bad
transplant. Your problem is that Latin has
been obsolete for a long time.


Res ipsa loquitur, and all that. De gustibus non disputandum. Thanks to Devona.

Some Burgundy Carrots

Things D1 has tried to eat recently

• Applesauce spoon
• Bib
• Coffee table, legs of
• Dirt
• Exersaucer
• Foot, Mama's
• Globs of dropped food
• Highlighter
• Interior of playpen
• Jar lid
• Keyboard, computer
• Lumpy oatmeal
• More (of whatever it is)
• Nose, Papa's (She likes to play on the floor while we exercise. And eat anything that stays still long enough for her to get to it.)
• Overalls
• Pajamas
• Quilt
• Receipt
• Shoes, Mama's and her own
• Telephone cord
• Underwear, when "helping" fold laundry
• Vultures, from Noah's Ark
• Wheel, from rolling chair
• X--alas, she doesn't yet have a xylophone, or I'm sure she would have tried
• Yarn
• Zipper pulls

'Round go the interviews again

The interview game is going around again, but this time I'm not going to ask any questions. I'm going to answer these questions, posed by Amey, and if you want any questions of your own, you have to go ask her. ;-)

1. Early bird or night owl?

Neither. I always need more sleep than I can manage to get. :-) I'm usually at my best late morning or late afternoon. I have a little bit more of a morning edge than DOB, though.

2. How did you and your husband meet?

The answer we give when we don't want to explain is that we met in law school. The answer we give when we want to get funny looks is that we met online. DOB was the president of the debating society for our distance-learning school, and we met when I signed up for a debate. Everybody else backed out of debating me, so he had to do it himself. And won, much to my annoyance (we still argue over whether he fought fair or not).

At the time, due to my mistakenly typing my birthdate on a website, he thought I was ten years his senior. So it took quite awhile for that mistake to be corrected and anything to move forward. Maybe I'll tell the rest of the story sometime.

3. Describe your favorite meal.

This is a bittersweet question, and it ties into number four. My favorite meal is the kind my extended family used to have for holidays and get-togethers, with a huge spread of at least two kinds of meat (one poultry and one not, because Grandpa hasn't eaten poultry since WWII), salads, vegetables, fruit, mashed potatoes, Grandma's rolls, and one of Aunt Dee's delicious desserts. Plus munchies ahead of time and leftovers enough to last the rest of the day. But now I live far away and as people pass on things are never the same as they were.

4. Tell us about the family you grew up in.

I am the middle of seven children, with an age span of twenty-two years between oldest and youngest. The family runs in three clumps: except for the oldest, who is adopted, there's an older sister, then a brother about two years younger, then several years' gap. So by the time the next round of diapers came, Mom had someone to help with them.

My father is very serious to outward appearances, but very sarcastic and silly in private; my mother was very bright and cheery in public, but often quite serious in private, though she had a great deal of silliness as well. (She died a couple of years ago.) We lived on a weekend farm which we called "The Funny Farm," and for many years published "The Funny Farm Mooos" for our friends and relations--now it exists as the Christmas letter. My siblings are all very smart in one way or another, but not necessarily particularly ambitious. All the ones from me on down were homeschooled. Mom's health was bad, so although she always had grand goals mostly we learned, while she napped, by reading from the thousands of books she filled the house with. When she was awake we could go outside and get muddy.

My grandparents and a couple of aunts all lived close by; one grandma lived with us for years until she died.

5. What is the absolutely best way to eat carrots?
If you have the right kind of carrot, the best way is to eat them straight out of the ground, after you knock the dirt off. (I once had a little boy grow me the best variety of carrots for this purpose, but I don't remember what it was. You had to grow them in special soil and treat them carefully because they were very tender and not resistant to bugs.)

And a bonus question: What do you do on most Saturday nights?
I want to be flippant and put "sleep. " Before that, though, we usually watch a movie, or if we watched a movie on Friday, read a book together. Watching a movie is a lot more work, because we don't have a TV. DOB has to remember to bring his laptop home, and then we have to bring the monitor and speakers from the office computer out and set it all up on the coffee table and keep D1 distracted so she doesn't get in the cords or look at the screen. It's probably good, because it keeps us from using movies as a substitute for spending time together. We have to really want to see something to bother. Also if we're going to have someone over (and we try to average it at least once a month), Saturday is usually the day.

Coffee Clash

It may not have been a determining factor, but it certainly drew my attention to DOB as having Good Husband Potential: he didn't drink coffee. In law school, such fellows were few and far between. (In fact, to date I've never met a law student without a caffeine dependence of some sort.)

Though I have been accused of it, I really don't have some deep religious conviction against caffeine. I eat chocolate with a clear conscience, and can bring myself to sip a cup of tea on occasion. I just don't like coffee. Don't like the smell of it; don't like the taste of it. I lived 24 years in the Puget Sound region, sitting at coffee shops, watching everyone else drinking coffee, without ever wanting to drink it. So it was a relief to think I could marry a man who would not insist on stinking up the house with a pot of it every morning.

Then came last Thursday. I drove into the office for an afternoon meeting. DOB was still in his previous meeting, but he came bounding in a few minutes late.

"Coffee is really good!" he said.

I reeled in horror at the betrayal. What did this mean? How could this have happened to us?

He went on to explain. Their quick pre-lunch meeting had gone for three hours; they were at a coffee shop with nothing to eat. He had decided to try a mocha. It was good. He felt good, despite not having eaten lunch.

I smiled quietly to myself. I had seen what even small amounts of chocolate on an empty stomach did to him. I had nothing to fear.

"Let's see what you think of it at 6:30," I said.

A few hours passed. We were driving home. I could see DOB beginning to wilt with the letdown.

"I don't ever want to drink coffee again," he said.

I murmured sympathetic things and took him home and fed him dinner.

We still have no coffee at our house. All is well.

Miserable Mothers

I'm a little late commenting on this Newsweek article on the misery of modern motherhood, but better you receive my profound thoughts late than never--right? Right.

The gist of it is that modern youngish women (it seems to be geared to women a tad older than me) lose their sanity in attempting to be the PERFECT MOTHER, get their children in the RIGHT classes, schools, etc., all while maintaining their job skills and trying to keep their career from being entirely derailed. The solution, of course, is better day care.

Is this frenzied activity the unselfish outpouring of a mother's love and devotion? Is this what happens when you love your kids too much? Is it a unique problem of our day and age?

To answer the last question first: No. Women who devote themselves to achieving perfection in all areas of life, at the expense of their actual lives and the lives of those around them, are a hackneyed stereotype. "She's the sort of woman who lives for others--you can tell the others by their hunted expression."

It's a natural, but twisted, outgrowth of the way God made women to be: multi-taskers, responsible for making sure that nothing gets left behind while the men press forward with their one-track minds bent on slaying the wildebeests.

But it doesn't get to this level of misery by too much love. I know, because I feel this pressure on me sometimes. What if I do X, Y, and Z wrong? What if my children miss out on something critical I should have given them? What if I never get the closets clean? (maybe I'm a little too obsessed about that).

It has nothing to do with loving my husband or children. It has to do with stroking my own ego. I want to be the person who can do it all well. I want to be the mother who has a spotless house, eight children all dressed in handmade and modest, yet stylish and unique clothes, all classically educated and fluent in three languages. It will look good on my own mental resume.

This explains, too, why such matters as tending to the mother tend to be categorized as "selfish" (even if a "good" selfish). There's nothing selfish about working to make sure my husband has a beautiful wife and my children a happy mother. But taking showers and naps doesn't check anything off on the "I AM THE PERFECT MOMMY" list.

It's just pride. Yet it camouflages itself so well: as love, as unselfishness, as motherly devotion.

