Out of the mouth of a real babe

I was downtown with the kids today around 5:30 p.m. and was politely stopped by Dan from Channel 8 news. He wanted a comment about our mayor's plan to purchase cameras to mount over street lights for snapping photos of people who run red lights. I believe the idea is to catch more people when a police officer doesn't happen to be handy.

I hadn't looked into the cost and effectiveness of these gizmos personally, so I demurred, saying I just hadn't had a chance to research the issue yet. Dan offered to give me all the information, but I demurred again and said I needed to get the children home for dinner. Honestly, though, my hair was being swept around by the wind, and even though I always have a lot to say about everything, I just didn't want to do it on TV looking like that!

On the way to our mini-van, Scooter (the four-year-old) asked me why I didn't want my picture on television.

"Oh, I couldn't really answer his question, and I'm not pretty enough to be on TV."

"But I am!" she protested.

Yeah, she's got a lot of confidence. But honestly, she is a real babe, so she can carry it off.

--Sparki

Fighting the Freedom of Choice Act

If you are interested in joining the fight against the Freedom of Choice Act, you might want to visit this site, which includes a petition to sign and other information.

Personally, I'm hoping that President-Elect Obama will be too busy futzing with the economy and dealing with foreign affairs to keep his promise to Planned Parenthood. In the meantime, let us all pray that our "unalienable right to life" will be protected for ALL Americans, even those awaiting birth.

--Sparki

Insert Tears Here

My friend Mrs. B-B and I have been trading darling stories about our children today. Here's one for the ages.

Zooey, age 9, has been begging me to set up a Yahoo e-mail account for him. I've been trying to put it off in the hopes that it's not that important to him yet, but no luck. Finally, he asked if he should discuss it with his dad, and I said sure. So he went off to plan his attack.

After the kids were in bed, my husband found Zooey's crib sheet. It reads:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dad, can I have an account on Yahoo! too?* I have my user name and password ready to go. Please?

(give pleading look)

(If he says no, pretend to cry.)

(If he says yes, say, "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" and give him a big hug.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

After he was done laughing, my husband said, "It's not a good plan. He should know by now that if I say no, crying isn't going to get him anywhere.

--Sparki


*I completely love his attention to copyrights -- he put the exclamation point in Yahoo!

Note to Joe Biden

Pope John XXIII was a Jesus guy on abortion.

Pope John Paul II was a Jesus guy on abortion.

If you try to say that you're a John XXIII guy, not a John Paul II guy, you're very, very, very confused. The Church is not divided on the issue of abortion, much as you, Nancy Pelosi and other politicians would like to think otherwise.

--Sparki

Funniest thing I heard all weekend

My husband, upon entering the kitchen:

"Wow, look at you, putting up food for the winter just like the pioneers!"

(I was microwaving corn, cutting it off the cob and freezing it in Zip-loc bags because I had too much for us to consume that night. Yeah, just like the pioneers!)

--Sparki

What a life!

As this interesting piece in the Washington Post points out, there is a huge, huge difference between the way pro-choice people and the way pro-life people look at babies with disabilities.

--Sparki

Coolest Music Teacher Ever!

In preparation for today's feast of Saint Gregory the Great, our parish's own Sister Mary has been teaching the upper grades some Gregorian chant. Zooey, being a 4th grader, is now in the "upper grades." He was really excited to be part of the chant at this morning's Mass...which, alas, I had to miss because of work obligations, and, alack, my husband had to miss because of an emergency dental appointment.

I'm sure it was lovely...I need to talk Sister Mary into letting the children sing chant for a regular Mass some Sunday. (If I talk her into it, she can talk Father into it...)

I'll tell you what, the kids at public school aren't learning Gregorian chant as part of their regular curriculum!

--Sparki

Theology At Dinner

My husband works a later shift, so the kids and I usually have dinner without Daddy. Since school started last week, I've been trying to make it a point to ask the kids what they learned each day. With three kids -- a 4th-grader, a 1st-grader and a preschooler -- that can take a very long time, so I'm sort of limiting it to one or two subjects a day. Monday was spelling and reading. Tuesday was P.E. and math. Yesterday, I decided to be a good Catholic mom and ask about religion.

The preschooler came up blank. That doesn't mean she didn't get any religion instruction, though. I know the teacher well and she talks about religion all day as she teaches this Montessori-style class, so there isn't necessarily a focused religion lesson. If they are talking about wild animals, they're talking about how God created elephants to have long noses for this purpose and giraffes to have long necks for that purpose. If they are talking about apples, they are discovering the lovely star-shaped pattern of seeds that God placed in each one (cut them cross-wise to see it) and how He loaded them with nutrition. You get the idea.

The first-grader said she couldn't remember. I told her to think about it and we'd get back to her.

