Happy (Belated) Birthday, InsomniMom!

I can't believe I missed the anniversary of my own blog's birth.

Two years ago, on April 19, 2007, I wrote my first post. Thousands of posts later, it's still just as fun as it was then.

RECIPE: Myla's Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Myla, God rest her soul, was my dear friend Beth's mother, an indefatiguable gardener, a fierce card player, an unflappable midnight sandwich maker. She was the favorite of all my friends' moms, just for being so funny and so easy to talk to.

She was also an amazing cook with a huge repertoire of recipes of maximum deliciousity. A few weeks back, I wanted to make a sour cream coffee cake like Myla's, and I knew I had her recipe. It was written, however, on an old-fashioned 3x5 recipe card and stuck down out of order in my old-fashioned Longaberger recipe basket. Honestly, I just didn't feel like digging around for it, so I found a recipe for sour cream coffee cake on a website I trust. It sounded a lot like Myla's, until I got to the part where I had to put the batter in the tube pan. Then I knew something was very wrong, and later on when I served the cake, I was proved right. It wasn't even close to Myla's feather-light cake and I was gruesomely disappointed.

So today, I sat down with that recipe basket and dug through it until I found that 3x5 card, written out in Myla's own handwriting for me about twenty years ago -- I asked for it one night after Beth, Julie, Hoot and I stopped by late for a bite to eat and a game of Hearts. Myla served us coffee cake and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and I was hooked.

The recipe is so old that the writing is almost obliterated, so I think I'd better copy it down while it's still legible. I'll think of Myla every time I make it.

MYLA'S SOUR CREAM COFFEE CAKE

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups sifted flour (the sifting is very important)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup sour cream

"RIBBON" IN THE MIDDLE

1/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350^o

In a medium mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, beating well until combined; add the vanilla. Carefully sift in the dry ingredients, stirring them with a nice, slow spoon until dry ingredients are moistened. Tenderly fold in the sour cream. BE GENTLE, goshdarnit!

In a small bowl, prepare the "ribbon" topping.

In a 10" tube pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray, carefully spoon half the batter. (I love writing sentences in the passive voice.) Gently spread the "ribbon" over all the batter, and then spoon in the rest of the batter. SLOWLY, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!

Place tube pan in oven with the tender care you'd use to place a sleeping baby into a bassinette and bake for 55-60 minutes. When you remove it from the oven, allow the cake to cool completely before trying to remove it from the pan. You might want to use a flat spatula to gently go around the inner edges of the tube pan to help unstick the cake, especially if your tube pan is fluted; it seems that no matter how much non-stick spray you use, this cake will still try to break your heart by clinging to the pan. I know this from painful experience.

Turn the cake out onto a pretty cake plate and sift some powdered sugar over it -- such a pretty cake! This is especially enjoyable with some hot Earl Grey or some cold iced tea. I think the flavor is too delicate for coffee, myself.

Watch your mirrors

Meelyn took her driver's test on Thursday, the one where you have to get in a car with an instructor and drive all over town, pretending that you're not nervous and that you meant to turn on the windshield wipers when you were nervously groping for the turn signal. Because that windshield? It looked dirty all of a sudden.

She passed the written test last summer in driver's ed class, so next month we can go to get her driver's license and all she'll have to do is make sure her hair and makeup look good and be very, very ready when the BMV clerk snaps the picture. Those clerks, bored with taking photograph after photograph every single day, don't care if your picture looks more like a mug shot than your driver's license photo. The last time I got my license photo taken, the clerk barely gave me enough time to stand in front of the curtain before she clicked; consequently, I, not the most photogenic person to begin with, have a wide-eyed, hunted look on my face and a weird piece of hair right in the middle of my forehead. All I need is a sign with numbers on it to hold under my chin to make my mother proud.

So! Meelyn will have her license in a couple of weeks, and a few weeks after that, Kieren will be starting driver's ed; he'll be getting his license in October. Aisling will have driver's ed next summer. Mercy gracious sakes, how these chilren has growed!

The essence of herbality

Have you ever noticed that it is expensive to buy herbs at the store? The dried ones are bad enough, but the fresh ones, which tend to look very limp and dispirited in their little plastic clamshell cases, ought to have a gimlet-eyed banker sitting at a desk beside their display, waiting with a stack of personal loan applications at his elbow. I never could find fresh tarragon in my city last year, but when I was asked to pay $5.99 for two depressed slivers of sage, I rebelled.