I am blessed with one thing these women apparently do not have: a husband who will lovingly tell me when my attitude is wrong. Plus one even more important thing; the grace of God that reaches down to me even though I am a helpless sinner.

Thinking about this has helped me realize why all our righteousness is as filthy rags. Whatever righteousness we seek for ourselves, we seek to make ourselves feel good about what wonderful people we are. (We can even feel good about feeling humble.) Yuck. What a stinking mess.

Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.

Speaking her language

As can be seen below, D1 is progressing in the motor skills department, but it's a source of frustration from time to time, as she still can't figure out what to tell those muscles to make them crawl!

Language development, however, is pure fun. She's starting to distinguish sounds for different things: "Hida!" is her standard greeting (along with a wave); "Dadadada" tends to go with happy times; "Nahnahnah" indicates hunger; and "Mamamama" is multipurpose.

So we're progressing well at learning her language. She's also learning ours: "Let go," "Thank you," "Up," "More," "All done" and of course, "No." Just this past week she started imitating more deliberately things we said: "Hi, Grandma," became "Hi-ga"; "water," "ah-te"; and alas, DOB's standard sarcastic response "Whatever," became "wat-eh."

Now we've really got to watch what we say.

And with Papa (Dada, Hidah!, etc.)

D1 wanted to demonstrate her talent for standing (with a little help from B5 and the coffee table).

Socrates' cave and certainty in education

So, plugging along through the Republic, I have finally come to the famous cave allegory. And after almost three millenia of philosophy the image, while as compelling as ever, mostly seems shockingly naive.

The whole idea of postmodernism, of course, is that there is no sun into which we can be led out. There isn't even a fire or people walking around behind us. There are only the flickering shadows on the wall.

But I'm afraid most of us, even those who believe there is a sun out there somewhere, that absolute truth exists, have a hard time asserting that we have found the way out into the sunlight. The best we can claim is that we've found a cave with a brighter fire, or maybe even, if we are very bold, a cave into which a few beams of sunlight come through slits in the rock. People who claim to be able to go right out into the sunshine always sound like crackpots. (Then again, Socrates said that's how they would seem to those of us still in the shadows. But they say different things, so they can't all be finding their way out. And we are tired of trying to figure out which ones are right.)

Perhaps one of the reasons our schools seem to have trouble getting kids to learn things is that none of us are very certain about what it is we are teaching. If there is no truth to reach, and nothing to learn but everybody's subjective perceptions, no wonder the kids aren't interested in listening. They could have stuck with their own subjective impressions and spent the time wasted in school on video games.

(Note: I was thinking about blogging on the tragic decline of Reader's Digest, but Marsha beat me to it.)

Thoughts from Here and There

Auntie M's comments on the evangelism post were extremely good. Go, read. I especially appreciated the point that people (at least in this country--and in a lot of others as well) don't lack for opportunities to hear the gospel. What they lack is reasons why they should listen.

In this article, the founder of Eharmony explains how he hopes to stem the divorce rate by helping people find their soulmate. With all due regard for the reality that it is often more pleasant to be married to someone with whom you have much in common, helping people find their soulmates will do nothing to avoid divorce. All marriages are incompatible; what destroys marriages is selfishness. Focusing on finding a "soulmate" who complements you ideally feeds the selfishness that damages a marriage. (And a lot of Christians' obsession with finding "God's perfect will" in a spouse stems more from this unscriptural notion than anything else. On the few occasions in the Bible when God's voice spoke from heaven and told someone who to marry, it was not necessarily all that much fun for the parties involved.)

On the other hand, I found this article a pretty insightful look at three basic types of men and what it's like to be a wife to each. (I'm a bit of a skeptic about personality groupings, but they can be helpful if you don't take them too seriously.) A good point that submission is going to look very different for women with different types of husbands. Only a few women have husbands who give them many direct orders. For a lot of women, submission means not pestering their husband for their lack of interest in giving direct orders. And for women married to what she terms "visionaries," like DOB, it means saying, "What's that?" enthusiastically every time he bursts into the room with "I have an idea!" even though he's already had and abandoned five of them in the last hour. :-)

And then things really got interesting

Have you ever had a day when you woke up tired from a long week, with too much still on your agenda for the day, and a deadline looming far too close?

Have you ever noticed that those are the days on which all hell breaks loose?

Maybe that's not quite the right word, though. All water breaking loose would be more like it.

Friday night we got to bed late. I woke up early on Saturday for no reason. I was tired. DOB was tired. The house was still a mess, and we had company coming that afternoon. DOB had a pile of work he was going to do from home. We ate breakfast and prayed for strength for the day.

DOB's brother (B2) came by to check his email, and DOB asked him to poke around in the attic and see if he could figure out why we'd had a bit of dripping from two of our ceiling air conditioning vents. B2 vanished into the upper reaches of the attic. I settled down to feed D1. DOB worked on the computer.

Then B2 called out, "Get a bowl and run to the bedroom!" Fortunately one of my bean buckets was empty, so DOB grabbed it and ran. The next thing I heard was great wooshing sounds and cries of distress from DOB. I manage to persuade D1 that she was finished eating and ran back. Apparently the air conditioning vents were filled with water. B2 had dumped some of the water out, but rather than descending straight into the bucket, it had shot out from all sides of the vent, drenching DOB and the vicinity and leaving the bucket dry.

For the next flood, we managed to find a better method. I stood on a chair and made sure the bucket was covering all possible water-spurting spots. DOB held the bucket straight over his head, which is easier than holding it out.

"Can you believe this?" he said to me.

"This will make a great story," I said.

And several more gallons of amber water with brown gook came rushing down.

We got about five gallons of water from that vent, and moved on to the one in Abbey's room. This one required moving much of the furniture. It also yielded five gallons of dirty water. Then, one by one, the other six vents in the house and their surrounding furniture. Fortunately the office one was dry, so the computers were not endangered. The rest yielded a gallon or two apiece, but while waiting for the moment when B2, crawling around in the installation, would manage to knock the water down, DOB had to stand with the bucket over his head, like Moses at the battle of the Amalekites.

When that was all done, D1 and I had both had it, and went for a nap. DOB and B2 went around unscrewing all the vent covers to dry, realizing at that time that the whole job would have been a whole lot easier had they removed them in the beginning. Now we know that for next time--which, of course, will probably never occur. (The theory is that the water was simply a couple decades' worth of condensation, which can probably be addressed by properly propping the ducts to drain as they condense.)

Then, later, of course, all the ducts had to be cleaned and reattached; a full meal had to be fixed, because we were all starving after that; all the bowls and pans used to catch drips had to be washed, dried, and put away; and all the housework that had originally been looming was still to be done. Somehow it all happened, and I was wrapping up the vaccuum cleaner cord as the doorbell rang.

We did have a very nice visit, and the first play rehearsal went well at church on Sunday. Relaxing weekend? What's that?

Random Thoughts

On Heaven:

Though commonly associated with heaven, after some thought I've come to the speculation that babies probably won't be there. This is not meant to be a comment on infant salvation/innocence/whatever, just on the reality that heaven is represented as a place where all things are in a state of perfect completion. (e.g. I Cor. 13) Cute as they are, babies are not complete yet. Hence, my guess is whatever age we depart the earth, in heaven we're all mature.

Though commonly not associated with heaven, I've also come to a more definite conclusion that private property probably will be there. The primary qualification for almost all humanly-imagined utopias is the abolition of private property. Yet when the Bible describes an ideal future, it describes one where private property exists. (e.g. Micah 4.) My guess is that in heaven we will have all the good things that come with private property--caretaking, generosity, creativity; and none of the bad things--covetousness, excess, unpaid bills. (Maybe in heaven I'll have time to get the closets organized.)

