So to speak

The other night we were reading Luke 6, about the ears of corn and the reference to David and the consecrated bread. (We're reading through the New Testament together in the ASV this time, for variety and a refreshing change of perspective.)

Me: Do you know what that's called in the King James version?
Michael: Shewbread, isn't it?
Me: With an E. And you know what I always say?
Michael: I think I heard this last time we read this...
Me (eagerly, before he can cut me off): There's no bread like shewbread!

On an unrelated note, I took this quiz online. Alas, I only scored 75% because I kept clicking on the Next arrow when no correction was needed, and the quiz read that as a skipped answer.

Maternal musings

- I just started wearing maternity clothes this week. I can still squeeze into most of my normal clothes, but I've decided that I'd rather look pregnant-and-hardly-showing than normal-and-rather-pudgy. Maternity tops have a way of subtly yet unmistakably announcing the baby's existence.

- After Jane was born, I was shocked and dismayed at the residual belly I was left with. I hadn't expected to lose all the weight immediately, of course, but I wasn't prepared for the immensity of the bulge. At the time I joked that I had reverted to three months pregnant. This weekend, however, we were looking over pictures of the first day or two, and I definitely looked far bulgier then than I am even now. So maybe post-partum actually leaves you looking four or five months pregnant.

- I'm glad Baby waited to launch onto its immense growth spurt until after the play was over. It would have been embarrassing to keep asking the costume people to take out the waist after every performance.

Free Pepsi!

I don't shop often enough at CVS to pay attention to the ads, but I just stumbled across their flier online and discovered that they have a terrific sale on Pepsi products this week. In a word - aside from the sales tax and the postage stamp for the rebate - free!

You buy four 12-packs of any Pepsi product for $10, and send away for a $10 rebate. Simple!

We're not in the habit of drinking soft drinks. But anything free is pretty irresistible! Besides, it's great to have soda pop to bring to potlucks and whatnot. I can hardly wait for Jane to get up from her nap so we can dash off to the nearest CVS and buy our dose of sugar water.

Nor iron bars a cage

On Friday we watched The Shawshank Redemption, a brilliantly made movie with way too much bad language and a horrifying depiction of prison life. It made me wonder how accurate to real life the portrayal of the brutality of the guards - and the unconcern of those in charge as to how the prisoners treated each other - is. The utter hopelessness and despair gave rise to the consideration of other imprisonments, which led to the random compilation of the Ten Worst Imprisonments of All Time. Except I couldn't think of ten right off. But for Jean Valjean it could be the Ten Worst Unjust Imprisonments of All Time:

- Judah's mother and sister, walled into the Tower, in Ben-Hur (Being bricked in! The leprosy!)
- Edmond Dantes in the Chateau D'If, from Count of Monte Cristo (The suddenness! The reversal of fortune!)
- Doctor Manette in the Bastille, from A Tale of Two Cities (Having to write your memoirs with your own blood!)
- Jean Valjean in Les Miserables (Well, so he did commit a crime, but in disproportion to the punishment. And having his footsteps so dogged by Javert!)
- Westley in the Pit of Despair (The Machine! The Albino!)
- The poor sap in The Pit and the Pendulum (Shivers!)

I'm sure there are others equally as horrible in terms of length of duration, uncertainty as to duration, suffering while incarcerated, and effects on family and fortune meanwhile.

Round Two

Now that the play is over, we can sit back, draw a deep breath, and prepare for the next big event looming on our horizon: the arrival of Jane's little brother or sister, coming February 2007. Jane will be an active almost-two-year-old, and no doubt much in need of a fellow child to share in the spotlight and spare her from spoilage. Alas for the new baby, which will have a hard act to follow to be as model a child as Jane has been. (Or perhaps its making its arrival just as Jane hits the vaunted Terrible Twos was a clever stroke of genius on its part.) We are all much excited at the addition and look forward to meeting our new little one next February.

Overheard last night

Michael (rummaging through the freezer): What's this?
Me: I don't know.
Michael: Good. Can we throw it away then?
Me: No! I'll work it off on my brothers next visit!
Michael: Do you actually like saving money, or do you just like feeling clever when you think you're doing it? Because it wouldn't actually cost us anything to throw this away.