My rebellion took the shape of a little herb garden, which I started indoors about four weeks ago. I bought six different packets of seeds -- basil, mint, tarragon, parsley, sage and rosemary -- which cost me two dollars less than that "fresh" sage would have, and a little kit for $6.00 that included eight biodegradable pots and these clever little compressed discs of soil from Lowe's.

Fine! I thought, tossing my head. The grocer wants to charge me an arm and a leg for that crummy ol' sage and he doesn't even have any tarragon for my Julia chicken so I'll just grow it myself!

I planted all the little seeds with no help from Meelyn and Aisling, whom I predict will be the first in line when I start dishing up food made from our own fresh, organic herbs. They were very bored by the whole thing and listened with expression of amused tolerance as I declaimed about God's green growing earth and the essential goodness of humankind tilling the nurturing soil.

"Mom, aren't you just going to add water to those little dirt Frisbees?" asked Meelyn. "I mean, there's strictly not going to be any tilling, is there?"

"I plan to dig little holes in the dirt Fris-...I mean, the expanded potting soil disks with my finger in order to plant the seeds," I said smartly. "I don't know if that counts, in your book, as equal to getting a hoe and chopping clods of earth out on the back forty, or even acquiring a Roto-Tiller from Mitchell's Machine and Sunbed Rental, but my heart is just as involved."

"Oh, my book, your heart," she said airily. "Hey, don't you usually kill the plants that are part of God's green, growing earth?"

"It's like your maiden name was Rappaccini or something," giggled Aisling, who had been sitting on the couch and looking over my little seed packets and then glancing at me with an expression that combined incredulity and barely restrained mirth.

"Oh, ha ha," I said and snatched the seed packets out of her hands, took my planting kit, and went out to the kitchen with my head held high.

So! I am terribly pleased to tell you that so far, all of my little precious babylamb seedlings have sprouted and they are growing with vigor in their pots, despite the grocer and my daughters and my several friends and family members who came to Meelyn's party on Sunday, saw the seedlings basking in the warm sunshine, and made a variety of smarty-pants remarks about the eventual fate of the herbs. None of their predictions had anything to do with iced tea with mint, or basil-tomato-and mozzarella salad later on this summer, or Julia chicken roasted with sage, or pork roast in the slow-cooker with rosemary sprigs, I'm afraid.

I must remain resolute and keep my inner Beatrice firmly in check.

Feast Day! St. Louis de Montfort

Today is the memorial day of St. Louis de Montfort, a Brittany-born seventeenth century French priest whom we know around here as "St. Louey" because we are Hoosiers and funny things happen to furrin* words when you intone each and every syllable through your nose.

Anyway, St. Louis (Lou-WEE, please) is one of my favorite new saints because of this most amazing book I've been reading. I've had it forever, knowing that it was an important book, but had never yet managed to crack it open because, well, Survivor was on. Now you know the truth, but let me just point out that you can't say anything to me that I haven't already said to myself. Twice.

The book is The Secret of the Rosary and I think it is probably one of the best books of Christian philosophy and prayer I have ever read. Not that I'm any kind of scholar or anything, but I did read my way into the Catholic Church, so I do have some experience in this area. I read books that talked about the rosary in glowing terms of how it can lead to a greater depth of relationship with Jesus and advancement in the spiritual life and I read books that dismissed it as nothing short of the blasphemous, scandalous, idolatrous vain repetitions of godless heathens.

As I contemplated these two opinions, I couldn't help but notice that the authors who disparaged the rosary sounded like they wouldn't recognize one if you pressed it into their sweaty paws and murmured, "Prayer beads." And they certainly didn't seem willing at all to recognize that the rosary is a means of meditating on the great events of the life of Jesus as experienced by the Holy Mother.

If there's anything I can't stand, it's the injust spouting of misinformation and half-truths by the ignorant, so the rosary won another devoted follower.

My family's sixth anniversary of becoming Catholic happened at Easter Vigil, so in all these years, I don't know what has taken me so long to get around to St. Louis de Montfort's famous book, but now that I've started reading it, I gobble it up section by section, ponder what I've read, and then go back to read it again. The Secret of the Rosary is a very slim little book, but it is so rich, so full of life, that you can't just sit down with some popcorn and treat it as you would something by John Grisham.

The thing I like best about it is that it's both practical and mystical, just like the Catholic Church. St. Louis writes in the flowery style common to his era, and while that seemed a bit quaint and sweetly funny at first, it didn't take me long to perceive the fervent personality of this great saint and scholar shining through -- you almost feel that St. Louis could be sitting across the table from you at Starbucks, personally encouraging you to dig deeper in your prayer life. It is an informative, inspiring and completely lovely little book written by a beautiful priest, teacher and theologian.