On Christian practices:
DOB is trying to persuade his Catholic partner to give up some of his free time for Lent so that he can study for another securities license. Something tells me that's not quite the purpose of the season.

On the other hand, Baptists don't give up anything for Lent because there's nothing left for them to give up. Except food, but how could they go forty days without a potluck?

I think I've finally figured out what legalism is. It's the way those other people misapply the doctrine of sanctification.

On housekeeping:
Now that D1 is learning to feed herself chunks of carrot, I have someone else to blame the messy kitchen floor on.

On the other hand, now that she is learning to feed herself whatever she finds on the floor, I really need to clean it more often.

Urgency for Evangelism?

Ever felt like if you're not actively out witnessing on a regular basis, there must per se be something wrong with your Christian life? I know I have. For most of my life. And yet my life has never afforded much opportunity to do anything of the sort, and I'm just not that confrontational. Making get-out-the-vote calls is as high-pressure as I can handle, and even then I have to psych myself up for it. Talking to people about their financial future, as DOB does, would be way too much for me. Bringing up their eternal destiny? Sorry, I just can't do it.

So I'm a bad Christian. Or maybe not. The Internet Monk has a new article suggesting that maybe this whole idea that converting the lost is the primary purpose of the Christian life is just plain wrong. Not justified by Scripture. Not conducive to the kind of peace, love and joy that are the fruit of the Spirit. Some people are called to be evangelists, church planters, and missionaries. But it's OK if you're not, and you don't have to feel like you have to make up for it by stuffing tracts under your neighbors' doors.

Maybe if I just love my husband, love my children, do a good job with what I've been given, and answer questions if I receive them, that's all that is asked of me. What a concept.

After a day of my cooking, the governor has declared my kitchen a disaster area. I'm waiting for the federal aid to arrive.

Meditations on second-hand clothes

Cheap is good, free is better. Last year I went a little overboard on garage sales, picking up clothes that I wasn't that impressed with because they were so cheap--and because I was afraid I wouldn't have adequate hand-me-downs. The hand-me-downs came through, though, and except for a few pieces, the hand-me-downs are much cuter. Probably because one's friends have better taste, on average, than random people holding garage sales.

I also needed to learn all the problem areas to check before buying. I started out buying 0-3 month sizes, in which the only common problem area is the neckline. As children get older, though, they constantly expand the areas they can irrevocably stain. There are other things, like the holding quality of the snaps, that I missed.

Unless a garment is very generic, there's no point buying it if it doesn't come in a complete outfit.

It seems that the common attire for all little girls these days is knit tops and leggings. I have an aversion to the idea of wearing clothes that strongly resemble pajamas. This probably dates to a painful childhood incident. Our house lacked central heating, and during the winter (spring and fall) I always wore sweats to bed. One year, I received a sweatsuit that had a very decorated top that seemed like overkill for just going to bed in. Having seen other children wear sweats out and about, I decided I should try to do it, myself, and wore the set to AWANA. As soon as I arrived, I regretted my decision. The entire evening felt exactly like one of those nightmares in which one finds one's self in public wearing one's pajamas.

So I will probably make D1 some jumpers or something to go over the leggings.

I don't think I subscribe to my mother's theory that it's good for your moral development to wear clothes that you hate. Of course, if there's some other good reason for wearing them, that can be different. Maybe she had a good reason that I overlooked. But I still recall that burgundy double-knit ruffled jumper when I was five years old with fear and loathing. I still hate burgundy, double-knit, ruffles, and jumpers. How do I get along with DOB? He doesn't make me wear burgundy.

Enough about me, let us admire D1

She loves to pose like this. I think it makes her look like a little hobbit smoking a pipe.

Last week she started to figure out waving. She still is uncertain about application, sometimes waving hard at inanimate objects and at other times staring blankly back when the entire church is waving at her at once, but she seems to have the general idea down well.

She is working very hard on the task of crawling, and is getting closer each day to being able to get up on all fours. It annoys her that she can't already do it. I foresee a lifetime of frustration for her.

She has grown into the next size of clothes. I'm getting really spoiled with having a whole new wardrobe every two months. The one downside is, her primary hand-me-down source was very petite and an early walker, so she is starting to get into clothes that would work better on someone who was more or less vertical. (I refer specifically to garments that come apart in the middle when not aided by gravity. Babies should stay in overalls until they learn to walk.)

Grrrrr

Yesterday I spent most of the parts of the day when I should have been Getting Stuff Done on the phone with Network Support, which is the intra-company tech support line, trying to figure out what was wrong with my password that was preventing me from logging in, but only on my own computer to the one particular thing I needed to log into.

Finally, after leaving messages and spending forty minutes solid on the phone with two different guys, one of them managed to do something that worked. He still wasn't sure what the problem was, or why what he did helped, but, hey! it worked. I was finally able to get in. Unfortunately, by that time, it was time to fix dinner and the like, so I couldn't do any actual work that day.

This morning I tried to get in again. I'm having the exact same problem.

Of course they're on central time and not open until D1 wakes up. And also of course, tonight they're going to shut down the entire system company-wide for a week to upgrade. So the data has to go in today.

I had a lot of more interesting jobs planned for this week.

Not for Children Under Three

Last Friday I was making the usual rounds at Wal-mart, and I observed a rack of wooden puzzles on sale--the ones for beginning puzzle-fitters with one piece per hole and a little knob on them to grab them by.

"Ah-ha!" I thought, "What a great price! I'll get some for D1 for her birthday or next Christmas."

Then I examined them closer, and saw them plainly labeled "Not for Children Under Three."

Rats. Then I thought about it some more. In my experience with three-year-olds (which despite not having parented one, is fairly extensive), I have found few of them still find the one-piece-per-hole particularly stimulating. They are ready to move on to greater challenges, like three pieces that fit together, and leave the one-piece-per-hole for the eighteen-month-olds.

Well, maybe those little knobs were prone to falling off. No wonder they were on clearance. I sadly turned my back on the puzzles.

Later I talked it over with DOB's mom, and she pointed out that pretty much every toy is labeled "Not for Children Under Three," even if nobody but children under three would want to play with it. It's a liability issue. (Heh, and I'm the lawyer.) Come to think of it, this is true of D1's favorite toys--and I have checked them carefully for choking hazards.

If one followed all labels and advice, children, up until their third birthday, would be compelled to lie on their backs in rubberized rooms (padding is a smothering hazard!) and stare at pictures painted on the wall (with non-toxic paint).

Not only does this hyper-labeling dull our sensitivity towards genuine dangers, it overlooks the greatest hazard to children under three: parents. A few nights ago, DOB and I were kissing D1 preparatory to tucking her into bed. As I bent over to kiss her, DOB accidentally stumbled forwards, resulting in my teeth colliding with D1's head, with painful results all around.

Fun with Plato

I am still progressing through The Republic, although temporarily sidetracked somewhat by getting several Oz books from the library, but I'm only supposed to read them when I'm on the exercise bike. (I love taking walks. I hate riding the exercise bike. But the weather has been too cold for D1 to go out most days.)

I'm coming to a greater appreciation of why it's important to read all this ancient stuff. When you see the same errors repeated over and over in every century and every guise, you may start to get wise to them.

For all the title of the book being The Republic, and the purported topic being the defining of justice, Socrates offers almost no advice on what sort of laws his society will have. It's all about how those people will be trained and educated. If we just get the education right, everything else will take care of itself.

The same idea appears, in some form, in every vote-for-the-levy flyer sent out today. You would think after nearly 2500 years of believing education was the answer we might have lit upon the right sort of education to do it, but apparently not. Yet the faith continues.