Goodbye Dolly

Our final performance was on Saturday night, and with that last show ends an era of our lives - hectic, frenzied, short, but so much fun. We were delighted at how many friends turned up throughout its two-week run, and thrilled to have my family come down this past weekend to watch. They enjoyed it thoroughly, and when we got home that night at almost midnight everyone crawled out of bed to talk over the play in excited and voluble whispers (because the 'everyone' did not, of course, include Jane).

So now that's done with, and we are feeling a bit lost, rather like Bilbo once he got back from the Lonely Mountain. I hope we don't go off and do something rash and wasteful with our sudden influx of free time, like sign up for Netflix or something. Plenty of yard work and bills to catch up on.

And with all that excitement of guests and plays and Jane walking this last weekend, the thing I'm most thrilled about is the $100 Kroger gift card I won yesterday! I saw fliers at our local Kroger last week advertising a back-to-school day for kids on Sunday, and I determined to take all five of my brothers, who I was sure would appreciate meeting the Keebler Elf and the Mayfield cow and participating in the Oreo Stacking Contest and the Milk Mustache Contest. But little did I dream that a local radio station would be there passing out prizes just for stopping by! My mom had dashed to the store earlier in the day and ended up winning a box of pop tarts, so I made sure to stop by the table in hopes of a similar fate. It was the perfect ending to a perfect weekend.

No, actually the perfect ending came that night, when we celebrated my dad's birthday with chocolate cake and homemade ice cream. Hurrah for celebrations, and for causes for which to celebrate!

That bwessed awwangement...that dweam within a dweam...

Three years ago today was the happiest day of our lives, as of then. And the intervening years, swiftly though they have flown by, have only gotten better. Why do I love being married to Michael so much? Let me count the ways:

- Every so often he will remark, 'We haven't seen Pride and Prejudice in a while. It's about time to watch it again, isn't it?'

- I love to watch him play with Jane. She absolutely adores her Papa, and for good reason.

- He is always willing to help with the dishes if I had a long day.

- He always compliments my cooking and is impressed with the littlest things, such as homemade piecrust.

- He takes pride in ownership and maintains the house and lawn well, without making it an idol.

Oh, and speaking of P&P, on Monday night we watched Sense & Sensibility and I remembered having seen it first when it came out ten years ago, at which time I distinctly recall identifying more with Marianne. I didn't quite approve of the indecorous excesses of her behaviour, but I certainly sympathised with her passion for books and reading, romantic fancies, and volatile temperament. As we watched the scene of her meeting with Willoughby and her almost-swoon upon discovering that he reads and glibly recites Shakespeare sonnets too, I realised that my notions of felicity in marriage have changed drastically since that time. Ten years ago I probably would have placed a lot more weight on the discovery of shared interests, which after all is nothing but a happy coincidence. By far the most important element is the character; the personality is just frills.

When Michael and I first met and struck up correspondence, we established an easy rapport by email because we had read many of the same books and recognised each other's quotes and nonsense. (Gandalf: 'Think of the riddles they both knew, for instance.') But that has very little to do with the basis for our relationship. In our marriage, we don't spend a whole lot of time sitting around going off on quoting sprees. It's nice to have common interests, but those can grow over time, and indeed we have each been responsible for introducing the other to a lot of new horizons. How silly it would have been for Michael to have been waiting all those years for a girl who liked sushi! How silly it would have been for me to have put 'Has read Emma' on my List. In the end, it is far more significant that I married a man of good character who is deferent enough to learn to appreciate my tastes than it would have been to have snagged a guy who just happened to like the same things that, at that time in my life, were top of my list.

Here is Jane, right after a bath

Her hair is so fun to play with!

The show must go on

Five performances down, three to go! Last week was a whirlwind of dress rehearsals, performances, cheering crowds, and late nights, but this week promises to be a bit calmer: one show on Friday and two on Saturday, and then we're done for good. It's been so fun, but I'll be relieved when it is over!