St. Louis de Montfort died two hundred ninety-three years ago today of natural causes in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sovre, France. One of the huge parishes in Fishers is dedicated to him. Here's a really nice article about him from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Happy feast day, St. Louis de Montfort. Please pray for us all.




*Hoosier pronunciation of the word "foreign."

Confirmation party

Meelyn's Confirmation party was today and it was really just lovely. Not because of us, but because of all the sweet friends and family who came to celebrate this really special occasion.

Here's who came to the party:

Uncle Graham and Carol drove up all the way from Madison. Carol brought Cokes and a veggie pizza (one of my favorite party treats) and a helpful attitude, although she did give me some grief for nearly pouring an entire dipper of punch on her hand and then tried to give me back her used Joyful Confirmation napkin to use next year at Aisling's party (see post below, final paragraph.) We bonded over melting a stubborn lump of orange juice concentrate in the microwave and later got sugar water in our hair when I accidentally splashed us by dropping the sherbet mold into the punch bowl with an excess of enthusiasm.

Pat, Angie and the kids came and all my friends finally got a chance to actually see the people I write about so frequently on this blog. Kieren was deeply admired by the several teen girls who were here, and for a quiet guy, I have to say he outdid himself in being both charming and entertaining, if the giggles I kept hearing were any indication. Dayden allowed Michelle and Al's boys to play with his bag full o' lizards that he keeps here. Kiersi peered between the balusters from her place on the stairs, looking like a little tiny convict and earnestly telling everyone who came through the front door that she was three.

Bob and Bridget came with Emily, clear from the west side of Indianapolis, which was so good of them. Emily is a good friend of the girls' and Bob and Bridget are the people Meelyn and Aisling would like to go live with, whether or not anything bad -- God forbid -- happens to me and my husband. "They have better food there," the girls tell us earnestly. "And they're very nice and never yell. And we get to play with the video camera and take lots of movies of us singing and no one tells us to turn it down." Bob and Bridget, if you're feeling lonely over there now that one little chickie has flown the nest and another one's in college and you've only got THREE LEFT AT HOME, please give us a call and we'll make arrangements for two teenagers to come for an extended stay chez vous.

Mark and Kayte came over from Carmel way on a Sunday jaunt. This was the first time that Kayte's ever been to my house, although we've been friends for a number of years. Isn't that odd? The explanation is, of course, that she is consumed by Matt's swimming schedule, which is no joke, considering that he is nationally ranked and swims year 'round. Mark, of course, is a busy lawyer who does some traveling in the course of his work, so it was a great pleasure to see their smiling faces. It meant so much that they took the time away from their busy schedules to drive so far.

Al, Michelle and the gang came too. As I said above, their boys were amazed by Dayden's generosity in the sharing of the bag full o' lizards (he is a very nice boy.) Kayte and I teased Michelle about her high-pitched refusal to eat another cold sandwich on our way home from Canada last fall. As Mee's sponsor, Michelle gave Meelyn a very beautiful and generous gift that makes me get kind of teary every time I think of it. Sweet, sweet friend!

The following people were invited but couldn't come and were missed:

Susie and Doug and Aunt Peg were invited, but Aunt Peg had a nasty fall and hurt herself rather badly a couple of weeks ago and is energetically undergoing convalescent rehabilitation, as is her wont. Doug had a business trip and Susie has been too involved with Aunt Peg to stray too far from home, so she sent a huge fruit bouquet from Edible Arrangements^® which was sooo cute,
telling me that she wanted to send a fruit basket because she knew I'd think of her every time I looked at it, hahaha.

Katie, Gary and Beck were invited, but couldn't come because it would necessitate Beck's missing her final orchestra practice before the big spring concert -- it seems that conductors and fellow musicians get a bit tetchy when this happens. Since Katie is one of my dearest friends and Beck is one of the girls' dearest friends and we all like Gary (even though he wouldn't stop the van in Stratford to let me hug a swan), it seemed a little empty without them.

Nanny and Poppy were invited, but of course couldn't come because they just flew in last week for Meelyn's sixteenth birthday. But we wanted them to know that they were wanted. I can hardly wait until they come home. Less than a month now!

There were a few other invitees who couldn't come, and I seriously don't know where we'd have put them if they did. I might have had to set up a table and chairs in the attic. But I know I'll pretty much invite the same people next year for Aisling's party, and perhaps a few more, now that I know I can do it.