But of course, to make sure people are educated correctly, you have to abolish the family. Otherwise people will wind up creating preferences for their own families, preserving old superstitions, and the women of the society will be distracted from whatever nobler tasks they are fit for. (For Socrates is quite modern in thinking women can do anything men can do, though not, perhaps, quite so modern in thinking they just can't possibly do it as well.)

Raised on his scheme, where no parent knows his own child, Socrates naturally expects these citizens to be purely public-minded guardians of the public interest. What they would be, raised without being permitted a lasting attachment to any particular human being, is sociopaths. Modern scientists have at last come to this conclusion by careful studies. Any mother could have told Socrates he was off his rocker in 400 B.C.

L. Frank Baum writes about a paradise rather like The Republic--but at least he has the humility to keep Oz a fairytale land powered by magic, not just philosophy. But whether it's Socrates or Baum, all utopian dreamers come down to this: People fight over X (families, religion, money). Therefore, if we can just remove X, people will cease to fight and all will be well.

The problem, as parents inevitably discover when they try to settle their children's disputes by these means, is that the problem is not in X, but in people's hearts. Take away what they're fighting over and they'll find something else to fight over. Indeed, take away families and religion and money--or tone down their influence--and you'll find you've removed most of the restraints that kept their fighting civilized.

It's by fighting and helping one's own brothers that one begins to get a glimpse into the brotherhood of man. It's by honestly believing in one's own religion that one can admire someone with whom one vigorously disagrees as a fellow-traveller in the search for truth. It's in search of earning money for one's self that one can work cooperatively with others for their good as well. All these things that people fight over are the very things that pull them together.

Solo Excursions

Last night I left my husband and baby behind and went out with a bunch of guys for pizza and beer.

I love doing things that sound scandalous.

Actually, it was our regular Young Republican meeting, but DOB was not feeling well. So, after considering that it was our annual election and attendance was important, we decided that I would go alone. As it happened, none of the other female members were able to make it, so I was the sole representative for gender balance. I also got elected secretary, which means it will now be my job to do the stuff I have been doing for the past few months. DOB is now treasurer, because we hope it will be less work than vice president.

Come to think of it, I don't know that anyone actually had a beer while I was there. (I didn't have anything, being too cheap to spend money on such luxuries.) Maybe the free refills on soft drinks were too attractive.

DOB and D1 survived just fine. D1 was starting to get fussy when I arrived home, but it turned out to merely be a problem of the diaper variety. (It was the first time I had gone out alone since I got married. I didn't much care for it.)

DOB is still sick, I presume, because he's been sleeping for eleven hours and is still going strong. This is the way he always handles illnesses--he just goes to bed and sleeps for twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four hours, depending on the virulence of the bug. He rarely has any other symptom, and he is never sick more than a day. It freaked me out the first few times it happened, but now I know to expect it and just go on with my business.

Questionnaire

This is one of those surveys that goes around the blogosphere. However, it's quite a bit more profound than most, and it also significantly predates the internet (perhaps not two unrelated statements). No obligation, of course, but it'd be fun to hear others' answers, too. Snagged it from Confessing Evangelical.

1. Are you really interested in the preservation of the human race once you and all the people you know are no longer alive?
   Yes.
2. State briefly why.
   I'm interested in my future children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. being preserved, too.
3. How many of your children do not owe their existence to deliberate intention?
   One.
4. Whom would you rather never have met?
   If I have met anyone like that, I've apparently blocked the memory of meeting them out of my mind.
5. Are you conscious of being in the wrong in relation to some other person (who need not necessarily be aware of it)? If so, does this make you hate yourself - or the other person?
   Thanks to my bad memory, no. When I am aware of it, I'm more upset about myself.
6. Would you like to have perfect memory?
   Not if it means remembering everything (see 4 and 5). If it meant I could forget what I wanted to forget and remember what I wanted to remember--like paying the bills on time--it could be quite handy.
7. Give the name of a politician whose death through illness, accident, etc. would fill you with hope. Or do you consider none of them indispensible?
   This question doesn't quite make sense. Anyway, I don't wish anyone dead, even accidentally. I might wish some of them to suddenly take up a life as a hermit in Nepal, but that's as far as I'll go.
8. Which person or persons, now dead, would you like to see again?
   My mother and grandmother.
9. Which not?
   Well, I wouldn't really like to see anyone who was still dead here on earth. That'd be freaky.
10. Would you rather have belonged to a different nation (or civilization)? If so, which?
    No. I'm too attached to indoor plumbing and regular bathing.
11. To what age do you wish to live?
    Probably 97. I don't know why. Older than my grandmother, but 100 just seems too trite.
12. If you had the power to put into effect things you consider right, would you do so against the wishes of the majority? (Yes or no)
    Yes. But not everything I considered right. Just respect for the rights of others. Everything else I wouldn't put into effect, even if the majority was on my side.
13. Why not, if you think they are right?
    Why not everything else? Because I think that's beyond the proper power of the state.
14. Which do you find it easier to hate, a group or an individual? And do you prefer to hate individually or as part of a group?
    I don't generally find it easy to hate, probably from a lack of spare emotional energy for it. But if I have to, I think person-to-person hatred would fit me best. Groups are too vague to genuinely hate and I don't like going along with a group to do things.
15. When did you stop believing you could become wiser - or do you still believe it? Give your age.
    I certainly hope I can still become wiser than I am at the age of twenty-six.
16. Are you convinced by your own self-criticism?
    Depends on what it is. But I think I am for the most part.
17. What in your opinion do others dislike about you, and what do you dislike about yourself?
    Others dislike my capacity for self-absorption (not as in talking about myself all the time, just getting totally lost in whatever I'm doing and not noticing the needs of others) and my carelessness. I agree with them in theory, but not always enough to change.
18. If not the same thing, which do you find it easier to excuse?
    See above.
19. Do you find the thought that you might never have been born (if it ever occurs to you) disturbing?
    It does occur to me, but it doesn't really disturb me. I wouldn't exist to miss it. It's just everyone else who would have missed out. ;-)
20. When you think of someone dead, would you like him to speak to you, or would you rather say something more to him?
    I would think someone already dead would have the more useful knowledge to impart. Like what it's like to die.
21. Do you love anybody?
    Yes.
22. How do you know?
    I get more upset by the harm suffered by them than by the related inconvenience to me.
23. Let us assume that you have never killed another human being. How do you account for it?
    I've been told a battalion of angels rides around my car. That's probably the only thing that's done it.
24. What do you need in order to be happy?
    A good night's sleep, a good meal, and DOB and D1.
25. What are you grateful for?
    Let's not get too sappy here. Far more things than you all would want to read through.
26. Which would you rather do: die or live on as a healthy animal? Which animal?
    Die, of course. Ugh.

Your vote needed for the Best of 2004

I want to enter the 2005 Erma Bombeck Writing Competition in the "humor" category. Basic parameters: 450-word personal essay, previously unpublished. Deadline is Feb. 18. Prize is $100.

Since my blog is the only place whereby I now remember my life (before blog, I relied on email and random battered notebooks), I have been skimming past months for material on which to write a humorous essay. Then it occurred to me that perhaps asking my readers would be a good idea. I don't promise to operate on majority vote, but I think the insights would be helpful.

The following have struck me as possibilities. Which one do you think has the potential to make the funniest essay for a broad audience? (Not necessarily the one you find the funniest right now, although it would be interesting to hear that, too, if it's different.) Feel free to make your own suggestions, as well.

Marital Strength Test (In which we try to clean out boxes)
On the Line (An encounter with telephone support for telephone lines)
Nomenclature (The difficulties of describing ties)
Confession is Good for the Soul (diaper changing adventures)
Eating with Baby (what it sounds like)
Amazing Facts about DOB (the powdered sugar story)

Happy Anniversary to Us!

