Heartbreak-Free Hotel

Courtship, Part 1, Part 3, Part 4.

If you did not grow up being taught from pre-puberty about the goal of emotional purity--saving all affectionate thoughts for your future spouse, once identified--I'm not sure there is any way to communicate how this concept can dominate adolescent life. Every thought of interest in the opposite sex is a sin tantamount to adultery. All friendships with the opposite sex are constantly suspect. And if you are a girl raised in these circles you are in a double-bind, since you can't have a real career either, which means you really are not allowed to think about the future in any way whatsoever. Just keep your head down and get good at doing laundry.

Fortunately my parents were much more lax in their application and more balanced in our private conversations, and I grew up without the more extreme problems that often resulted. But I saw and felt the double-bind keenly.

And I still can't figure out where this idea comes from. Some people argue that it is inappropriate for two single people to act towards each other in a way that would be wrong for two people already married to others. But plainly if that were true, no one could ever get married under any scheme. I would find it highly inappropriate for DOB to be prayerfully considering whether he should take another wife.

Anyway, at some point you proceed beyond adolescence and are ready to get married. Here the courtship schemes have to somehow allow for a marriage to occur without violating their notions of emotional purity. This is hard. 

Followed strictly, emotional purity would require Fiddler-on-the-Roof arranged marriages where you meet at the wedding and finally discover you love each other after twenty-five years. This seems so extreme that usually it is considered OK (for reasons not at all clear) to have feelings at some earlier point. When, exactly, is not clear. 

After all, you have two points to coordinate: the point at which the couple is emotionally attached to each other, and the point at which they have made a binding commitment to be together. If you allow feelings to come first, then you provide the possibility that people might break up. If you’ve gone around equating emotional purity with physical purity (and physical purity with salvation), this is unacceptable. On the other hand, if you expect the commitment to come before the feelings, you are back to arranged marriages and it’s not clear how, exactly, the decision to marry should be made. (Direct revelation? Compatibility charts? Casting lots?)

This tension creates a lot of confusion in courtship circles, as there simply is no way to reconcile it, unless you can magically have everybody feeling and promising exactly the same thing at exactly the right moment which, of course, never happens because human beings are not robots.

This is not to say that endless brief and fragmentary relationships are a good way to spend one's youth. But those are, perhaps, not the only two alternatives. This is where the claim of some courtship advocates that what they are advocating is just what everybody did before dating was invented in the 1920s proves absurd. Have they never read a novel written before 1920? Broken hearts have always been a risk of love.

When DOB and I became close friends, we were stepping over the bounds of proper courtship. We didn't have parental approval to become close friends. We had made no agreement yet. By the "emotional purity" rules this was "emotional fornication." Getting to, you know, like someone. Making a point of talking to them. Caring about what they thought. This is sinful. Because . . . because why? Because it might not turn into marriage? Because breaking up will make you sad? Risk of sorrow does not equate to sin. All love is risky.

The truth is, without breaking the "emotional purity" rules we never would have gotten together in the first place. We would have had no opportunity to get to know each other. Who is going to risk everything (courtship is a very high-stakes process) on someone they have not really had the chance to get to know and have no feelings for and no assurance of reciprocal feelings? From my observations many other successful "courtships" actually fudged this rule quite a bit. And many hearts have been broken because courtship provides no informal way to explore a potential relationship and find out if it would work before it becomes a huge, public deal.

Goin' Courtin'

Courtship used to be a generic term for mating rituals, whether of singing backwoodsmen or strange tropical birds. Somewhere about two decades ago, certain segments of conservative American Christendom decided to appropriate this term for a new (yet traditional!) method of approaching marriage in a particular way that would be holier than, more successful than, and above all, not the same as dating.

Dating was bad because it was associated with immorality, divorce, rebellion, and wasted youth. Unfortunately, it was not nearly so easy to define what would be occurring instead. Books were written, seminars were held, pledges were signed, but everybody was signing up for different things, which resulted in a great deal of confusion when they tried to actually get together.