As I thought things over in the aftermath, contemplating the leftovers, I realized that we served some very weird food and I'm a tiny bit mortified. My whole concept was to have things that people wouldn't need utensils for (except the cake) because I wasn't totally sure that we'd have enough forks without having to do a sinkful of dishes somewhere along the line, which would have been inconvenient. We have eight silver dinner forks and eight silver salad forks, but only six stainless dinner forks and six stainless ditto. I could not see the sense in asking people to eat tiny meatballs with spoons, hence the finger food.

This is what we had to eat:

Little ham salad sandwich triangles -- These were very delicious, but I won't serve them at Aisling's reception next year because the ham salad was just too messy. We did take the precaution of "sealing" the bread with soft butter so that it didn't get nasty and wet, but the ham salad still oozed out the sides. Still, people liked them: out of that whole crowd, we were only left with sixteen triangles (we made forty), which we happily ate for dinner late that evening because? Is there anything more fun than eating leftover party food while curled up on the couch in your jammies after all the guests have gone home? Love!

Cheeseball and crackers -- This is Meelyn's favorite, the one with the cream cheese, garlic powder, finely chopped green onions and chipped beef. This was considered an elegant party food back in the early 1950s, but we are still workin' it here in the midwest. The crackers, of which I had a fabulous assortment, all came from the Dollar Tree. I know! I didn't think they'd be fresh either! But they were! From now on, Dollar Tree is my one-stop source for party plates, cups, gift bags, greeting cards, thank you notes and crackers for the cheeseball.

Veggie pizza -- Carol brought this, as I mentioned, and I was so glad, since the veggies did away with the need for a veggie tray, which always looks so lovely and healthy, but NO ONE EVER EATS ANY OF IT. We get left with baby carrots and celery sticks and cucumber slices and radish roses for DAYS, and since we don't want them either, they always seem to get thrown out, which makes me feel wretchedly, hideously guilty. Carol's veggie pizza had a crust made of Pillsbury croissant rolls, plus cream cheese with some kind of seasoning (a packet of ranch dressing mix?), plus the vegetables and it was so good. There were only about eight squares of that left over and the girls and I ate them for breakfast yesterday morning. They were still very fresh and the croissant crust wasn't soggy at all, so the cream cheese must provide the same kind of moisture barrier that the butter did in the ham salad sandwiches.

Fruit -- This came in the form of Susie's Edible Arrangement and it was so pretty, people didn't want to dig into it at first. It was constructed from canteloupe, honeydew, strawberries, grapes and pineapple, and once everyone decided that it was a food object and not a museum piece, it went very quickly. Delicious! I managed to grab a pineapple daisy before they were all gone.

Cheese, summer sausage and olive spears -- I could not resist the urge to cut up summer sausage and cheese into teeny chunks and spear them on those fancy toothpicks with ripe and green olives, mostly because I snort-laugh whenever I read about Una Alconbury's Turkey Curry Buffet in Helen Fielding's spectacularly hilarious take on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones' Diary. I am always enthralled by the thought of bourgeois cheese dice and pineapple chunks on toothpicks, with Bridget haranguing Mark Darcy to choose a tidbit off the tray. I just love it too much. Here's a little snippet from Bridget:

****************************************

The worst of it was that Una Alconbury and Mum wouldn't leave it at that. They kept making me walk around with trays of gherkins and glasses of cream sherry in a desperate bid to throw me into Mark Darcy's path yet again. In the end, they were so crazed with frustration that the second I got within four feet of him with the gherkins, Una threw herself the room like Will Carling and said, "Mark, you must take Bridget's telephone number before you go so that you can get in touch when you're in London."

"Can I tempt you with a gherkin?" I said, to show I had a genuine reason for coming over, which was quite definitely gherkin-based rather than phone-number-related.

"Thank you, no," he said, looking at me with some alarm.

"Sure? Stuffed olive?" I pressed on.

"No, really."

"Silverskin onion?" I encouraged. "Beetroot cube?"

"Thank you," he said desperately, taking an olive.

"Hope you enjoy it," I said triumphantly.*

***********************************************

There was one thing I didn't consider, though, and that was the uncanny and unfortunate resemblance that cubes of all-beef summer sausage have to horse meat. As the girls and I sat at the kitchen table threading little chunks of this and that on our frilly toothpicks that matched my serving dishes, I had some moments of misgiving, fighting hard to resist the urge to throw back my head and whinny. I also did not allow myself to gallop into the dining room to set the platter with our be-toothpick'ed treats on the table. We didn't have very many left over, though, so maybe not as many of our friends and family went to the cinema to see Seabiscuit as I thought. If I serve these again, I'll make sure to just cut each round of summer sausage into quarters and leave the edge (minus the rind, of course).