No, it's not our wedding anniversary. (Unless you're allowed to celebrate seventeen month anniversaries with a whole week of celebrations, but aren't we supposed to be beyond such sappiness at this point?) It's our one-year house anniversary! A year ago today it was -17 degrees and our soon-to-be pastor, his son and son-in-law, a few old friends and all available family members were trotting back and forth across town, moving us from a very crowded and smoky apartment to a house that is only crowded in the closets and where the only smoke comes when dinner boils over.

I was four months pregnant, and still had very little energy. (I think a lot of what I chalked up to morning sickness was really poor air quality--I felt remarkably better once we moved here.) My kitchen was packed up and moved entirely by a sixteen-year-old boy, who did a fantastic job at it. I just laid around and watched all the action for the most part. I also ordered pizza when the work was done.

With the inclement weather of the last month, let us not forget to mention the blessing of an attached garage. Last winter it was such a treacherous business for DOB to get to the car and get it cleaned off that he called me once he was safe inside the car to let me know he wasn't lying bleeding on the ice outside. Sometimes it was half an hour after he left the door that he finally called.

So, hooray for one year in our home, sweet home.

Random thoughts

• Just heard an advertisement for Advil Liquigels--"With real liquid!" As opposed to those competitors, who only have fake liquid in theirs.
• His Majesty has started taking a preventive tonic for high blood pressure: high-proof cayenne pepper in a vodka tincture. Now there's a manly drink.
• Why do I get more woken up by the alarm not going off on the weekend than by it going off on weekdays? Lying wide awake at 4:45 am on a Saturday is just not right.

My great wisdom

Yes, after a grand total of seven months of parenting, I think I'll benefit the world with my theories on child-rearing.

That's not enough time to learn much of anything. Still, I've been a parent as long as D1 has been in the world, and she's learned quite a bit in that time. Even if she hasn't learned much of substance, she's learned what kinds of things there are to learn: how to communicate and how to move. I think, like her, I've at least learned what it is I need to do.

I need to love her.

Don't I already? Sure, I get warm fuzzy feelings when I look at her (when she's clean, happy, and I'm not too tired). That's not love.

Love is ministering to her needs when I don't feel like it. Love is training her when I don't feel like it. Love is incredibly hard work.

I think this is where any book of advice on parenting, or any system of parenting, runs aground. Any system of parenting can be turned into a vehicle of parental selfishness. I could easily schedule D1 (who really is very compliant) to stay out of my hair most of the time so that I could do what I want to do. I could just as easily ignore her until she demands my attention, then give her what she needed to shut her up. (I fail in one or both directions practically every day.) I personally am not the sort to do it much, but there are others who will instead hover around, creating emotional neediness in their children so that they can have the gratification of meeting those needs. Any of the above could find books of good advice to justify their approach.

And the only way to avoid it is to love her like I need to. I do think parenting needs to be child-centered--not child-run, but child-centered. The parent is there to serve and train the child; the child isn't there to serve and gratify the parent. Of course, this means training the child to be obedient, to work hard, not to demand attention and all that--but it has to be done for the child's good, not the parent's.

I do have a fairly structured approach to D1's day, and I do want very much to train her not to fuss to get what she wants. But I keep revamping the structure with the primary goal of anticipating her needs, so that she doesn't need to fuss to get what she needs. (As she gets older, she gradually has more chances to learn to wait for the things she wants.) It's hard for me to do this--especially with giving her attention. But when I do, we're all so much happier.

The goal in parenting is not some middle ground between authority and love. It's the extreme of both--authority that, when asserted, is absolutely consistent and just; mingled with love that is incredibly delighted in the child and shows it every minute of every day.

Socrates is mortal

In my quest for thoughts on education, I decided to first try Plato's Republic, as it seemed old enough to start with. (Yes, I know I should start with the Bible, but I was already reading it.)

It's much more entertaining than I expected. For one thing, it looks like the Socratic method was just as irritating for Socrates' friends as it is for modern law students:

"Yes, he replied, and then Socrates will do as he always does--refuse to answer himself, but take and pull to pieces the answer of some one else."

And in filtering children's reading material, homeschool parents have nothing on Socrates. He wants to expurge any references to, say, great heroes bewailing the dead in The Odyssey, so that the young future warriors won't get the idea that death is something to be feared. Even references to the heroes or the gods laughing too hard is bad, since we don't want the youngsters to ever lose control of themselves like that.

One would be inclined to think that this is, at least in principle, a wise course: only expose children to the ideas and behavior you want them to emulate. But the Bible takes quite the opposite tack. It shows the heroes of the faith doing dreadful things, and accuses God of actions that Socrates would find quite blasphemous--ordaining evil events and deceiving people.

But then, Socrates is trying to find a way for us to achieve human perfection and explain the gods, whereas the message of the Bible is that we cannot do either.

Random list time

Things we own that have broken down in the past year:
Dryer
Hot water heater
Car
Rocking chair

Household items we are collecting for toys for D1:
Plastic vitamin bottles
Those flat plastic thingies used to close plastic bags
Film canisters (even though we only use digital!)
Old cds
Scrap paper

Items on my to-do list left from last week:
Install operating system on old hard drive
Write Christmas thank-yous (gasp!)
Get wedding present for friend
Baby-proof house
Get Christmas boxes out of D1's room

A long-awaited catastrophe

Last summer, I bought a rocking chair for D1's room. It was at a garage sale, and even though I thought $30 was a bit much for an unfinished, slightly rickety rocker, it was as far as I could talk them down, and I really, really wanted a rocking chair.

What with one thing and another, I never did get around to refinishing it or strengthening it. The front cross-piece kept falling out and it felt kind of wobbly. Every time DOB came in to rock D1 before bedtime, he would comment, "I know this thing is going to fall apart sometime while I'm sitting in it."

I thought he was exaggerating the danger, perhaps overly-influenced by The Patriot.

Last night, as we were rocking through the last lullaby, a loud crack rang through the nursery and DOB and D1 were suddenly sitting at a very strange angle. I sheepishly extricated them. Sure enough, the chair had given way altogether.

I will look at the chair later today, but DOB thinks it will require paternal intervention for him to trust it again.

Growing up too slowly

Time magazine had an article on what it calls "twixters" (don't you hate attempts to coin trendy new words for societal phenomenons?): i.e., twentysomethings who still don't have a steady career or a family of their own, who enjoy the privileges of adults without wanting to take on any of the responsibilities. There is much debate on why this is, whether it's a good or a bad thing, and what to do about it if it's a bad thing. (DISCLAIMER: Following discussion pertains to society as a whole, not to any reader's particular actions. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't cram it on.)

Yes, it's a bad thing. The generation is very much like Susan of Narnia: "Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can." As adolescence gets pushed down younger and younger and stretched out for longer and longer, there is little room for the innocence of childhood or the responsibilities of adulthood.

So what's wrong with that? People were never designed to have pleasures without responsibilities--they were meant to go hand in hand. A stable society cannot handle a large group of people entirely devoted to their own self-actualization. Society requires a willingness to sacrifice for others, especially for the next generation. But in our age, those best equipped to bear and raise the next generation are doing their best to dodge the bullet, or at least put it off another decade, when they will find it a much heavier burden. Nor is their current lifestyle preparing them well to care for their own parents in later years. Not to mention the moral consequences of encouraging people to put at least two decades between the onset of sexual ability and the onset of sexual responsibility.

But there are good reasons why people are choosing this route. For one thing, they've been raised to believe they can be and do anything, and that the only measure of a lifestyle's validity is whether it makes them happy. With all those choices, of course it's harder to settle down than it was when your life path was mapped out for you from birth. Although social mobility has many advantages, one of the great benefits of traditions is they save so much time.

