accidental shwwwooooozhing vs. a dead tree

q. shenaynay

Spuddy Buddy usually pays good attention during school, and I can count on him to give me solid narrations after readings. But this morning, as I was reading Tree in the Trail to him, I could tell he was beginning to glaze over. No, no. I stopped and closed the book.

"Well, buddy boy, you're not exercising control over your powers of attention right now, are you?" I asked.

"Ummm..." He paused to calculate his best angle. But he knows full well that The Mamadah Hath Power To Demand A Narration On The Spot. So, no way out. He turned a little pink. I was expecting him to say he was thinking about lunch or baseball. I was not expecting this:

" I was accidentally trying to get my brain out of Denver."

Denver. Oooookaaaay. Spuddy has never been to Denver, nor has he ever shown any interest in Denver other than it being the home of a sports team or three.

"Denver?"

"Yes, ma'am. Accidentally. Rockies. With snow on top. In Denver."

Seeing as how we don't have much occasion to discuss the attributes of Denver around our house, I was at least pleased to note that Spuddy was passingly aware that it's located in the Rockies. Bonus. But still.

"Sweetie, we are reading about a tree on the dusty Santa Fe trail. In New Mexico. So why is your brain up in the Rockies in Denver, Colorado?"

(I should probably helpfully interject a shameful confession here, before you continue, that Spuddy, yes Spuddy, son of a veteran Charlotte Mason devotee, spends a wee bit too much time reading Calvin & Hobbes books. Now you know. Please proceed accordingly.)

Spuddy's eyes grew large and wild and he began speaking in his mega-enthused superboy voice:

"Well, I was sort of accidentally imagining that I was mining inside a humongous mountain outside Denver and I accidentally poked a hole all the way through the top of the mountain, and all the snow on top of the mountain came swooshing down on top of my head and then the cold, cold snow crashing down on top of me just -- shwwwwwwooooozh!!! -- slid me all the way back down the mining passage I had dug and I whooshed all the way down to the place where I had started outside the mountain and then I kept whooshing down all the way back into town. And so then I just went back to the hotel where we were staying. Because I was pretty cold."

Oh. Right. Okay.

So tell me, friends. Do ya think there's any chance of getting a boy who's just whooshed shwwwwwooooozh! from the top of the inside of the Rockies all the way out and down to a Denver hotel to return to a tale about a dead tree on a dusty trail?

I will try again tomorrow. Yes. I will. Ten years to go with this one. Lord, help me.

hot mama, indeed.

okay, you asked for it, and she posted it. head on over to rachel tsunami's family blog for her bodacious chili recipe.

preach it, papa.

"The gospel is to comfort the afflicted,
but it's also to afflict the comfortable."

~ Sonny Pyles

Six Janes for Christmas

It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone, whether in possession of a great fortune or not, is in need of an attractive set of Jane Austen's novels. So it's quite felicitous that Oxford University Press has included the beautiful Oxford Illustrated 6 volume set of Jane Austen's novels in their annual fall sale. These are regularly priced at $150, but they have them on sale for... are you sitting down?...

$40.

Hello? Six Oxford hardbacks with dustjackets for $40. And these have the original, classic illustrations from the first editions.* We have this set, purchased during an earlier sale, and they are quite fine.

Sale ends November 1st, so tarry not, gentle readers. Surely someone you know needs a set?

*I edited this out, because I looked at our set again and realized I had confused our Oxfords with other JA copies stashed around our house (umm, it's a little embarrassing how many Janes we have amassed over the years, here and there). At any rate, the Oxfords do not have those illustrations, but they are quite lovely as is... and at the price are cheaper than the paperback editions at B&N.

sometimes I forget to breathe.

St. Crispin Day

Great Scot

If you can listen to this, and not get a lump in your throat, you have no soul.

St. Crispin's Day Speech

It is always important to remember that there are things in this world that are noble and worthy of any sacrifice.

Happy Birthdayums!

happy birthday to my dear friend Emily

who is now 15.

woot!







"a very happy birthday with love from pooh."
it takes a great deal of pencil to say a long thing like that.