Keeping these things in mind -- the oozy sandwiches, the Secretariat-on-a-stick -- I think I may go in another direction for Aisling's reception next year.

Yesterday evening at Moms' Night Out, my friend Julie was telling us about this creamy chicken and rice casserole that she has made for every baptism and First Communion party she's ever held. She told us that it was easy to prepare and a real people-pleaser, at which time everyone started clamoring for the recipe. Julie emailed it to all of us this morning, and I have to say, it does sound good. I was thinking that maybe I could serve the casserole with little hot biscuits, or maybe even little homemade puff pastry croissants, some fruit salad and a relish tray -- perhaps with gherkins, silverskin onions and beetroot cubes -- plus cake.

I'll just need to buy some new forks.

*Bridget Jones' Diary, Copyright (c) 1996 Helen Fielding, All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Penguin Books, Penguin Putnam Incorporated, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

Confirmed!

Meelyn was confirmed last night with an enormous group of teenagers (and some adults as well) at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Carmel. It was a beautiful Mass. When the confirmands processed into the church and Mee passed by our pew, her beautiful face peaceful, her hands prayerfully folded, I couldn't help but think about the first time I held her, her baptism, that first confession ("I am sometimes mean to my sister, but she deserves it"), First Holy Communion. I sniffled loudly, trying to keep myself under control. I did not want to go forward to receive communion from the hands of the bishop looking like a panda.

"Are you crying?" Aisling whispered from the left. She's at this age when any sign of great emotion from me causes her to fall down to the floor, laughing.

"Not quite," I said with dignity.

"Is he?" she asked, pointing discreetly to her father, who was standing at my right.

I craned my neck around to get a look at his face. "Yep," I whispered back.

"You two are such adorable, funny old things," she giggled.

I'm happy to report that I resisted the urge to step on her foot, since we were in church and all.

The bishop, whose name is William Higi, preached a very fine homily about what the sacrament of confirmation is: It is the completion of the work that was begun in us at baptism, each step along the way since then (first reconciliation, first communion) bringing the confirmands to this specific point where they would stand before him, the assembled priests and the congregation and confirm before God that they intended to serve Him for the rest of their lives; that they believe the statement of faith that Christians have been professing for the past 2,000 years, the beautiful creed codified at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father, God from God,
Light from Light, true God from true God,
begotten, not made, one in being with the Father.
Through Him all things were made.

For us men and our salvation He came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the Virgin Mary
and became man.
For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered, died, and was buried.
On the third day He rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures:
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son, He is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.

+Amen+

The bishop told the confirmands that, although this sacrament was the last in the rites of initiation, this was by far not the end of their journey in Christ. In fact, it signaled a beginning: They are now considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be adults in their faith, with all the responsibilities that entails. "If you don't understand something about your Catholic faith," he said, "you are bound to learn about it. As a representative of Christ on earth, it is your responsibility to tell other people about the Catholic Church. It is your duty to help Catholics who have lost their way to find their way back home."

There was more along these lines and I found it very inspiring, especially when he said very seriously, "You have gone through a lot of preparation to get to this point, although we refer to it as 'formation.' In the process of your formation, you have learned why this sacrament is extremely important, and you also learned that you are making a profession and a promise before God. This is not a step to be undertaken lightly, because God holds us to our promises."

Excellent.

Michelle was Meelyn's sponsor and came in looking beautiful, as always, bearing a gorgeous sheaf of deep red flowers in her arms (she knows I know NOTHING about flora and fauna, so I know she'll forgive me for being clueless about what kind of flowers they actually were. I know pansies, roses, daffodils, tulips, petunias, geraniums and pretty. That's it. Oh, and daisies.) When they went forward together so that Meelyn could be anointed with the chrism oil, I thought I would just melt into a puddle.

Afterwards, there was a little reception in the (huge) narthex and church hall with all kind of punch and cookies and cheese cubes and little sandwiches. Meelyn and Michelle had their picture taken with both Fr. D and the bishop, who was being mobbed like a rock star. The bishop is a very tall man, and with his red miter and gold crozier, he towered over the two of them. I think the picture, which I had to take on the horizontal in order to get all of them into the frame, may well consist of Meelyn and Michelle's heads and the bishop from his pectoral cross on up. Oh, dear. This is the bishop's last round of presiding over confirmations in the diocese: He is 72 or 75 or whatever age means it's time to slow down and take it easy, and his letter requesting retirement has been accepted by Pope Benedict. That means that next year, Aisling will be confirmed by a new bishop!