For another, education takes a long time in our society. An unjustifiably long time, in my opinion. Sure, our society is more complex than it was 150 years ago. But it's not that complex. Maybe great-great-grandpa only learned how to read, write and cipher--but he learned it in six years, and he learned it better than most people who have spent twelve years in our current education system. Maybe we do need longer to prepare ourselves, but sixteen years of full-time schooling should not be considered the bare minimum for a living-wage job. That information could be processed in a lot less time.

People also talk about the cost of living and how folks can't afford things starting out like they did in the 50's--but I suspect it's more the expectations of livings that have gone up. If young couples nowadays were willing to live in 1000-square foot houses, with a single tv set, one car, no cable, no internet, and no cell phones, I bet they'd find they could afford it, too.

All the trends indicate that this prolonged adolescence is likely to continue, however. So, the next question is, having gone ahead and grown up ourselves, what do we do to make sure our children do--and get out of the house before we're entirely feeble?

Me Neither, Said the Little Red Hen

We had DOB's youngest brother over for the weekend in celebration of his birthday. At lunchtime on Saturday the following conversation occurred:

QOC: I'm making roast for dinner. Do you guys want mashed potatoes or baked potatoes?

DOB: Oh, mashed potatoes!

B6: Yeah, mashed potatoes!

DOB: QOC's mashed potatoes are the best.

QOC: Well, I'm getting tired and mashed potatoes make more dishes than baked potatoes. So if we're going to have mashed potatoes, I'm going to need you guys to help me with the dishes.

DOB: Hey, baked potatoes with lots of butter and salt and pepper are really good--why don't we have baked potatoes?

B6: Yeah, let's have baked potatoes!

Actually I wound up being really, really tired by nightfall, and thus they wound up helping me with the dishes anyway. But there were less than there would have been.

Bar hopping

Being a member, albeit inactive, of two bars allows me to compare their various services. California is definitely the superior at member service, probably due to its having ten times as many members as Washington, and therefore, presumably, ten times as much money. To wit:

• Both bars' annual fees are due on or about February 1. However, California doesn't start charging you for being late until March 15, while Washington cracks down on anyone postmarked February 2.
• California only charges $50 for inactive status--and you can reduce that $10 more in optional deductions. Washington charges $117, and you can only reduce it by $1.13. (This may also suggest that the California Bar spends a lot more time on things entirely unrelated to law, such as promoting the legality of topless beaches. The Washington Bar doesn't do this because their beaches are too cold. Actually I suspect it's just that the Washington Bar, emboldened by the example of the WEA, is less honest about its lobbying activities.)
• California's fees statements are much better organized and more attractively laid out.

I discovered today that it is not too late to elect inactive status for DOB and thus drastically reduce his dues and spare us the trouble of him having to spend the entire day tomorrow doing CLE. So, hurrah!

D1 and the hallway, which looks ever so much better since DOB's mother finished painting the trim last week.

Snowy day, as viewed from the playpen.

Why I can't get stuff done

I was bemoaning to DOB last night about the slowness of my progress at such tasks as organizing the house. Just keeping up with the bare minimum of chores fills all my time; I can't imagine having a hobby or going out except for grocery shopping. Why did I have so much less time than everyone else?

Then he reminded me that I do have a part-time job. For some reason it never occurs to me that this factors into my time. I do it at home, and I do most of it before D1 even wakes up in the morning. And I do it for DOB--doesn't every good wife spend a few hours every morning doing data entry for her husband? But it's still time I don't spend on other things. So. It's OK.

I do sometimes remember to mention it to people who ask if I work. Which makes me wonder: why does it make me feel more significant to tell people I work part-time for DOB's firm--a job for which I am, with all due humility, vastly over-qualified--than it would to tell people I am a full-time housewife and mother, a job which I could study for my entire life and not begin to master? Why does our society place value only on activities which lead directly to monetary remuneration?

I think the slighting of the contribution of housewives is just a symptom of a value system that equates productivity with money and leisure with amusement (i.e. mindless self-indulgence). We need to revive an appreciation for leisure as a means by which we can become better people; and a definition of success which only has a small place for money and much larger places for health, good relationships, and a capacity to appreciate what is excellent.

Difficult question

Last week I gave D1 the stuffed Noah's Ark I found for her at a garage sale last summer. We had been reading about Noah in our morning Bible reading, and she had reached the age where she would enjoy putting in and pulling out small squishy objects.

We were playing with it yesterday and she was chewing enthusiastically on the lions when I noticed that one of the lions was losing its mane.

"Mommy needs to repair that," I remarked as I set it aside.

Then I thought about it some more. The animals in the ark should be one male and one female of each. Female lions don't have manes. Shouldn't I therefore remove the mane from the lion altogether and designate it the mama lion?

Then again, maybe that would make it more difficult for D1 to match the two animals. Plus, she loves the orange fuzzy mane. So maybe I should sew it back on.

The lion is left in limbo while I loiter.

Missing Papa

DOB is working late tonight. And we are not sure what to do without him. D1 doesn't seem to think the usual daytime routine of "play quietly on the floor while Mama works" is adequate for the evening. I am wracking my brain to remember what all those things DOB does with her in the evening that terrify me and set her squealing with delight. But I'm not very good with them. And if I had never watched DOB do them, I'm sure they never would even occur to me. Yet I'm equally sure they're important for her learning and growing.

On the other hand, I don't think she'd get a very well-balanced raising if DOB tried to do it alone, either. (I'll let him figure out what would never occur to him to do.) Just goes to show that a child needs a mama and a papa. Not just any assortment of adults who happen to live at her house. Not two adults who happen to want to raise her. Each parent--each gender of parent--brings something unique and important to the mix of parenting that's very hard to duplicate when they're gone.

Sometimes tragic circumstances mean children can't have both. But no other combination should ever be held up as an equivalent to having a mother and a father.

The Bible and Everything Else

Jesus is Lord of all things. There is no division between the sacred and the secular. God is the source of all truth. God's Word is the ultimate in revealed wisdom, and all human experience must be subjected to it.

I agree with all of these. So why do I so often find myself squirming when I look at curricula that take these ideas seriously, and purport to relate all of learning to God and His Word? Is the problem with them, or with me?

Let me try it from another angle. The Bible says we are to eat and drink to the glory of God. Jesus also instituted the Lord's Supper, ennobling the act of eating to become a way in which we have fellowship with God. Now, suppose that devout theologian combined these two truths and taught that every meal should be the Lord's Supper. Every child sitting down with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich must comport himself as if he was partaking of the bread and the cup. Every time we ate strawberry ice cream, we should meditate on Christ's sacrifice as symbolized by the red of the strawberries.

This new practical theologian would be taking things a little too far. And in his zeal, I think he would be undermining the Lord's Supper. It does take us from the human need for physical nourishment to the human need for divine nourishment. But if it were not a special and sacred occasion, if it were simply our ordinary meals, we would cease to see it as a vehicle to Christ and start to treat it as simply a way to get full. (Seems like the Corinthians might have had a similar problem.)

Similarly, if we get too carried away with insisting that every scrap of human knowledge must be extracted from, tied to, or analogized with Scripture, we run the risk of treating the Bible as simply a vehicle to the knowledge we need to function, and not as it was primarily intended, a means to reveal God himself to us.

I have also seen this ideal carried into dishonesty. For instance, a teacher script for introducing the alphabet I saw once had the teacher essentially instructing the children that God had created capital letters. Now, even if I had assurance that writing was a matter of direct divine revelation, I would be a bit perplexed as to why God only revealed the truth about capital letters in the last millenium to the scribes of a handful of alphabets.