Alchemy

When you read this, I want you to feel the branch beneath you
Swell like a ship on a great grey mane of wind.
I want you to feel your blood pound even in your teeth
As you run and run and run bareheaded in the cold winter sunlight.
I want your hands to understand cool silky streams,
Your fingers to know the keys beneath them
As sonatas glisten and stumble past
And Mozart turns over in his grave.

When you read this, I want your heart to burst
For scarlet and purple,
Wuthering Heights by flashlight,
Sun poured sideways in the grass,
The touch of a beloved hand.

When you read this, have compassion on a poet's ineffectual alchemy,
For Life transmuted to these lines of print retains but
The faintest flicker of a pulse; still,

When you read this,
I want you to feel with me,
See with me,
Run in the wind with me.

When you read this,
I want you to know.

reciprocity and the snoopy dance

~all of us


hey, there. thanks for popping in.

now, we figure you're probably popping in for a little beehive fix because we update fairly often and, well, you sorta kinda like that in a blog.

we understand that sort of thing.

we probably come to your blog, too. and, like you, we sorta kinda like it when we hit that little button in our blog favorites folder and your blog comes up on the screen and whoopee happylujah yay yay yay you yes you have posted something new. instant gratification! bonus! yay! you're still out there, somewhere in the great big world, kicking and breathing! yaaaay. happy happy joy joy.

oh yes, some of you delightful creatures just make us do the happy blog dance. joy joy joy. oh how we like you. you are so cute.

::pauses to demonstrate the happy blog dance::
::which greatly resembles the snoopy dance::
::you know, like on peanuts::
::dance, dance, dance::
::wheeeee::


but some of you (fade in the woeful bad sad music here) leave us bereft... crestfallen... and forlorn. it's not that we don't love you, you understand... but love is not our subject.

to review:
updated blogs = good
outdated blogs =bad

yep. some of our nearest and dearest need to update their blogs. oh, yes, they do. you know who you are. so do we.

::ahem::

interminable serpents of skank.

Right again, Pops.

"You can't walk through a briar patch
without picking up a few briars."

~ Sonny Pyles

spuddy the superhero

And now for another episode of the diverting conversations of Spuddy Buddy and the Mamadah (me).

The scene is important here: picture me standing in the middle of (no kidding) more than a dozen loads of radically filthy laundry from the camping trip, wherein it rained non-stop for about 24 hours, rendering all that laundry damp, muddy and reeking of souring campfire smoke, not to mention that said piles mountains were making the living room and kitchen floor practically impassable, not to mention all the bins of food paraphenalia that needed washing and putting away, nor the muddy camper outside that we hadn't even begun to clean up, nor the fact that I hadn't washed my hair in three four okay, fine, almost five days. Alrighty then, got the picture?

Enter Spuddy:
"Mamadah, will you please make me a superhero cape real soon?"

Yes, son.

"Oh, cool! I want it red with orange inside, and the hood should be green. You're the best Mamadah ever! No, wait -- the whole thing green but with a red inside part. Can you make it tomorrow? Please?? Hey, I'm hungry. I want the cape to come down to here. Can you? Whoa, I'm really hungry! Wait, did I say that right? -- red on the outside and green on the inside. Got that? Can I have some food?"

Yes, son. Yes, son.

"You know what my superhero name is going to be?"

No, son.

"Exhausting Man!"

::choke::

"And this is the sound I make right before I exhaust people!" (here he does a hypermega mondotronic superhero move that remotely resembles a prize fighter who's had too much Red Bull): "plaaaabthtrrrrrrrrgraaaaackerrraaaaaaaaa!!!!"


Yes, son.


(So somebody tell me why we can't have Laundry Man or Cleaning Man or even I'll Make My Own Snack Man? I ask you. Why can't they be superheroes? They sound like superheroes to me. And I would make them all the capes they wanted. Yes, I would. plaaaabthhtrrrrrrrgraaaaackerraaaaaa, indeed.)

because we just felt like it.

Over the past several days, deep in the Arkansas woods, various and sundry people have had the oddish experience of coming upon an exuberant commune of twenty very happy campers singing old hymns, Sacred Harp tunes, and now and then a folk song just for variety... around a campfire, in a canyon, along hiking trails, in the crags of staggering ancient rock formations, in pouring down rain... umm, maybe even once or twice in a camp bath house that was felicitously discovered to have chill-bumpish acoustics.