Tomorrow, we're having a very small reception for Meelyn here at the house involving, well, punch and cookies and cheese cubes and little sandwiches. WE ALSO HAVE CAKE, so see how with it I am? We found a lovely die-cut banner that reads "Joyful Confirmation" on the cheap at the Party House, as well as some matching napkins. I am delighted that we'll be able to use the banner again next year, although the napkins, I'm afraid, will be unsalvageable.

Spring cleaning in my bedroom - oh, the horrors

Where, I ask you, do you put the tiny little cast that cradled Aisling's fractured arm the summer she was ten years old?

The answer is not "in the trash," just in case you wondered. I don't know why I can't throw it away. I only know that I still have the nickel Meelyn swallowed when she was three, stored in a specimen cup in the treasure box that dwells beneath my bed. And don't worry, you big sillies. That nickel didn't come out nature's way; it was removed from its precarious lodging place in her throat between her esophagus and her trachea by a crack team of ER doctors at Riley Hospital. Like I'd keep a poop-encrusted nickel...I ask you. Really.

I think I just need to squeeze that little cast in there too. Right now, it is sitting on my dresser, just where it has been sitting (hidden by a basket full of silk flowers) for about three years now.

Oh, my room is always so much fun to deal with! For some reason, instead of being the quiet, romantic retreat I always want it to be, it seems to be the depot for all the things people want to keep but have no place else to put, like a storm window with cracked glass; the impedimenta from three different 500 Festival Mini Marathons, all still stored in their plastic bags; scrapbooking stuff. A pile of clothing to donate to Goodwill. My grandmother's high school graduation photograph from 1937, which is still waiting to be hung on a wall even though we've lived here for four years. A baby blanket; a box of stuffed animals; some soccer cleats; a telephone book from 2004.

I fully expect a moving van to back up to our front door someday and for a man with a clipboard, chewing the end of a damp cigar, to say to me, "I've got some goods to unload here, a push mower and three kids' bicycles, a sitz bath and a butter cookie tin full of buttons. You want the guys to carry it on upstairs?"

"Wait just a moment!" I'll splutter. "That's not our push mower! Ours is orange and I'd know it anywhere because it has a Build-a-Bear Workshop sticker on it that Aisling was putting on all our outdoor furniture and stuff to identify it when we first moved here and she couldn't understand why people wouldn't just come up onto the front porch and steal the chairs. And I sold the girls' little pink bikes in a rummage sale years ago! And I don't want someone's old sitz bath -- eeeewwwww!!!! And I have no reason at all to clutter up my house with yet another butter cookie tin full of buttons! Take all that stuff away!" And then I'd make shooing motions at the men who were moving someone else's junk into my house as inexorably as the tide moves in.

"Look, lady," the cigar man would say with a note of impatience in his voice. "This here is McKinney Self-Storage, right? And there's a room upstairs where said items can be stored, right?"

At that point, I'll probably just give in, although I'll probably be called away to spend some time in a special place where I can while away the day's hazy hours by counting all my buttons from my cookie tins over and over and over and over again.

The good news is that I made great headway yesterday, actually unearthing the seat of Ma's beautiful Stickley style rocking chair. Now the only two things on the seat are a crucifix whose nail got knocked off the wall when I was vaccuuming and one lonely Child Craft book: we donated the rest of the set to Goodwill about a month ago and somehow missed that one volume.

Today, we move on to the next quadrant of the room. We may find the entrance to a new world, Jimmy Hoffa, or the holy grail. You never can tell.

Why we would fail as guests at an outdoor Parisian café

We were coming home from Subway today -- home of the famous $5 foot long subs -- and we passed a local Mexican restaurant that had lunchers sitting outdoors on the enclosed patio, enjoying the absolutely beautiful day we're having here in central Indiana. That restaurant is a particularly attractive one in our downtown area, and their patio is very festive and lovely during the warm months, with gaily-colored umbrellas shading the many wrought-iron tables and flowers spilling out of containers. Occasionally, there are mariachi, which is my idea of some of the best music on earth. If you shut your eyes on a hot July evening, listening to the music and the murmur of conversation from a distance, you would swear you could hear the surf washing gently in from the bay on the nearby beach of Barra de Navidad.

However, it is now daytime. And the umbrellas aren't up. And the flowers, in quiet acknowledgement of Mother Nature's surly and vindictive side, are still huddled inside at the nursery. So the midday diners were sitting there, talking on their cell phones, tapping away on their laptops and conversing with their companions were in the full sun, accompanied by playful breeze that stole a napkin off someone's lap and tossed it into the grass.