Still, two elements emerged as key for true "Biblical" courtship. (I forget how it was explained that something was Biblical when no one had heard about it until 1990.) There had to be parental approval and guidance of the process, and "emotional purity" was exalted to the level of physical purity, which was in turn exalted as far as it could go and still hope for a future human race.

Many people had many other details added on to this. (My favorite was the idea that courtship should consist of constructing a "compatibility chart" to determine the suitability of the potential partners. "Our charts indicate we are compatible--will you marry me?")

There was some good stuff in all this, of course. Promoting passionate romance among young teenagers is pretty silly. (Of course, so is treating them as perverts because they have natural desires, which was what the teaching of "emotional purity" often amounted to.) Having purpose. Consulting elders for wisdom. All good things.

But the structure of courtship went beyond providing some balance for the decadence (and by that I mean not excess of chocolate, but lack of a center, loss of purpose) of modern romance. It created a new structure that not only, like all human structures, had its own set of problems, but because it was promoted as "God's way" exacerbated whatever problems might arise.

And on that, more next time. And the time after that. And to conclude.

It's Hard to Be Me

Wednesday night dinner was running a little late. But only a little. It was all on the table, dished out, and I just needed to get some cups out of the cupboard.

Trouble was, some of those cups were upside down and some of them were right side up. In a moment of temporary (the temporary part of this has been disputed) insanity, my hands decided the way to handle this situation would be to flip one of the cups over while my hands were full of other cups.

Whether it flipped over or not is impossible to say, because it somehow shattered. Glass shards hit DOB, who was sitting across the room. Glass covered the counter, the floor, the table, and, especially, me. I stood barefoot in the middle of the wreckage, holding the cups that had somehow escaped the apocalypse and dripping blood.

Supper was very late. Fortunately we determined that only one piece of glass had made it to the table, and we threw out the coleslaw which is rather sparkly just in case, but the rest of dinner proved edible and no one has started bleeding internally yet. Most of my external bleeding has stopped.

Very, very late that night, after everything was cleaned up and everyone was in bed, I dropped the point of a heavy book on my foot. It's still swollen.

A Day of Gatherings

It was a beautiful and fun, but exhausting weekend. First there was a baseball game to watch, with friends and cousins in it. (The ducklings still show no interest in organized sports. But they had a great time with the disorganized sports happening on the sidelines, dressed, in Deux's case, as a rather overheated knight/pirate/cowboy/ninja.)

Then we went to Grammy and Gramps' house, as we usually do on Saturdays. Then we came home and had some friends over who brought some outgrown toys: a toy kitchen and a tractor. Much racing between the basement and the backyard.

Dot and Dash pose with the cousin's dog.

Then we had church on Sunday morning, followed by a large gathering at Their Majesties, officially to celebrate Rocketboy's 25th birthday, as he was on leave, and also incidentally to celebrate Bookworm's graduation (summa cum laude, double major in mathematics and mechanical engineering, and yeah, we're only slightly proud of her). And then there was Mother's Day and Their Majesties' anniversary to toss in. It was a lot of fun, especially since horribly-timed illnesses have caused some or all members of the Duchy to miss the last few months of family gatherings.

After that the group of people who Play Weird Games came over and we played Weird Games until after bedtime. We got back at DOB, who had creamed Rocketboy and me on Friday night, but who lost badly this time.

Now we are very, very tired.

Deux finds the Legos wherever he goes.

Killed for Sport

This week one of our stories to read for school was a children's adaptation of King Lear. We have done several Shakespeare-derived stories, though mostly comedies up until this point. They loved  A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night, but I was still a little nervous about how they would handle a tragedy. (They haven't quite recovered from the story of Roland, more than a year ago.)

