St. Ardalion

You can tell it’s been a busy week when you’ve been trying to write a blog post for days, but somehow it just never gets done, and suddenly it’s Saturday again, and you still haven’t hit the magic Publish button.  And for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what made the week so busy.  Just it somehow was.  But now here we are on the other side, and to make up for my non-blogginess, here’s a picture of Sweet Pea being ridiculously cute, as she is wont to be.

Seriously, I think this kid may be the cutest baby who ever lived.  I know that, as her aunt, I am contractually obligated to say this, but still.  She is still so tiny, but already full of so much character.  She likes having her hands free so she can curl them up by her face, and she likes to push her head out of her bunting, stretching her neck out to try to see everything around her, for all the world like a little turtle sticking its head out of its shell.  She makes the most ridiculous faces, including the best little baby scowl that I somehow did not mange to take a picture of.  When she squinches up her face, she gets a little wrinkle just on the bridge of her nose which is amazing because I get the exact same wrinkle on my nose too!  We tried to get a picture demonstrating this miraculous likeness, but instead it just looks like we’re scowling at each other.

As for the news, well, Easter was good.  On Friday I got to go down to see Sweet Pea and Sae and Mr. T.  I brought Pizza Factory, and got to hold the baby, and hang out some.  On Saturday most of the clan gathered at St. Anthony’s for the Easter Vigil.  This year’s Easter Vigil bet was a tie between me and Mr. T – it came down to the seconds, and since all of us use our cell phones as our watches, none of us had a watch with a second hand.  If I were a little more unscrupulous I would declare it in my favor, but that darn conscience… gets in the way all the time!  14 even texted his bet in from Missouri, and he would have won, but he got it in too late, so it didn’t count.  Sunday was lots of family time.  Since we didn’t get to have the baby with us (she’s still much too little to be exposed to large groups of people), Boy-O brought the sugar glider he and his roommates adopted, and we got to play with it instead.  Which was also adorably cute, though not nearly as cute as Sweet Pea.

The rest of the week has flown by.  Thursday night was the first night of the Spring Theology On Tap series.  Adam Pasternak gave a really great talk on religious freedom, particularly as it applies to the current political situation.  I kinda love Adam, whom I knew back when we were both at UD, and it was a really great talk.  Unfortunately, I didn’t pay very much attention to it.  I was sitting in the back whispering and having fun with Pippi, and drinking really, really delicious Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, which had a little higher alcohol content than I realized.  After a while Pippi and I decided to order a pizza, and when the break came, various vultures of the male variety came over to try to steal some.  Lately I haven’t been in the most charitable mood towards persons of the male gender (this may also have something to do with the not-blogging), so I really rather enjoyed denying them all access to the pizza.  All in all, it was one of the most fun TOTs I’ve been to in a long time!

And while we’re on the topic of Men Are Strange, it’s so bizarre that right when you’re feeling cranky about men in general is right when all the guys start coming out of the woodwork.  Friday morning, our new maintenance guy was totally flirting with me while I made his badge, and then the guy who comes to empty the shred box decided to tease me about my somewhat battered door sign.  I ended up chatting half the morning with Atlas, during the course of which he said he might start coming to TOT himself, and then when I went down to lunch the pretty cute and slightly geeky (a good thing) lab manager decided to sit with me.  In the afternoon, one of the other maintenance guys (the much too young for me but pretty cute one) decided to come hang out in the HR office for a while, just, you know, for kicks, and then the topper was getting a message from Sarge saying that he was very sorry he hadn’t been able to come see me yet that day, but they had a situation in the ED they had to deal with.  It reminds me of when I started wearing makeup, and suddenly had the two single guys at my old work in my office building towers out of empty pop cans.

Men are strange.

Pope St. Cletus

I was thinking the other day that I really like Easter.  It’s almost the perfect holiday.  You’ve got it all: deep religious significance, family gatherings, presents, little kids being adorable, pretty clothes, a time of preparation that deepens your anticipation, and, at least compared to Christmas, a blessedly low level of commercialization.  Not to say that the proliferation of pastel colored bunnies doesn’t get to be a little much this time of year, but compared to, say, Halloween, it’s not bad.  Plus there’s all the pretty flowers everywhere, and better than usual odds of having somewhat nice weather.  It’s hard to imagine how it could get better.