Worse yet is the area of history, where it is far too easy to turn every twist and turn of events into an illustration of this or that Biblical principle, ultimately leading us to the conclusion that if we're doing fairly well (and if we can afford all these books, we probably are), God must be on our side. Presumption, pride and dishonesty are not honoring to God, however much lip-service they may pay to him.

Besides, if there really is no distinction between the sacred and the secular, then we have no need to convert every topic by pasting a Bible verse on top of it. If everything has been created by God, then that in itself is reason enough to study it. I think we will find more and more of God's character as we delve deeper and deeper into whatever we study--but the connections are often subtle and hard to tack onto a third-grade text.

This is not to say that we shouldn't hold all learning accountable to God's Word, and reject anything that contradicts it. Or that we should relegate Bible to a distinct study and keep it out of all our other subjects. It's right and proper to make God the focus of all our life. But seeing God reveal himself through all his world needs to come naturally, not be forced to increase the "spiritual" appearance of our schoolbooks.

Disturbing evening

Friday evening D1 and I opened our January books from the book-of-the-month club conducted by my family for small grandchildren. (The book designated for me did not seem to be quite at my reading level, but it was distinguishable from D1's by being non-chewable.) After D1 had crumpled the wrapping paper and chewed appreciatively on her book for awhile, we took her into her bedroom to get her ready for bed.

Suddenly DOB started whacking her on the back and fishing in her mouth. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"She's got something in her mouth!" DOB exclaimed.

I pried her mouth open and looked in horror. "No, she doesn't, but the roof of her mouth has turned blue!" My mind raced, trying to think of what loathsome disease would turn the roof of the mouth blue.

"No, it hasn't," DOB exclaimed, and indicated I should try fishing in there myself. I stuck my finger in and sheepishly pulled out a piece of sky-blue wrapping paper.

A little bit later, I took her wet diaper into the bathroom, glanced at myself in the mirror, and gasped in despair. DOB came to see what was the matter.

"I've got wrinkles!" I declared, pointing at tiny lines on either side of my mouth.

"Oh, those are no big deal," DOB said, "I have them, too, see?" He pointed to his mouth, and then realized that his moustache covered any applicable evidence.

I do find it somewhat consoling, however, that I've never had a gray hair, whereas DOB has been having them since he was eleven. I guess we'll just spread the aging around.

Monday morning review

Household items, Good: DOB's dad fixed the vaccuum cleaner, so I should be able to keep D1 from wallowing in grime today. He also fixed the iron, which had broken last week as well (he's not sure how, but he took it apart and put it back together and now it works). I got a new sponge for my mop.

Household items, Bad: The screw in our evil bathtub drain has rusted out entirely. Home Depot workers could not identify the screw type to replace it, and the fittings are so different from normal bathtub drains that I'm not sure the whole shebang can be easily replaced. I'm not sure what to do next.

Organization, Good: I only have last night's and this morning's dishes to do this morning, less than usual on a Monday.

Organization, Bad: I still haven't finished putting away Christmas presents--I have a whole box of books still to deal with.

Schedule, Good: I've been up and dressed and had breakfast before D1 wakes up every morning for a week.

Schedule, Bad: Owing to a church business meeting and then how long it takes us to eat supper on Sunday nights, we got to bed two and a half hours late last night. We've come to the conclusion that we're going to have to have popcorn night some other night of the week. It just takes too long to chew.

Seismic shift

While D1 was playing on the floor this morning, everything suddenly clicked and she realized: if I roll over, I can get other places. All day long she's been rolling back to front and round again, trying to get new places and crowing with delight at her own cleverness.

The change is almost as dramatic as having her born (though significantly less effort on my part). She's got her own ideas and her own means of locomotion. She's a person.

She's a person who wallows on the floor a lot. True to Murphy, today was the day my vaccuum stopped sucking and the sponge disintegrated on my mop.

Annoying parental post

So, what cute and clever things about D1 can we drone on about?

• She finally rolled over from front to back! She still seems to find the whole process a bit mystifying, though. We need more playing on the floor time.
• She has started babbling. Not only is she babbling, she even seems to be learning Spanish. She said, "Hola, mama" quite distinctly the other morning. Not sure where she's learning it, since I don't even have Eres Tu Mi Mama? to read to her, and my Spanish doesn't go much farther than that.
• If you show her that you've hidden a spoon under a cloth, she knows that she should be able to pull the cloth aside and find the spoon.
• She can pick up her squishy blocks now, whereas a month ago she could only bat at them in frustration.
• She has a variety of laughs, including the uproarious being-tickled laugh and a special malevolent cackle that probably means she's plotting something sinister.
• She's developed a very healthy appetite in the last week or so, and so far hasn't turned up her nose at anything offered, except when not hungry. (I appreciate my mother-in-law's advice to mix all the food together from the start; that way the baby never has a chance to notice she doesn't like something.)
• Also, she looks incredibly cute in this hat:

Chesterton (of course) on education

"Education is only truth in a state of transmission; and how can we pass on the truth if it has never come into our hands?"

"Education is violent because it is creative. It is creative because it is human. It is as ruthless as playing on the fiddle; as dogmatic as drawing a picture; as brutal as building a house. In short, it is what all human action is: it is an interference with life and growth."

"Obviously, it ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people; the assured and experienced truths that are put first to the baby. But in a school to-day the baby has to submit to a system that is younger than himself. . . . Many a school boasts of having the last ideas in education, when it has not even the first idea; for the first idea is that even innocence, divine as it is, may learn something from experience."

Resolutions and goals

According to the people in my life who pay attention to such things, resolutions are the more vague, general ideas, while goals are specific, achievable things. Here are some. (Yes, it's late, but so is everything right now. See Resolution #1.)

Resolutions
1. I resolve not to get annoyed because I did not accomplish today everything I hoped to accomplish in the upcoming week, year, or lifetime.
2. I resolve not to worry about problems that cannot possibly occur for at least five more years.
3. I resolve to enjoy what I have instead of saving it all for some unattainable future.

Goals
1. Always use decorative notepads when writing grocery lists. I keep receiving these, and is anyone likely to hope for a giant collection of carrot notepads when I die? I think not. Might as well use them up now, and if I run out, I can use the plain paper then. (See Res. 3.)
2. Get out some of the new dishtowels I got for my wedding instead of continuing to use the ragged ones I've been using for the last five years. (See Res. 3.)
3. Learn how to fry an egg. I can boil them, poach them, scramble them, and fling them against the wall, but I can't fry them. Time to learn.
4. Clean out all the closets in the house. (And not get annoyed if it takes all year. See Res. 1.)
5. Get published somewhere new.
6. Get a working internal-day schedule and working monthly/quarterly schedule for less regular household tasks.
7. Create adequate processes so that the desks get cleared off and stay cleared off.

We start with a bad example

Here is an example of education which is not serving good ends, on two fronts. If you're not a clicker, the article concerns a Korean practice of sending the mother and children to the US for years so that the children can get an American education, while the father remains in Korea working to pay for it.

The original problem is with the Korean education system, which is so oriented to achievement on a narrow range of topics that children have no time to develop in other areas, sleep, or do anything but cram from kindergarten to university. Keep that in mind next time you hear about US math scores being low. Our schools could certainly do better, but there is more to life than high test scores, and in trying to fix our problems we had better remember that.

I don't think the parents of these families have found an acceptable alternative, however. In an effort to get their children English and an education that leaves room for development of the whole human being, they have taken away the most key ingredient to a whole human being: a whole family. This is probably rarer in America, but it certainly happens, especially where the children have special athletic or performance abilities. I don't believe any educational end justifies tearing apart a family. You don't make whole people by breaking families.

The end of education

I have been rather displeased with myself over the last several months because I lacked the focus to learn anything of much substance. I read few books, because I couldn't decide which ones were worth reading. My thoughts were dull and scattered. So I decided I needed to pick something to study and study it.