No problem. Death and banishment were just as great dramatic fodder as meddling fairies and disguised courtiers. We acted it out with Lego characters as we went along, sending the banished characters skidding across the table and on to the floor. This was such a great hit that we had to do it again. Then we needed a live-action version. Deux served as King Lear, Duchess and I as the two wicked sisters, Dot as Cordelia, and Dash as All The Other Guys.

Everything was winding up to a dramatic conclusion and I poisoned myself after handing poison to the Duchess, then collapsed in dying agonies on the floor. And then my agonies became real, because I landed with my hand on a piece of Lego. It drew blood. We amended the story to have Death By Stabbing.

We read about Antony and Cleopatra in history. This has been a pretty gory week.

Submission, but not like that

Since I’ve started on misapprehensions of Ephesians 5, I’ll continue in the same vein. Although other verses get roped in, Ephesians 5 is without a doubt the keynote text in teaching that there is a hierarchy in marriage; that men in some way are called to rule and women in some way are called to obey. That if there’s a stalemate, then man gets the tie-breaking vote. That the man’s goals and dreams are of more significance than the woman’s.

I already talked about the problem with interpreting “head” as “decision maker.” It’s a modern connotation, not an ancient one. There’s just nothing in this passage about decision making in difficult situations.

What about the other commands? Just keep in mind that every command given in this passage to husbands and wives separately has already been given to all believers, male, female, young, old, single, married. We are all to love one another as Christ has loved us. We are all to submit to one another in the fear of God. Women are not somehow exempt from exhibiting Christ’s love, nor men from exercising submission.

In other words, these are universal principles. Women are to love their husbands as Christ loved the church, and men are to submit to their wives in the fear of God. To say otherwise is to argue exceptions into commands that are plainly written as universal.

What about in practice? I grew up with the hierarchical teaching on marriage. I didn’t seriously consider any other options. In fact, twelve years ago I probably would have argued for a pretty extreme view of male hierarchy. However, even then I had the sense to avoid guys who had anything at all to say on the subject. To me a single guy who needed to talk about being the leader in the home was waving a huge red flag. I am now deeply thankful that I had that much sense.

Although DOB never did particularly hold a strong position on needing to be in charge, there’s no doubt that by nature he’s a take-charge person and by nature I’m fairly easy-going. It would be pretty easy for us to follow a hierarchical pattern. And initially, we kind of did. Because it was what we were used to. Because it was what we were told was right.

                                                                                                

The trouble is, every time I’ve decided, “Well, that’s what he wants to do so I should just submit,” when I had a different view, it has been absolutely the wrong decision. It always has meant stopping the conversation we needed to be having. It has been cowardice on my part.

This doesn’t mean me insisting on my way. It means we are one. Like the head and body cannot operate without full agreement, neither can we. If we haven’t reached agreement yet, one or both of us don’t yet have enough of the other’s perspective. When we do that work, the work of really listening and trying to understand, we always find out what is best for both of us.

Now that does not address the problem of what to do when one partner is being intractably stupid. However, I don’t see how this problem is actually solved by giving men the unilateral right to be the intractably stupid ones.

An Important Event

Thirty-three years ago today, an event very important to my life occurred, though I took no notice of it at the time. I was more interested in immediate events, such as figuring out what everything within reach tasted like.

Still, without my notice, it occurred: The long-lost Duchy of Burgundy welcomed the birth of its rightful ruler. And the world became a better place. At least a better-observed and critiqued place.

Long live the Duke!

Being Controversial

I'm feeling even more controversial than I thought, so instead of starting with courtship, I'll start with critiquing this statement:

“A man should be the spiritual leader in the home.”

This is one of those phrases, like “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” or “God helps those who help themselves” that many people think is in the Bible, but actually isn’t.

It seems like people are taking this from the end of Ephesians 5. Only there’s no command there for men to be spiritual leaders. There’s a command for men to love their wives—but the example given is quite practical: “as their own bodies.” Nothing profoundly spiritual about making sure your wife is fed and clothed. 