But that is not the strange part. Not to me, at least. The strange part is that it would seem, judging from some of the comments we got, that singing just to be singing has somehow become an unexpected sort of thing nowadays. Now don't get me wrong, these folks were jolly about it, even pleasantly enthused. But several of them said things like "your group is really getting in some good practice" or "we heard you all practicing last night around your fire."

Practice? Who drags twenty people out in the deep wilderness to practice? Who hikes a couple of miles down into a canyon to practice? Huh. And all that time we thought we were just singing. Silly us.

We know those friendly folks meant well, and we appreciate the encouragement, but there's an important point here about the nature of singing sacred songs that we earnestly desire to reconfirm for the general goodwill of the human race:

There is no practice. There is only praise.

(Hat tip to Yoda.)

Really, it makes me feel rather melancholy for the state of postmodern humanity that people nowadays would tend to assume that anyone singing in a non-performance setting must be practicing for a performance later. I mean, why bother to sing if you aren't performing? Sort of reminds me of the sad story I was told recently about a girl on a praise team of a local congregation who refused to sing one Sunday morning because the sound dude didn't hook up her favorite mic. Please. Do you reckon God cares about your silly mic? He can hear you just fine without it, if you'd just forget about performing and sing for Him.

Don't people just sing anymore? Or do we only perform?

Does God want us to perform, or to praise?

Here in my favorite universe, singing -- and particularly singing praise to the Lord -- doesn't require a microphone nor an audience nor even an event. It just is. And it's good when you're all alone, but even better with friends. And it is really sweet with friends in the woods around a campfire. (Oooooh, and even better with those same friends in a deep rock canyon with a waterfall. WOW.)

I think more people should try it. Wouldn't you just love to live in a world where now and then you could walk up on happy people singing hymns and folk songs just for the all-fired fun of it? What a delightful world that would be.

At our neighborhood Starbucks, late at night, a small group of Nigerians sometimes sings their native folk songs in a back corner. They sing so quietly you can barely hear them, but the little bits you catch are exquisitely beautiful. They lean in and look one another in the eye, and they look like they just couldn't bear not to sing something comforting and familiar from their far away home while they are all there together. That's exactly how I feel about singing hymns with my loved ones. Sometimes I wish those Nigerian folks would just cut loose for once and let us really hear them while we sip our mochas. Wow. Would that be cool, or what? But they probably assume most of us would much prefer the unnaturally polished pop blaring through the speakers.

You probably wouldn't have to go too many generations back to find your ancestors belting out folk songs in pubs, mills, gardens and fields all over Europe and Great Britain. I remember when I was a little girl going to the grocery store with my grandfather (born in 1894 and raised among relatives who remembered the Civil War era). He sang while strolling up and down the aisles like it was the most normal thing in the world. My grandmother sang while she cooked, while she rocked babies, while she did laundry. I bet yours did, too.

So are you going to sing to your grandchildren, or are you going to stick earbuds in their ears and call it good?

What's wrong with all of us? When did the human race develop the mutant stuffy gene? You know what I think? I think the advent of recording studios marked the death knell for spontaneous singing. Heavily edited professional recordings have got us all way messed up in the head with perfection garbage. Well, forget about that. Perfection is unnatural. Read that again, please. And expecting it of yourself or anyone else is just flat unhealthy. Nobody's editing you. And who cares if they were anyway? That would be their problem.

To loosely paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, anything worth singing is worth singing poorly.

Lots of fine folk songs and luminous hymns are gasping for breath out there. Don't you feel sorry enough for them to lend them some air? I bet you have at least one grandparent who did.

Those sacred songs we were singing out there in the woods last weekend are just too beautiful to go left unsung. How could we not sing them? Who will sing them if we don't? And what better thing to do out in the woods around a fire with twenty crazy people who feel the same way -- who all know we will feel so much better about being here in this strange place called time if we sing some songs from our real home together?

So sing something. You'll feel better.


Sweet Prospect

Lo, what an entertaining sight
Those friendly brethren prove!
Whose cheerful hearts in bands unite
Of harmony and love.
When streams of bliss from Christ, the Spring,
Descend to every soul,
And heav'nly peace, with balmy wing
Shades and bedews the whole.