I think I'm tired at the end of a show, what with all the dance numbers and quick changes, but I must remember that whatever I do, Michael does too, plus all the scenes he does on his own. We have several dance numbers together, and then he participates in several scenes involving mainly male characters. The second act is especially grueling for the guys, as they dash straight from the Elegance dance scene backstage to madly change into their waiter costumes for the intensely physically demanding waiter's Galop (involving seven sequences of jumping across stage in time, waving napkins and saltshakers and menus around, jumping up and clicking the heels in the air, and other equally exhausting vignettes), followed immediately by the somewhat slower but no less active title piece Hello Dolly! for which they had to learn a complicated dance step called the soft shoe, after which they dash backstage and change even more quickly into evening clothes for the riotous and energetic polka competition, after which the lights go out and we all immediately find ourselves standing on stage under the hot glare of the lights for about ten minutes for the courtroom scene. Whew! I get tired out just dashing back and forth to stage left and stage right in an attempt to meet him for a split second in the wings and apply the water bottle!

But it's fun and rewarding and brings the usual adrenaline rush, especially when the crowd really gets into it. Amazingly enough, there haven't been any major mistakes; all the main characters are remembering their lines or ad-libbing convincingly, and the occasional misstep that happens in a dance number is easily covered. As long as you smile brilliantly and confidently enough the audience will assume you know what you are doing.

Yes, it's been grand, and this coming weekend will be the crowning fun, but I think it will be our last play for a while.

The play's the thing

On Saturday morning we dropped Jane off with friends and spent the whole day rehearsing. We didn't see her again until almost 7:00 that evening. Then yesterday we dropped her off with another friend before church, and didn't see her until nearly 8:00 at night. I was so active and busy during rehearsals that I didn't have much time to think, but when we were driving to pick her up and when we saw how overjoyed she was to see us I simply couldn't imagine how people manage to leave their babies at daycare all day long. Today I am just drinking in as much as I can from my time with her before I drop her off at 5:00 to go pick Michael up and run a full dress rehearsal. We haven't yet run the thing straight through with no stops so we are not quite sure how long it will be with intermission, but it will probably top three hours. With 7:30 kick-off (of course we have to be there at least two hours in advance), picking Jane up afterwards, and the drive home, that means we'll be getting to bed around midnight every night this week. Michael will hardly even see her at all.

BUT! Yesterday we ran through it in costume for the first time and it makes it all seem so real! Suddenly everything falls into place, and though we still made a few mistakes, the director seemed to think that we are coming along nicely. Apparently, for some shows they haven't even come up with a final number until the Monday dress rehearsal before opening night.

Jane is being such a trooper. She seems perfectly happy this morning, playing with her toys as usual and chattering away merrily and primarily unintelligibly. She has become fluent in several foreign languages recently, including German (bitte), French (oui), Spanish (hola), and Swedish (ja).

The pace quickens

As if it ever slackened.

Today I earned a $25 dinner certificate for test-driving a minivan at a local Toyota dealer. We received a mailing advertising the promotion, and after calling to verify the validity of the offer and the lack of strings attached, Jane and I were off to inspect the goods. It was such fun to get to try out a new car and enjoy all the bells and whistles, and because I was clear on my intentions up front, there was no pressure at all (which usually would scare me away from taking advantage of these kinds of promotions). I told them when I arrived that I was there for the free gift certificate, that we weren't in the market for a new car today but might be interested in purchasing a minivan in a year or two, and that I'd be happy to scope out the options so we could be aware of what was out there. The new vehicles these days are really amazing. I wonder, if everyone in America immediately bought a brand-new car AND always fastened his/her seatbelt, what the auto fatality rate would drop to. As the salesman explained all the features and all the hidden airbags/curtains/protective pockets, I wondered how anyone could possibly die in that car.

This week we have a slight breather from play practise. Last Saturday was our last free day (and only in many weeks) before the final grueling lap. On Saturday we have a complete run-through with costume changes; Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are full dress rehearsals; Wednesday is opening night; Thursday, Friday, and twice on Saturday are performances. And amazingly enough, with the exception of this Saturday (panicking a little bit on that score), we have childcare completely lined up for Jane for both weeks. It helps that family is coming down the second week to take turns watching Jane and watching us. It will be fun! But I will be glad when it is over.

Bigger isn't always bad

I stumbled across this post and, while charmed by the general call to de-clutter and not lay up excessive treasure on earth, felt that the adulation heaped upon the French for their simplicity and small-mindedness was a bit over the top.