This Easter was a good one.  Of course, when I say “Easter” what I mean isn’t just Easter Sunday, but the whole Triduum, the series of liturgical events starting Maundy Thursday, continuing Good Friday, and culminating in the Easter Vigil on Saturday night.  On Thursday we had our very first ever CL Holy Thursday Church Crawl, a sort of mini-pilgrimage in which you visit seven Altars of Repose at seven different churches in the time between the end of The Mass of the Last Supper and midnight when Adoration usually ends.  I enjoyed this more than I expected to.  Rather than being disruptive, the trips between churches came right when my attention was starting to wander anyway.  I rode in the car with Grace, Captain Amazing, and Grace’s roommate, so the travel time was a lot of fun, and all in all, the time flew by.  Midnight came almost before I knew it.

Friday morning I slept in, and then spent most of the day (except when I was in church) sewing.  I had wanted to get the second muslin (a trial run of a pattern sewn from cheap fabric so you can work out any fitting issues before cutting up your expensive stuff) of my bridesmaid dress bodice done before our bridesmaids meeting that evening, but it didn’t quite happen.  So instead of a bodice, I showed off my planned hairstyle and jewelry.  AnniPotts showed us her dress (she looks totally like a bombshell), and Sae showed off her dress too.  I tried to show my fellow bridesmaids how to put up the bustle, but from the level of attention they paid, I’m pretty sure I’m still stuck with bustle duties.  Indy also showed us the incredibly beautiful bead flowers she’s been making for all of our hair.  As things wound down we all started to get pretty silly, and then Sae showed us her version of being a Bridezilla.  So I filmed it.  And really, I don’t know why this video isn’t an internet sensation.  I mean, I think it’s just about the most ridiculously awesome thing I’ve ever seen.  Plus, after we made Sae repeat the performance (also caught on tape), Boy-O got into the act with his own dinosaur impression.  It was kindof wonderful.

Yes, that really is what we’re like when we get together.  I told you my family was awesome.

Saturday was more sewing, finally resulting in a finished muslin with all the fitting kinks worked out.  Sae, Mr. T, and Fleur came up from Cincinnati for dinner with us followed by the Easter Vigil.  We had everyone in the family at the Vigil this year except Big Brother and Jacob.  It was pretty sweet.  Indy won the Easter Vigil Bet.  There was some pretty stiff competition this year.  Fleur placed a bet for the first time, and even 14 called a bet in from St. Louis.  If the Easter Vigil had gone on one minute and a few seconds longer, Sae would have won, but our parish priest was apparently in a hurry this year (shortest Easter Vigil I think I’ve ever attended – we barely went over two hours), and Indy emerged triumphant.  As soon as the Vigil was over, I headed home, changed into jeans, and headed out again to join my swing dancing friends at Mai’s Bachelorette party.  Alas, things had started to wind down by the time I got there, but I still had time to drink a really good beer, and hear Mai tell her version of how Nameless proposed to her.  I’d only heard Nameless tell this story before, so it was fun hearing the other perspective.

Sunday started off with brunch and Easter baskets.  This year Sae and Fleur hid them, and did Hot and Cold for us as we searched.  It was a little simpler than other years (we still remember the year all the clues were in the form of poems, or the other year when we buried Indy’s basket in the garden), but Fleur’s enthusiastic cries of “Hot!  Burning Hot!  You’re on fire!” made it extra fun.  In the afternoon pretty much everyone wanted a nap, and then we regathered over at Aunt B & Uncle J’s house for their traditional Easter lamb supper.  I ended up the evening knitting some of the last rows on Sunny’s wedding shawl while sitting on the porch swing listening to Johnnycakes and Uncle S trade drinking stories.