There's the example given of Christ's love and care for the church, but unless you actually believe that husbands somehow are able to save and sanctify their wives (and I'm afraid that's heresy), it's clear that this is given in the way of inspirational example, not practical scope of activity. Paul quickly ties it back down to earth with the analogy to the body again. The passage as a whole reads like this: See how Christ cares for the church spiritually, as part of his spiritual body? That's how you should care for your wife physically, as if she were your own physical body.

There’s also a description of the husband as being the “head” of the wife, but, first of all, a description is not a command. It’s the way things are, not the way they should be. Second, there’s nothing about being a “spiritual” head. Obviously a man is not physically the head of his wife, but there’s a vast logical gulf between being the “head in a metaphorical sense” and being the “leader in spiritual matters.”

And that’s before we even get to the question of what “head” means, which is a theological and linguistic question above my pay-grade, so I’ll just point to the problem with the common “leader/decision maker” interpretation that is obvious from a general familiarity with the Bible and other ancient books: in ancient times, the heart, not the head, was spoken of as the seat of decision making, faith, and spiritual power.

Well, but so what? Is it bad for men to take the lead in spiritual things? Shouldn’t we encourage them all we can?

The trouble is, once you say “the man should be the spiritual leader,” you’re implying that there is something fundamentally wrong in a house where the wife is (or thinks she is) currently more interested in spiritual things than the husband. This often has more to do with perception than reality—since many women are more verbal, more duty-driven, more sociable, or simply have more flexible schedules than many men, they will often act more in ways that fit the public perception of “spiritual” than their husbands will.

So then what? Does she try to curtail her own spiritual growth so that she can let her husband be the leader? Does she suffer in silence? Does she try to maneuver him into spiritual leadership? Whatever happens, you’ve created a lot of discontent and tension in a situation where, quite often, the husband was doing just fine at loving his wife as his own body, but now is judged inadequate because he doesn’t like to get up early for family devotions, or whatever it is that currently counts as “spiritual leadership.”

Over time, people grow and change. At times one spouse may have greater spiritual interest, at times the other. This is not a problem. We should all be following Jesus. We should all be considering how we can encourage each other to good works. We should all be seeking to be a servant, which is God’s standard of spiritual leadership.

And by the way, I have never met a man who did something more eagerly because he got a good guilt trip over it.

(Another passage this idea could come from is I Corinthians 14:34-35, and while that’s another can of worms—here’s a good discussion—it doesn’t contain a command to men either.)

Odds and Ends

• The Duchess has decided that milk gives her headaches. So far avoiding it seems to be working. She is perfectly happy with goat cheese on her beans and almond milk on her granola, so it has not been too difficult except for eliminating half my breakfasts and all white-sauce based suppers. We're hoping it's a temporary sensitivity that will go away after a short period of avoidance.
• I had a guest post over at Girlfriend's Guide to Homeschooling, on the topic of courtship. I may write a series on this topic over here, because I'm feeling in the mood for some controversy. Then I may find some more controversial things to write about. This will probably make the blog very boring for people who read to hear about cute things the kids do, so I will have to get them to agree to do extra cute things to supplement.
• The squirrels ate all of the lettuce I set out in regular beds. They left most of what was in the flower bed. I'm suddenly not at all interested in gardening any more. Plus, it's raining.

Foamenting Discontent

You know how there come those days when you've had a busy, fun couple of weeks with people visiting and trips to the zoo and the trains and staying up late talking and watching movies together and it's all settling down and you vow, "Tonight's the night we go to bed early! Tonight's the night we get back on schedule!"

You know how that's the night a child always needs to go to Urgent Care?

It was Dot's turn. She's never been. Just before bedtime, she somehow managed to snort a piece of craft foam, much to her surprise. Her own efforts to dislodge it only bloodied her nose and made her more distraught. I arrived home in the middle of this (I had been at Bible study) and was, I confess, a little skeptical. We couldn't see it. Her nose had stopped bleeding. How did we know it was still there?