"I don't like to eat outside," Meelyn said as we sat at the stoplight in front of the restaurant. "It's so hot."

"And the wind messes up your hair," said Aisling, who was scrutinizing her face in a purse-sized mirror, tucking a stray wisp back into place and pursing her lips to make sure her lip gloss was evenly applied.

"And makes your hair stick to your lip gloss," I added, watching her.

"Your napkin blows away...."

"Bugs fly into your food...."

"The sun beats down on your head...."

"Flying pollen makes you sneeze...."

"A bird might poop on you...."

"People at stop lights look over at you and wonder if you really should be eating those apple empanadas..."

We all glanced quickly at one another just as the light turned green.

"Inside," said Meelyn firmly. "That's where we like to eat."

"In the shade," Aisling affirmed.

"Away from prying eyes," I sighed, taking one last longing sniff of the empanada-scented breeze before we rolled away.

Father Vic and "SoulWow"

In a hilarious take on those "ShamWow" television commercials, here's a YouTube video from Fr. Vic, touting the yearly penance services in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island during Holy Week. He is not only a good priest, but a priceless mimic. "This offer is free, and all you need to bring is a contrite heart!"



Here's the original ShamWow commercial from YouTube.com with Vince, the ShamWow pitchman, so that you can compare the two. And I can't include Vince's ShamWow video without giving the Slap Chop a nod.

Spring cleaning goes upstairs

Okay, here it is:

Today, THE BATHROOM

1. Shower curtain and shower curtain liner washed and rehung.

2. All rugs and other miscellaneous textiles, such as curtains, washed and possibly even ironed and rehung.

3. Linen closet swept, shelves dusted, and purged of all beauty unguents and ointments that are no longer used and have just been glumly sitting there.

4. Walls dusted; everything else washed and wiped down and scrubbed and cleaned until we DARED IT NOT TO GLEAM.

5. Baseboards dusted, floor mopped, corners delved into with a sponge, the place where I spilled hair dye and stained the tile floor mourned over.

6. Drawers and under-sink cabinet likewise purged of all the things that manage to drift in there; I saw a purple velvet hair scrunchie in the second drawer the other day that I know neither girl has worn on her head since they were about six and eight. Why do we still have this? And why am I keeping a set of hot rollers when I threw away the hot roller heater doohickey thing about twelve years ago because it wouldn't get hot anymore? Did I think that some coiffure genie was going to suddenly surprise me with a gift from Clairol or something?

The girls' rooms have already been cleaned for the spring because -- and I don't know why, either, that I've not yet mentioned this -- they now have their own bedrooms. They've been sharing a room since Aisling was one and Meelyn was three and just recently, they decided that they could be on their own. So we unloaded about a million books from the shelves and hauled furniture back and forth across the hallway and while all that work was being done, the girls cleaned out drawers and I swept and dusted and wiped down woodwork and furniture and took blankets down to the laundry room. So thank heaven THAT'S done.

Because whenever I think of my own room and the work that's going to have to be done in there, I just want to give out. Our room is big. And it has a lot of furniture that has to have a sweeper run underneath it, or moved so that the sweeper can do its job more efficiently. And a really big and heavy mattress that makes it difficult to get the bed ruffle on and off without bodily injury. And tall windows that require one to stand on a step stool in order to wash them. And a closet that is full to bursting, since it is a nineteenth century closet serving two twenty-first century people.

And so many, many, many drawers, all of which need to be turned out. *groaann.....*

Grandad gave me two of my great-great-grandmother's chandeliers, both of which were converted from oil to electricity somewhere in the nineteen-teens. They are both beautiful and valuable and I was rocky pleased to get them because we have the perfect house to display them. HOWEVER. The one I wanted to put in our bedroom has a whole bunch of little dingle-dangles and when I think of having to fetch an even taller step stool -- or, as some might call it, a ladder, which are unchancy things even when leaned up against houses, never mind in the middle of the bedroom floor leaned up against the air -- to get all those ten feet up to where the chandelier would be all snuggled up against the ceiling so that I could Windex it and wash the dingle-dangles, well, I am very very happy that my husband (who has been asked approximately five thousand times to please please please put Grandmother's chandeliers up) has not yet summoned the energy to make that happen.

When heaven is wedded to earth

Easter Vigil Mass last night was one of the most beautiful I have ever been to. As I sat listening to the readings that tell the history of salvation from the fall of mankind to the coming of the Savior, I marveled again how I came to be sitting in a Catholic Church, ready to melt into a puddle with love for Him.