It's all well and good to heed the call to the simple life, to make do with less and be unwasteful. Certainly in America we could do with a little dressing down, and I agree that most people today have way too much junk on hand. But it's going a bit too far to assume that since having too much (stuff, space, etc.) is excessive and oppressive, it must therefore be better to err on the side of asceticism. What we want is a happy medium - not too much, not too little: just right.

There is no virtue in making do with less for the pure sake of self-denial. In other words, smaller living spaces/appliances per se are not inherently better than larger ones. It's a question of what you need and what you can prudently manage. Glorifying simplicity for simplicity's sake, as if that were an end in itself and necessarily more virtuous than complexity, harks back to Henry David Thoreau and his ilk.

The western European notion of smallness fits a very definite mindset, and it's not necessarily geared toward functionality, convenience, or practicality. Much of it is simply rooted in tradition and bounded by the limitations of the past: way back then, that was all they had room for, and they've never bothered expanding their horizons since then. Having a half size refrigerator certainly will limit the amount of groceries you can stockpile, which works out just fine for the shrinking family size of western European nations but isn't so handy for the healthy American homeschooling family that may jolly well need - and put to good use - that extra chest freezer.

There is something undeniably charming and quaint about making do with small and even cramped spaces, but why would you willingly force yourself to make do if you don't have to? I've been to Dutch bathrooms, and there is very little charm in trying to squeeze both hands at once under the tiny (cold water only) faucet in the typical powder rooms. Why build like this if you don't have to?

I'm all for using good taste to drive the selection of your clothing, and relying on quality, not quantity. But I'd rather have my decisions driven by taste and preference rather than necessity, and stock my few well-chosen articles in a closet roomy enough to be comfortable. Choosing to live with small closets in order to force you to make the right decisions about your wardrobe seems a bit like stapling your stomach in order to ensure that you don't eat too much.

Having less stuff than you need to operate at full efficiency can be just as disastrous as having so much extra stuff that your actions are hampered by your possessions. If a full-size dishwasher saves you time and effort, then buy one! If you'd rather wash your own dishes and a big dishwasher would just get in your way, then don't buy one! But priding one's self on one's small dishwasher or washing machine is just plain silly.

Mother Teresa gave away all that she had and lived a life of strict poverty, and yet she was no more virtuous in her generosity than was the Good Samaritan. Sometimes it helps to have big houses and ample possessions, if you can use those things to serve others and advance the kingdom of God.

Back...sort of

We've had a seemingly unending stream of houseguests over the last few weeks, and while it's been enjoyable to host people, it does take a toll on the spare time. Since our primary guest room also houses the computer, snatches of computer time have been rare and short. Therefore emails have not been answered promptly and blogs have been neglected.

Things might reach equilibrium again but for the fact that Dolly rehearsals hit crunch time this weekend. Opening night is in three weeks, so the pace quickens.

In other news, Jane's top words are Uh-oh and Mama, in that order. The garden, for lack of watering, is pretty much dead.

The license plate game

This is a fun game that my family has played for years. You can also play it as a board game using scrabble pieces, but it's best for enlivening any driving trip. You simply form a word out of the three letters on the license plates of passing cars. The rules are simple:

1) The word must be at least four letters long.
2) No proper names or contractions allowed.
3) If two words contain the same number of letters, the shortest word is determined by alphabetical priority. (So for AGE, Ages beats Sage, even though it has two syllables.)
4) The letters have to appear in the word in the order that they are on the plate. But they can be anywhere in the word.
5) The shortest and the longest words both win. (This is great for playing with your spouse in the car [a non-speaking baby in the backseat doesn't count] because you both win, all of the time.)

It's fun to take this one step farther and make words out of initials. Since most of us (with the exception of certain Italian spaghetti-lovers) have three names, this works out perfectly. The point is to invent the cleverest and pithiest word, not necessarily the shortest. A few quick examples:

MLF = Mellifluous
SLJ = Um...well...her maiden name was a cool Silver...
SEM = Semantics
RLR = Ruler
JRP = Jurisprudence

The days are getting shorter...