However, when it comes to handling emergencies, DOB is the specialist. This is because I refuse to believe emergencies are actually occurring, especially late at night. "Sure, it looks like that limb is severed, but we can probably put it back on with Super Glue. Or maybe it will look better in the morning." I'm better at routines. Whereas DOB gets all fired up at the prospect of a New Problem To Solve. And also believes that medical help is sometimes necessary.

So we called Their Majesties, who abandoned their supper to come sit with the other kids, and drove to Urgent Care. The other kids have gone to the ER, where it is slower because you are behind people with actual emergencies like heart attacks, whereas at Urgent Care snorted craft foam is more exciting than sprained wrists and earaches.

I was apprehensive about how Dot would take this.  She tends, as I have mentioned before, to be extremely difficult and unreasonable under stress and she had been cranky and tired before the incident occurred and completely bonkers afterwards, wailing "I can't DO anything!" until Deux managed to soothe her by reading enough Mother Goose poems. How would she take having her nose poked at?


Apparently she figured out that there was now something she could do. Because she lay still, serene as the Lady of Shalott, even though it took dozens of tries before the doctor could finally extract the foam. The doctor afterwards told her, "You are perfect, you know that?" She nodded smugly.

Today she was cranky and unreasonable again.

The Grammar Commando Visits

Actually I shouldn't really be the Grammar Commando, because I'm really not that picky about grammar as long as you say what you mean to say. (I'm all in favor of splitting infinitives and dangling prepositions like fish bait.) It's the unintentionally humorous misspellings that get me.

Like this one: "I will email you privetly."

THIS is privet:

I guess a "privet" email would be like the little hedge postbox in Little Women.

An email sent to an individual rather than a list would be a private email.

Guest Post at Faith Permeating Life

I have a guest post on "What Marriage Means to Me" over at Faith Permeating Life today. Thanks for the opportunity, Jessica!

And I'm going to post a real post over here soon, I promise. DOB's parents are visiting and things have been busy.

Anniversaries

Easter, despite being a movable holiday, has become an important anniversary for us, and one whose significance has grown over the years.

It was the day, nine years ago, that we got engaged. It was the night before Easter, three years ago, when we began a line of questioning and seeking that would take us far afield and bring us home again. It was Easter last year that we invited our children to join us as part of Christ's body.

This year on Easter, we officially joined the church we have been attending for the past year and a half. It probably looked like a pretty obvious step for many--one lady commented she had thought we had been members all along. We show up for all the services, we read and sing and teach. But for us it was a big step to join, to state that we had found a place and a people we were confident enough to commit.

Growing up in the more conservative sort of evangelicalism, I always thought the mainline churches were just "country clubs" where people didn't really believe all that any more, but just went to church out of habit. I'm sure there are many that are like that. But we've found a place where the Good News is still proclaimed faithfully, and where we can hear it and live it in a generous way that has room for struggles and differences.

One phrase that was new to me on coming into the Lutheran tradition is "remembering your baptism." The Lutheran view of baptism is that of God acting through the water, setting his seal on us. Instead of being challenged to try harder, to recommit our lives, to promise God more, we remember that God already did it all, we recognize that God has guided us this far, we look for how God is working now, we know that it's still all God.

So today I'm remembering with gratitude the way God has spoken to me, through the places I have been, through the churches I have attended, through my baptism when I was eight, through my parents' teaching, through God's people and His world and people who don't see God as I do but have yet grown my faith anyway. 'Tis grace has brought us safe thus far, and grace shall lead us home.

It's All About Timing

Last night was the Maundy Thursday service, which involves foot washing and solemn music and prayers.

Well, there was a lighter, if slightly awkward moment, during the children's sermon when the pastor, trying to illustrate the drama of Jesus' washing the disciples' feet, asked, "If the President were here, would you let him wash your feet?"