We were received into the Church six years ago last night, so it was an anniversary celebration as well. I keep wondering why He chose me when there are so many people I know who are smarter and wiser and better.

The road to the Catholic Church was not without its rocky places, though. Strangely enough, even though we became Catholic during the worst scandal of the modern era -- it seemed like every day brought a different account of some priest diddling a teenage boy in the sacristy -- that didn't deter either me or my husband. We'd both been in church practically all our lives and we knew about the swept-under-the-rug problems involving church leaders, so I suppose it wasn't much of a shock to either of us: We both had parents who were fans of Jim and Tammy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart back in the day.

No, it was the smaller things that made us wary, like the whole bonfire thing before Easter Vigil starts. When this was first explained to me -- "We meet outside the church? And there's, like, one of those brazier things? Like you might have on your patio? And someone has started a fire in it? Well, anyway, Father lights the Paschal candle from that fire and...Oh, wait, I forgot! First he blesses the fire. THEN he lights the big candle and sings 'Chri-ist be our li-ight' and it's great if the priest can sing, but maybe not so much if he doesn't have a good voice. And then everyone else lights their candles from the Paschal candle and then we go back into the church. And there you go!" -- I thought it sounded like a funny kind of thing to do, out there next to the road and all, but I was already firmly committed to belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist (still am), so I figured I could deal with the fire thing.

It was a step, though. I was a member, from the year I was fourteen, of an evangelical charismatic Protestant church where the people thought nothing of waving their arms in the air in praising the Lord, and singing in loud voices or yelling out 'Hallelujah!' or even being slain in the Spirit, but if you'd ever have asked any of us to traipse out to the parking lot and light a fire in someone's Weber grill hauled out from home in the back of the truck and then stand around out there, singing and lighting candles and talking about Christ being our light and all, well. Well. I just don't think that would have gone over all that well, in spite of the fact that our church parking lot was back off the main drag in New Castle, and not right there on Broad Street where all the teenagers used to cruise in their cars and play loud music.

Once I was able to experience this whole bonfire-with-singing-and-candles thing, though, I got it. The fire is like the Holy Trinity, God in the world before time began. The big Paschal candle is Jesus, who came to the world as light in the darkness. And all of us standing around with our little candles - our candles are lit from the big candle -- Jesus within us -- or lit from someone else's candle -- the Word being spread through people and throughout nations. And then we all go into the dark church, which you would never think could be illuminated just from the light of all those little candles, but somehow it is, glowing and cozy and warm with love.

It is the night that heaven is wedded to earth, and beautiful exceeding is the marriage thereof.

Every year, I wait, trembling slightly, for that one specific line of the Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation, sung a capella: "Father, to ransom a slave, you gave away your Son."

It is the most moving, most shiveringly, hauntingly beautiful hymn of all. To hear it sung, one voice rising in the darkened church lit only by the glow of the candles, is a moment almost undefinable, it is so full, so rich, so full of God's great love and compassion for us. The Exsultet has been sung at the Easter Vigil for about 1,500 years now, first in Latin, of course. Here it is in English, no less beautiful.

The Exsultet

It is truly right that with full hearts and minds and voices
we should praise the unseen God, the all-powerful Father,
and his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

For Christ has ransomed us with his blood,
and paid for us the price of Adam's sin to our eternal Father!

This is our passover feast,
When Christ, the true Lamb, was slain,
whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.

This is the night,when first you saved our fathers:
you freed the people of Israel from their slav'ry,
and led them dry-shod through the sea.
This is the night,when the pillar of fire
destroyed the darkness of sin.

This is night when Christians ev'rywhere,
washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night,when Jesus broke the chains
of death and rose triumphant from the grave.

What good would life have been to us,
had Christ not come as our Redeemer?

Father, how wonderful your care for us!
How boundless your merciful love!
To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.

O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!
Most blessed of all nights,
chosen by God to see Christ rising from the dead!

Of this night scripture says:
"The night will be as clear as day:
it will become my light, my joy."

The power of this holy night dispels all evil,
washes guilt away, restores lost innocence,
brings mourners joy;it casts out hatred,
brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.

Night truly blessed,when heaven is wedded to earth
and we are reconciled to God!

Therefore, heavenly Father, in the joy of this night,
receive our evening sacrifice of praise,
your Church's solemn offering.

Accept this Easter candle,
a flame divided but undimmed,
a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.

Let it mingle with the lights of heaven
and continue bravely burning
to dispel the darkness of this night!

May the Morning Star which never sets
find this flame still burning:
Christ, that Morning Star,
who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on all mankind,
your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Amen.


Happy Easter to you, and God bless you.