Monday started with a walk and hanging out a little with AnniPotts before she headed back to Texas, and then heading over to Aunt S’s house to help her put her plants outside for the summer.  She’s hosting Sae’s third (and final) bridal shower next Saturday, and she’d asked us if we could help her prepare.  Some of her plants are quite large, and since she only walks with the assistance of two canes, she needed a little help.  So I moved plants, and then sat and had coffee with her for a while.  When I was leaving I remembered that she lives just down the street from one of the best yarn shops in Dayton, the one I almost never get to because it’s so out of my usual way.  (Actually, who am I kidding.  I didn’t just happen to remember that when I was leaving.  I had been thinking about it since I knew that I was going to be driving out that way during normal business hours.)  So, you know, I stopped by.  And picked up some yarn.  Just a little bit, because, well, finances and all.  I’m just lucky that the yarn I use to knit my colorwork mittens happens to be (comparatively, at least) inexpensive!  And then in the evening was the last lesson of UD Swing Club for the year.  It was somewhat bittersweet – a lot of the students who were part of that first class of enthusiastic swing dancers are graduating.  I’ll miss some of them very much, but as long as they keep dancing, I know that I’ll run into them again sooner or later.   And in the meantime, I’m really looking forward to having my Monday nights free!

And that was my Easter.  How was yours?

St. Daniel

There’s a lot I love about teaching swing dancing.  I love the rush of sharing something I love, of watching new and tentative dancers blossom into full-fledged Lindy Hoppers.  I love the secret thrill of teaching something I know is really hard, but presenting it as if it’s no big deal, and watching my students pick it up without a hitch, never knowing the magnitude of exactly what they’re doing.  I love seeing how my students turn out, the joy and musicality with which they dance, knowing that all students reflect at least a little of their instructors.

And then there are the stories.  It’s not just being able to tell them my own stories, like back when I’d just barely started dancing and Hatman tried to lead a Texas Tommy out of open position, leading to much awkwardness, or the infamous dance with The Clogging Lindy Hopper at the Miami dance Valentine’s Day before last.  It’s also the stories I end up telling other people, mostly of ways I’ve ended up looking like an idiot in front of the class.  For example, there was the first time I ever taught by myself, and ended up telling my demonstration partner rather urgently to “Do me the bad way!” (I was trying to tell him to demonstrate how not to lead a Lindy basic, but, um, yeah.)

Unfortunately, Monday I think I added to this list of stories.  Mr. Zoot and I have been teaching Charleston for a while now, making our way through side-by-side Charleston, hand to hand turns, other partner Charleston moves, and into Tandem.  When we had our quick teacher consult at the beginning of class (us?  plan ahead?) Mr. Zoot said, “Hey, let’s teach Travelling Charleston!” And I said, “Oooh!  Yeah!” Now the problem is, what I as thinking of was a move that’s done with the partners facing each other, holding both hands, kicking through similar to hand to hand Charleston turns.  I apologize if this is a bunch of gibberish to you – the important thing is this: When Mr. Zoot went to lead the move he was actually thinking of (Traveling Charleston out of Tandem, in which the two partners are back to front, both facing the same direction), I had never done it before, and I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t just not following something on the dance floor, but while our entire class watched.  It was pretty horrible.  It took me a few (ok, maybe half a dozen) tries to get it down, though I did eventually get it, and then I was able to turn around and teach it, but still.  Pretty much an Epic Fail.

Sigh.

The rest of my life, thankfully, has not been nearly so Failicious.  I finally got my copy of The Celtic Tenor’s Hard Times in the mail, which means I no longer have to scour Youtube for Celtic Tenors vids in order to get my fix.  Plus, I’ve been steaming along on Fleur’s First Communion shawl, and this weekend I think I might just actually get some time to work on my bridesmaid dress.  I had a breakthrough about it a while back that I’m eager to try out.  You see, one of the reasons I haven’t made more progress on the dress (besides my general lack of weekend sewing time) has been that the pattern calls for many, many bound buttonholes.  This is a somewhat advanced couture sewing technique that may produce beautiful buttonholes, but is rather fiddly, and has coincidentally been intimidating the crap out of me.  However, when I looked up the pattern on Pattern Review, I saw that one other sewer came up with the idea of using snaps instead, thereby completely circumventing the whole buttonhole issue and also adding a rather kicky style accent!  It’s genius, my friends, pure genius!