I considered making this topic financial planning, which is what DOB is about to embark upon further study of, but acquiring a CFP didn't seem nearly as useful to me, and the required studies were not intriguing at all. So, although it would be fun to study things together, I decided to pick something different.

I finally decided on the topic of education. This is a topic that is relevant to my life as a homeschooling mother. (A career I consider myself to have already embarked upon. After all, today we will have lessons in Bible, pre-reading skills, music, physical education, and eating bananas with our fingers. On the last we still have a lot of work to do.) But, given sufficient freedom it can encompass almost anything of interest to me and provides lots of room for abstract philosophizing.

It's ironic, because the part of my former job I generally liked the least was doing research on education. But those were specific, concrete topics, like "How effective is value-added assessment at determining teacher quality?" or "How is No Child Left Behind being implemented in Washington schools?" Way too practical for me. Plus, immensely frustrating because I just felt that the whole system was wrong from stem to stern, so there was little point in finding miniscule areas for improvement.

Now I can start at the very beginning. Education really boils down to two questions: What is the end goal of education--what kind of person do we want education to produce? What is the means of education--what are the best techniques to achieve that kind of a person?

Lots of room for abstract theorizing there. Some of which will probably make its way here, so please bear with me.

The screaming you hear . . .

is me opening the property tax statement.

Sometimes being a grownup really stinks.

Sleep, blessed sleep

For some reason, D1 had a hard time sleeping after we got home. Actually, I can think of several reasons: change in time zones, being up all night with sickness, being hungry because she lost weight while sick, sleeping in strange places. She was convinced that if she awoke at, say, 2 a.m. and found herself bored, sufficient squalling ought to bring several adults to entertain her.

It took us nearly a week to convince her otherwise. But last night, apparently, she finally got it. And I finally got a decent night's sleep for the first time in two and a half weeks.

Ahhhhhhh.

Et tu, Brute?

You believe in doing the right thing, but aren't
always sure what that is.


What is Your Shakespearian Tragic Flaw?
brought to you by Quizilla

Messes of varying degrees

The house is a mess. But the degree to which it is a mess makes a huge difference when it comes to how traumatic that state is. I have identified three degrees of messiness:

First Degree Messiness: The mess is shallow, consisting of things that have an obvious place to go and can be put there without much thought. Examples: one meal's worth of dishes; a pile of already-read newspapers; a bunch of toys that all go back in the same box. On the day after a party, the house tends to be in a first degree state of messiness (unless you have friends like my aunt's and they throw jello in the heat registers): a quick pick-up, and you can enjoy the Especially Clean pre-party state all to yourself. First degree messiness really isn't troubling, as long as one has a reasonable amount of physical energy to deal with it. No brainpower required.

Second Degree Messiness: This is a deeper mess, consisting of things that may have a place to go, but it's not entirely obvious or they have to be sorted out before they can get there or there's just so much it's overwhelming. Examples: a pile of bills; one weekend's worth of dishes; the still-packed luggage from a trip. Any first degree mess that sits around past your tolerance level (for me, about a day and a half) automatically becomes a second degree mess. Second degree messiness is probably the most depressing messiness because it is at once highly visible and requires both mental and physical energy to deal with it.

Third Degree Messiness: This is the mess that has dug in its heels and sits defiantly sticking its tongue out at you. The mess that has taken on a life of its own. It is a mess that has no legitimate place to go, until you make one for it, and usually it's sitting in the way of you making it. Examples: Boxes never unpacked from the last move; a pile of magazine clippings; whatever it is that's in the back of that closet you never look in. Everybody (except Martha Stewart) has a spot of third degree messiness somewhere in their life. Third degree messiness can be more easily ignored than the other two, both because it usually is somewhere outside the normal lines of vision and because you've adapted your life to ignore it. The downside is, third degree messiness tends to spawn greater second and first degree messiness, because it takes up space that belongs to something else. And it tends to grow on its own volition.

Most of the mess I'm annoyed by right now is a second degree post-trip messiness. But it's reminded me of all the third degree messiness that I've been wanting to deal with for months and been making very little headway on. What I should do is either deal with it or go take a nap. But it's so much more fun to analyze it.

The more presentable aspects of the trip in pictures

This should have been Christmas morning, but wasn't. Oh well, we still look sharp.

DOB demonstrates to the niephlings how to build a train out of my grandparents' colored blocks.

D1 models the traditional reindeer antlers, which are getting a bit battered after three Christmases. Note how well she sits up now.

D1 reads the newspaper while waiting for her parents to finish packing and go. (This picture was not staged. Honest.)

Smart women, hard choices

Another study on the obvious has come out, confirming that smart women have a harder time finding spouses than smart men do. (Thanks to Amey for the link.) I know the problem full well, having had many spurts of mingled despising and envy of those big-eyed airheads who somehow won the hearts of guys who apparently saw me only as a nicely-accessorized brain. Fortunately that did not last forever and I found an intelligent guy who actually wanted an intelligent wife, etc., etc., happily ever after.

Except even then it's not quite that simple. People will blame men for being misogynists and feeling "threatened" by smart women, and no doubt that is sometimes true. But the smart men are probably smart enough to realize something, at least instinctively, about the nature of marriage: marriage is meant to be a union, and union cannot survive two separate life focuses. If the husband is off having his great career and achievements and pursuing his goals, and the wife is off having her great career and achievements and pursuing her goals, they aren't really spouses anymore, they're just two people who sleep together fairly often.

No wonder a smart man doesn't want a woman who will simply pursue her current life course without any reference to his. So instead he finds someone who doesn't really have any particularly grand goals and will support his. Even if she doesn't have a clue about quantum physics, they're happy, because she's helping him quantumize better. They're in it together.

One could theoretically imagine a parallel universe in which smart women could generally do the same thing, and find a domesticated house husband who would cheer them on. One occasionally finds a situation in which it works even in this universe, but in general, a man who will simply support his wife's goals and ambitions is a wuss. No self-respecting woman would want to marry him.

The ideal situation, however, is neither of the above. It's one where both husband and wife have the same goal and work towards it together. A smart man and a smart woman, working towards a goal that they both share, is a beautiful (and dangerous) thing.

But it's still going to require some sacrifice on the woman's part. At some point, she's going to have to deal with some hard questions: Am I willing to just be part-of-his-thing, or will I always wish I was my own thing? Wouldn't I accomplish so much more without being weighed down with kids and all the things that accompany marriage? What if he shifts focus--do I go along with him or strike out on my own?

Sometimes a woman must choose between "greatness" and goodness, between success and happiness. All the media coverage goes for the successful, but I still think I'd rather choose happiness.

I don't have any of our pictures downloaded yet, but Jeremy captured a great set of pictures while we were visiting them. They're all here.

We are home

We got mostly better; we saw some of the people we wanted to see, though far from all; we made our return journey; we are home. The only excitement on the trip home was when we were driving from the airport and I was trying to figure out how to apply sour cream from the squeezy package to my Wendy's baked potato. I aimed inaccurately and wound up shooting sour cream across the windshield, instrument panel, steering wheel, and DOB. In his fatigued state, DOB was most perplexed as to why cracks started appearing across the front of the car and simultaneously I started laughing hysterically.

It's good to be home. It's even better to be able to look forward to being home. Last Christmas, neither of us wanted to come back. The only thing that made us do it--besides the threat of wasting plane tickets--was the hope that perhaps we might be able to buy this house and get out of the apartment. This time, we had much to anticipate upon coming home: a house, a church, our family out here. I realized while out there that I was even a little homesick. I even missed the corn fields. It seems like there were a few too many trees in Washington.