Whereupon one young boy piped up, "No, I wouldn't, 'cause I don't like the President, cause he lied this one time and . . . " (Our church is, I suspect, politically diverse but definitely not one where politics comes up in conversation much.)

But everyone expects lighter moments during the children's sermon and especially from this kid, who had also volunteered, when the pastor asked for examples of unimportant jobs, "Pastor!"

So the service had moved on to quiet, solemn prayers and music and it was to end with DOB singing a song, which I was supposed to accompany, and then, just at the last verse of the last song before it, Dot uttered those five little words which no mother of preschoolers delays to respond to for anything.

Still, perhaps there was time. So I swooped her up silently, figuring to steal rapidly out the back and return before the current round of music and prayers were done.

Only I neglected to calculate on the life-sized cross propped in the back of the sanctuary. As I swooped Dot out of the room, I clonked her forehead full-on against the cross-piece. Fortunately she was so startled and intrigued by the suddenly falling cross that she didn't actually scream, but then I had an urgently-needing-to-depart preschooler and a large crashing wooden object on my hands and the music running out.

I propped it up long enough to last until some attentive folks came to properly right in and then I dashed onward and got all my laughs out while Dot was in the bathroom and walked serenely back in just in the nick of time.

Thoughts on Cleaning Off My Desk

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So that's why I couldn't find any pencils.

I hope the IRS never audits me.

No bag in the shredder and I bought the wrong kind of bags at the grocery store. I am thwarted by myself at every turn.

Found the timer. If I could find the camera cord too, it might be worth all the suffering.

I hate Sunday School teachers. And everyone else who gives children anything but nutritious food that is consumed immediately, with no wrappers. I guess that makes the Costco aisle ladies my only friends.

The sun is shining! The children are playing outside! I can see my desk!

I never did find the camera cord.

More Things I Don't Say on Homeschool Message Boards

RC: Use curriculum XYZ! We love it!!

SQOC: Boy, one or two exclamation points wouldn't have done it but that third one clinches it: even without any reasoning or explanation, I am convinced that this is the right choice for my family. I'll run right out and buy it.

Original Poster: My 6yo son does [randomly-chosen behavior].
RC: My son does that, too! It must be a boy thing!
SQOC: Yes, because two small boys are a representative sample of the one billion of them on the planet sufficient to deduce a gender stereotype.

RC: I have always done [insert family habit] and my children have never [insert undesirable behavior in question], so I'm pretty sure that's what did it.
SQOC: Have you ever studied logic? I have, and that's why my children have never committed an ax murder. You should definitely try it.

RC: Whenever we come across something about millions of years in a book, I ask my children, "How old is the earth really?" and they shout out "6000 years!"
SQOC: Right, a knee-jerk recitation of dogma is the best way to begin a lifetime of critical thinking.

Green Things Growing

For the week that began two weeks ago, it snowed every day. Every day. Granted, it only stuck sporadically, but still. St. Patrick's Day! It should not snow on St. Patrick's Day!

The coming of the first day of spring did not look too promising, but spring managed to come anyway. The last few days have been sunny and on occasion even warm. And after a very long hiatus, I have a garden of my own again. Admittedly, right now it consists of a flower bed with a few gaps and some bags of soil. (I'm trying the new method of planting straight in the bag of soil--we'll see how it works.) But we have transplanted the first round of lettuces. I've been raising them from seed on the front porch in little milk jug mini-greenhouses, which seem to have done just fine in spite of the cold. And we planted a row of peas that I am hoping will grow all the way up the porch railing.

Also, His Majesty thinned the raspberries again, and this time I put them right in the ground, in three beautiful rows, so hopefully they will all live. Last year he thinned the raspberries while we were still negotiating on the house, and by the time we had closed on the house and made it habitable and moved in and turned to look out back, most of them had given up on life after two months in a plastic bucket.