Of course, as soon as I though of having snaps instead of buttons on my dress bodice, I remembered the story of 14′s Pearl Snap shirt.  You see, being from Texas, he had a few Pearl Snap shirts, which various of my sisters (mostly AnniPotts and Indy) found very entertaining, especially for the way having snaps instead of buttons could facilitate a man ripping his shirt dramatically off.  One night he was over at The Family Homestead, helping with the dishes after Saturday night dinner.  He decided to take his dress shirt off (he was wearing a t-shirt underneath) so he wouldn’t get it wet.  AnniPotts was also at the sink, and he remembered how funny she thought his shirt was, so he decided to try something.  “Hey, AnniPotts, ” he said, “Watch this!” With that he dramatically wrenched open the front of his shirt, only to realize, as buttons went pinging across the kitchen, that he wasn’t actually wearing a Pearl Snap shirt that night.

That story has since gone down in family lore.  I think we’ll still be telling it when we’re old and gray.  (14 will just have to deal with it, which he will do by laughing a little, turning a bit pink in the face, and saying, “Oh, geez.”)  But telling the story of 14′s Pearl Snap shirt is one thing, having a Pearl Snap bodice on my bridesmaid dress is the kind of private joke that makes giggle every time I think about it.  When it comes to weddings, I think I can use all the giggles I can get!

St. Francis de Sales

If you are reading this, it is because I am down in Washington, DC, taking part in the March for Life, and don’t have internet access. I’ll give you guys a nice update when I get back, but in the meantime, here are some pretty, pretty pictures of Indy’s miniature animals.

Elephant, long dauschund, short dauschund, and the world’s smallest earless dog.  This was taken at the diner where we were having breakfast on the morning of Jacob’s anniversary.

The coin the little polka dotted dog is on is a quarter, just for a size reference.

But Indy says that they show to best advantage perched on the bridge of someone’s nose.  14 tried to oblige, but the dog didn’t seem to want to stay there…

He had better luck later in the day posing with the tiny bunk beds from Fleur’s dollhouse.  His cell phone rests very comfortably in the top bunk.

Much better!

St. Hilary of Poitiers

I was preparing a long post with all the details of how we marked the 2nd Anniversary of my brother’s death, but right about when I started getting into the details of exactly what kind of pancakes we all had at The Golden Nugget I realized that it was a bit ridiculous.  So here’s the short version.  Attempt at morning Mass (14 cleaned off my car for me – what a great guy!), apparently Wednesday is the only weekday that Holy Angels doesn’t have 8:30 Mass, breakfast at Golden Nugget with Dad, Mariah, Indy, The Duchess, Boy-O and 14, then home for a short nap and attempt at headache remediation.  Noon Mass at St. Joseph’s (only one handkerchief’s worth of tears – not bad), then over to the Family Homestead where I and Indy ended up crafting while 14 fell asleep on the couch (I am now almost done with the first of the Winter Wonder Mittens – just half a thumb to go).  Then watching youtube videos while people slowly arrived for dinner, and then dinner all together.  We had Mom, Dad, Indy, The Duchess, 007 (thankfully recovering from the evil rotgut stomach flu that took him down for a few days), Rosie, Boy-O, Mariah, Sae, Mr. T, and Big Brother on speakerphone (14 had headed off for Men’s Group, so he wasn’t there).

It is good to be together at times like this.  I have to keep reminding myself of that.  When I am grieving, most often my first instinct is to go off alone someplace, and get my crying done before I have to come out and be among people again.  But it’s good to be with my family, to know that we are all going through the same thing, even if we express it in different ways.  It is good to know that with this group of people, I do not have to pretend to be ok.

After dinner, we distributed Aunt C’s Christmas Grab Bags, then helped finish cleaning up, and little by little headed off to our separate homes.  This is good-bye for a while for us.  The Duchess heads back to Philadelphia today, along with 007.  The Absent-Minded Professor is already back at school, and AnniPotts is down in Texas being comforted by her sweet kindergartners.  The next time we will be all together will probably be Sae’s wedding at the end of May, or maybe Easter.  Those seem very far away right now.

And now we go on.  This year was not as bad as last year.  Hopefully next year will be better.