And a much-needed rain has rescued us from what threatened to be a drought, which was a dire state of things, to be sure, because it never drowses in Georgia. I hadn't been as faithful in watering my garden of late, and things were looking rather blighted. The one advantage was that the grass had stopped growing, and thus needed no mowing.

Family came down last week and stayed until Sunday morning, and Jane certainly enjoyed all the attention. We went blueberry picking on Saturday, set out to pick a gallon, and got carried away and came home with two. Now I know it's not proper to talk about prices, but I simply must crow at the tremendous bargain. The blueberries were $6/gallon, and when we went to the store later, we saw them for sale at $2.99 for 1/2 pint. Now by my calculations that is $6 a pint, and considering that there are eight pints to a gallon, we really made out like bandits! Some we sent home with family, some we made into blueberry muffins, some we fed to Jane, but the majority we froze.

Then this morning I scooped up ten half gallons of milk about to expire, at such a terrific price that I couldn't resist even though I knew I had no room in the freezer. So when we got home I unloaded the freezer, rearranged everything, condensed, sorted, and curtailed, and ended up cramming most of it back in, giving up on a few non-essentials like bread crusts. Bread crusts are all very well and good, but would I hang on to bread crusts over milk? There was plenty of room in my freezer once I gave up the bulky junk! It seemed like a perfect object lesson to me about how we cling stubbornly to the dross and pass up the really good stuff in life.

Maybe in five years you'll catch me wearing a pair of gauchos...

A few of my fashion backtracks, to wit:

-When they first came out, I decried 3/4-length sleeves as looking unfinished and silly, causing the wearer to look like a gawky adolescent who had outgrown her clothes. But I finally tried some, and decided I like the look, and now I have several such sweaters of my own.

-When they came around again (because apparently they lived another life as pedal-pushers in the time of Jackie O.) I thought the same thing about capris. If you can't afford to buy pants that go all the way down to the floor, then just stick with a short skirt!! But I finally started wearing them, and found them nice, light, comfortable summer wear, and of immeasurable value to tall people who want to be vague about hemlines.

-When they first made an appearance, I poked fun at chunky square-toed shoes, because they looked so trendy and apt to disappear in a season or two. But they didn't, and I gave them a cautious try, and decided that they were very comfortable and far more sensible than the pointy-toed formal shoe look, which required only a jingle bell and a matching jester hat to complete the look.

So now I'm thinking that: 1) gauchos are just a throwback to culottes, which were hideous enough in denim and corduroy but are pretty bad in this modern knit, clingy and snug in the wrong way; 2) skirts should be skirts; shorts should be shorts; any unhappy compromise is bound to please neither; 3) but they look so silly!

Never say never is, however, my new motto, so I can't say I'll never wear them.

Things that annoy me

-Reading non-words in print, such as 'instinctual' or 'administrate.'

-Hearing Ann Coulter described as 'beautiful,' 'blonde,' or 'rail-thin.' In my opinion, she's not that gorgeous, she probably dyes her hair, and she's so thin because she smokes a lot. Now I really shouldn't carp about her looks, because I truly do agree with most of what she says, but I'm so annoyed by the simpering sneer she adopts whenever posing for a photograph.

-Invisible spiders (Indian name: Spiders-Who-Hide-Under-Leaves) on bean plants that jump out at me whenever I'm not wearing gloves.

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I could think of on short notice. Ugh. Back to proof-reading sappy moralistic children's books.

Not that it's any of my business...

The only thing about the Jolie-Pitt baby hoopla that interested me enough to irritate me was the statement by their apparently famous and accomplished doctor (so hand-picked that they flew him all the way to Africa to deliver their child), something along the lines of: 'The baby was delivered by a planned cesarean due to a breech presentation.'

Good grief! You'd think these people would be rich enough to afford a skilled enough medical team that could handle delivering a breech baby naturally! To be sure, many in the medical establishment believe that a breech presentation means an automatic cesarean, but many other skilled and experienced doctors and midwives are adept at working with the mother to turn the baby, and even - as long as there is no danger, such as risk of the cord being wrapped around the baby's neck, which should be evident from a quick sonogram - delivering a breech baby.

But then, we weren't really counting on celebrities to set good examples and be sterling role models for the rest of us, were we?