And our daffodils are about to bloom, though they seem to be behind everywhere else. We must live in a bit of a cold spot. All the better for growing lettuces.

I haven't seen a rabbit yet this year. Here's hoping.

More Ideals and Reality

(I hate it when I discover I've already used a post title.)

This week has been a long, slow slog of recovery. The kids are doing much better, but the house and I take longer. Especially since recovering kids make for a messy house.

Yesterday Duchess and Deux had spent much of the day cutting apart magazines in the living room. I probably shouldn't allow this in the living room, but there isn't really anywhere else except the kitchen table, which is usually otherwise in use. By late afternoon, the living room was ankle-deep in paper and I was beginning to feel frantic.

One of those cardinal rules of parenting is supposed to be that Children Clean Up Their Own Messes. And usually they do. But this mess was so big, and so deep, and so tall, and I was already so cranky, and they were already so wired, that I knew if I went in and made them clean it up, I would start yelling and we would all be at each other's throats.

So I offered them a choice: Clean it all up, or go outside and play. After a bit of deliberation (quite a bit on Dot's part, who hates being cold), they all opted to go outside and play. They went outside and burned energy. I stayed inside and cleaned in quiet. When they came in, somewhat calmer than they had been, I felt able to tolerate their presence enough to let them help me make pizza.

It wasn't ideal. But it was good.

The Walking Dead

We have recently been experiencing that special form of family bonding known as the stomach flu. (Which, of course, is incorrect, as it has nothing to do with influenza.) For once, everyone got it at once, except for Deux, who had an initial bout the previous weekend, and me, who either had a very minor case early on or who still has it hanging over my head. Everyone came down with it in the middle of the night, though, which I thought was an unnecessary touch.

Lucky us we had the Ma and Pa Kettle collection in from the library. These movies are theoretically set a short distance from here and we have been to the general area. However, the actual sets look suspiciously like California rather than the Olympic Peninsula. (Hint: There'd be a lot more and bigger trees. And it would be raining.) They're pretty corny, but a good choice for the circumstances.

I caught the bad cold Dot already had, just to round things out with lack of sleep. Adding that to nonstop laundry and dishwashing, and matters got so desperate for a couple days that I broke down and bought Plants vs. Zombies. This kept everyone occupied (not always quiet) watching me while they recuperated without straining my throat. Any resemblance to how I looked or felt after the experience is purely coincidental.

Today I'm using it to bribe our way through the mountain of accumulated chores. Deux is designing his own live-action Lego version, but he and Duchess keep getting into arguments over the rules. DOB is back to facing the backlog of work, without his paralegal, who got married on Saturday.

I need to go fold the laundry so we can fight some more zombies.

Something Fishy

This week DOB's Rotary club released a load of hatchlings into a local creek, so we went to watch. The directions we had said "Behind the auto parts store" so we spent some time wandering amongst the machinery and asking befuddled auto parts workers before we realized we were supposed to proceed a couple of blocks up and down a dead end.

Envisioning the release as the opening of a mighty gate and rushing of many waters, we thought we would be too late. But it was a far more labor-intensive process. First the fish had to be loaded into coolers, and trucked up to the creek. Then they were dipped into the creek, a few at a time.

In addition to the ducklings, we had their 20 month old small cousin (SC) along. She is of an altogether different temperament than the ducklings at that age: highly mobile, ready for anything and overjoyed at the prospect of swimming with the fishes and rolling in the mud. Amazingly, she never fell in over her knees.

It turns out salmon hatchlings are really dumb. Even though we made every effort to release them in actual water, a large portion of them immediately made their best effort to swim into the mud. It took quite a while after the initial release to convince as many hatchlings as possible to leave the mud and go where they could actually breathe. And many of them returned to the mud as fast as you threw them in. This diminishes my confidence in the benefits of fish oil for the brain--it doesn't seem to be doing the fish much good.

Nobody fell all the way in and nobody ate a fish, so we will have to go back and do it again.