'Tis like the oil divinely sweet
On Aaron's rev'rent head.
Those trickling drops perfumed his feet,
And o'er his garments spread.
'Tis pleasant as the morning dews
That fall on Zion's hill,
Where God His mildest glory shows,
And makes His grace distil.

Chili Apologetics

q. shenaynay

1. It's raining today.
2. It's October.
3. My blasted fall allergies are in full attack.
4. We're going camping.

Any one of these factors occurring in isolation could result in a monster pot of killer chili materializing on our stove, but when all four factors occur at once, it's as inevitable as my Daddy fiddling with his handkerchief while he preaches. Twelve quarts of the fiery stuff are now percolating piquantly toward purgatory on my front burner. Ahhhhh.

It occurs to me, as I go through the ritual of shaking the mason jar wherein corn masa magically dissolves and thickens in warm water, that we will be sharing this batch with friends who may not be fully aware that chili has philosophical and spiritual implications in our household. Perhaps it would be best if I offered a few words of explanation, a sort of apologetic for chili, if you will. Okay, then... we'll start with the basics.

::clears throat::


I am a Texas girl. I make Texas chili.

I do not apologize for this, not even to non-Texans (bless their hearts) who wave their spoons in mute surrender and curiously change color. Should you appear to stop breathing, I can do nothing better for you than suggest more sour cream. Just so you'll know.

I believe that chili should be crafted toward the purpose of reminding you that you are fully alive.

I believe the Creator put the endorphin-releasing substance called capsaicin in chile peppers because He knew Granny Eve was going to bite that apple and that thereafter stuff was going be tough for all of us down here and we were all going to be in perpetual need our having our fallen endorphins all fired up. To review: Sinners Need Chili.

I believe the practice of sharing chili is therefore devotional and merciful in nature, a holy act of encouraging one's downtrodden brethren. (I know this to be true because so many of my loved ones have experienced quasi-pentecostal episodes whilst partaking of my chili.)

I believe that pot of polite, soupy stuff which was served to me in Nashville once was NOT chili regardless of the fact that the dear saint who served it to me called it that repeatedly; however misguided, I still give her devotional props for having her heart in the right place.

I believe if all American schoolchildren were properly fed real Texas chili, those taste bud diagrams in their textbooks would be wholly unnecessary because they would know full well the precise location of every taste bud they have.

I believe Texas historians will someday discover that the battle of the Alamo and most of the infamous range wars were sparked by recipe spats between burly wild wild west men at frontier chili cookoffs.

I believe if world leaders would seriously pursue the art of making Texas chili, they would no longer feel driven to tinker around with nuclear explosions.

I believe I need to end this post and go contemplate the providential mercies of capsaicin and endorphins and knowing for sure that you're alive. In short, the love of God expressed in a bowl of frito pie.

so everyone give me suggestions as to what to call this post pleaseums

i can't think of a name. ;)


anyway.

please visit this blog in the near future:

the heart of flame therein

i'm probably just going to be posting my pictures there, unless i decide to startle you all by not.


thankums!

she's so beatrical

q. shenaynay

And now for a word about Beatrice.

There are no entirely normal days with Beatrice. You never know what's coming next, but you do know that it is coming. She says what you weren't expecting to hear. She takes photos of things you looked right at but didn't see.

Now, she lives under the delusion that she's average and even normal. We laugh indulgently at her for this, but only when she is distracted. Just imagine a magician who is oblivious to the fact that average civilians don't pull rabbits out of tophats.

If you're not riding her roller coaster, you'll miss all of it -- she's quiet about it, slippery and quick. And sometimes she's maddeningly obtuse and leaves you feeling slightly out of focus... and then six hours later you get it. This is one of my favorite things about Beatrice, actually. She's like a living riddle.

Fa and I were feeling particularly bemused by her beatricality tonight, in a fond and beholden sort of way, so for the past hour, we have kept a little log of whatever happened to come forth from the mouth of Beatrice... here, then, is a random sampling, and I do mean random:

(oh, and please imagine all of the following being said with a quirky, dry flourish)

"Some Middle Eastern dude. Or maybe somebody named Paul. But my water's boiling."
(when asked to cite the source of a quote)

"I would look washed out. Like a ...squash."
(discussing personal appearance issues with Fa)

"UGH! I just learned you can't kick the ball in a regular football play. So whyyy do they call it football?"
(coming in from the back yard with Spuddy, quite put out.)

"Ack! MAMADAH! The pasta! It's heathen! It rages! It imagines a vain thing!"
(trying to prepare dinner; see Psalm 2)

"Caitlin and Dan are rather like the puritan woman and her basket..."
(she neglected to finish this thought, which is probably for the best)

Walking in with all her massive hair covering her face and holding her head in both hands, looking rather like a rasta muppet:
"OWWWW. Newton has turned against me."
(seems she had been head banging to Rascal Flatts and found it caused gravitational scalp pain)

and as the hour came to a close... I said to Great Scot, in response to him coming up with a brilliant plan for the upcoming weekend, "Oh, you're gooood!" Whereupon Beatrice quickly retorted, "Actually, you're innately wicked, but you did come up with a swell idea."

Season Turns

In that world you knew it was fall
When the first crisp scarlet leaf unmoored from the tree.
The first day of school was always cool and clear
New-sweater weather.

This world isn't so neet neat. Leaves fall
More or less all year round and they're
Mostly brown anyway. The first day of
School was 84 degrees and murky to boot.

disillusionment you say? bah.

I like this world pretty well, actually.

it's messy and stories don't stop at The End and you have to do more than shriek when you see a cockroach in the kitchen cabinet and when you want to Find Out More you can't just Check It Out at your Local Library and broken limbs just aren't that glamorous and gallons of milk don't appear in the refrigerator magically right on schedule and North is only Up if you're holding the map the right way and come to find out the Good Guys are really pretty indifferent most of the time.

But

I've got a life to live,
And you love me.

treadmill rock

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

Do thou go forth without delay to my cousin Dawn's blog and watch this. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Just go.

Really, you need to see this.

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

sorry, my phone is just not available for that. is yours?

q. shenaynay

I don't usually put stuff like this on our blog, but if you could only get one small glimpse of my face when I answer the phone to a telemarketer daring to interrupt my family's dinner or school or simply fouling the fine art of conversation, you would understand why I am breaking from the norm for this. I turn into Brunhilde the Horror of Wagnerian Proportions over nuisance calls.


Cell phone numbers are currently being released to telemarketing companies, meaning the scourges of society will now start harassing us on our cellphones and not just in the peace and sanctity of our homes. You will, of course, be charged for these calls.

To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone:
888-382-1222.
It is the government's National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time. It blocks your number for five years.

You must call from the cell phone number you are wanting to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.

HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS
OR GO TO: www.donotcall.gov

more good stuff

"The crosses which we make for ourselves by a restless anxiety as to the future are not crosses which come from God. We show want of faith in Him by our false wisdom, wishing to forestall His arrangements, and struggling to supplement His Providence by our own providence. The future is not yet ours; perhaps it never will be. If it comes, it may come wholly different from what we have foreseen. Let us shut our eyes, then, to that which God hides from us, and keeps in reserve in the treasures of His deep counsels. Let us worship without seeing; let us be silent; let us abide in peace."

~ Fenelon

the power to descend

q. shenaynay

I always find the devotionals for the first three days of October in Oswald Chambers' My Utmost For His Highest to be particularly powerful and timely. Seems like every year, about the time they roll around again, I'm needing to read them again. Here is the first of the three.

The Sphere of Exaltation

"Jesus leadeth them up into a high mountain apart by themselves." Mark 9:2

We have all had times on the mount, when we have seen things from God's standpoint and have wanted to stay there; but God will never allow us to stay there. The test of our spiritual life is the power to descend; if we have power to rise only, something is wrong. It is a great thing to be on the mount with God, but a man only gets there in order that afterwards he may get down among the devil-possessed and lift them up. We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay on the mount. The times of exaltation are exceptional, they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware lest our spiritual selfishness wants to make them the only time.

We are apt to think that everything that happens is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching -- into character. The mount is not meant to teach us anything, it is meant to make us something. There is a great snare in asking - What is the use of it? In spiritual matters we can never calculate on that line. The moments on the mountain tops are rare moments, and they are meant for something in God's purpose.