The fourth-grader said they had a quiz on the Old Testament. I suggested he ask me one of the questions to see if I knew the answer. The question he picked was a fill-in-the-blank: God made h____ and e____. I answered "hedges and evergreens" for fun and when Zooey tried to protest, I insisted that God did make hedges and evergreens, so I couldn't be wrong. Then I tried "hyenas and elephants" and the kids all giggled. Finally I (correctly) supplied "heaven and earth."

It was really a lovely conversation. And then Edyn, our six-year-old, dropped the ginormous bomb of a question: "When was God born?"

Ummmmmm...yeah. She always does this to me.

It's not that I don't know the answer. It's how to phrase the answer so that she and her little sister can understand. (Zooey tends to get most of that stuff thanks to really good religion teachers at our school.)

I got a piece of paper and a pen because I always do these things better with a visual aide. (When I taught 2nd Grade Sunday School in our protestant years, that flannel board got a work-out!!)

I explained that a mortal being had a beginning (conception) and an end (death). And I drew something like this to show that time line:

O---------------------O

Then I said that an immortal being, like an angel, had a beginning (creation) and no end, with this diagram.

O--------------------->

Then I explained that when Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead, he was able to take our mortal lives and change them into immortal lives. (I skipped over the "immortal soul" part because I thought the girls were too young to understand that their bodies are mortal but their souls are immortal. Zooey jumped in and said that, and they just stared at him blankly.)

O---------------------O------>

And then I explained that God is eternal, so He has no beginning and no end. He just always "IS". At first, I drew it like this:

<--------------------->

But then I also drew a circle with arrow heads all pointing in the same direction around it (which I can't recreate here, sorry).

At this point, all the kids were gnawing at their corn-on-the-cobs and nodding, so I was thinking I was getting more points toward that Mother of the Year award.

Then somebody asked what kind of a being was mortal and didn't live forever. Zooey put in a few suggestions like snakes and bats. I threw in wart-hogs, wanting to keep to the "yucky animals we don't like" category.

Then Zooey's eyes filled with tears and he said, "I wish dogs had immortal souls."

Two little girls' chins dropped. They stared at him.

Scooter whipped her gape from Zooey to me and burst into tears. "You mean Lazlo's going to die? Lazlo isn't going to live forever and ever?!?!?!"

Lazlo is our dog, in case you didn't know.

Scooter's tears made it impossible for Zooey to hold back his own floodgates. Before I knew what was happening, both kids were on my lap, sobbing into my shoulders (one on each side -- and let me tell you, Zooey is such a big kid, that was a very dampening experience).

Edyn continued to calmly eat her chicken leg. It's not that she doesn't like the dog. I think she was just really hungry.

Anyway, I tried to console the two devastated kids with the usual stuff. "God keeps track of the sparrows," I assured them, referencing Matthew 6:26. "He's not going to forget to take care a good dog like Lazlo."

"But I'll never see her again!" Scooter cried.

"We'll see her in our photographs and in our memories," I said, figuring I might as well experiment with consolation techniques because I had NO idea how to make this sound okay. "We'll see her in our hearts."

Scooter looked down at her third shirt button.

"But I can't see into my heart!"

I decided I'd said enough. So much for the Mother of the Year award. I just hugged the kids until they thought to call the dog and hug her and assure her of their undying love, and then hugged the kids again until they had cried themselves out.

Siiiigh.

--Sparki

What a pity!

Apparently, growing up "empowered" by your feminist mother isn't all it's cracked up to be. Read the tragic tale of Rebecca Walker for the sad details.

I hope this mother and daughter reconcile soon.

Seriously, now...

If your 15-year-old daughter was posing for photographs, and the photographer talked her into taking off her shirt (which your daughter had no intention of doing upon arrival) and if those photographs were published in a national magazine, would you or would you not be calling the cops and reporting said photographer?

But hey, apparently if you are Billy Ray Cyrus and if your daughter is Miley Cyrus, whom you carelessly thrust into the limelight at a very tender age and if the photographer is the famous Annie Leibovitz (of whom Miley says, "You just can't say no to Annie..."), then I guess you allow your daughter to take the blame and apologize to all the fans.

I'm sorry, folks but a 15-year-old is still a child who needs parental guidance, no matter how talented she is. Where were mom and dad during that photo shoot? Apparently, they were there, nodding approvingly. Why wasn't Billy Ray standing up to Annie and saying, "No, you will not photograph my minor daughter half naked."

I heard a news commentator say this morning that it was Vanity Fair's fault. No it wasn't. It was Miley's parents' fault. If you put your minor child in the public eye and allow them to be scrutinized, ogled, criticized, worshiped, glammed up, etc., this is what happens. Let society treat your kid like a piece of meat, and sooner or later, the media will take it all the way to porn. Okay, arty porn, since it's Annie Leibovitz, but it's still porn in my book.

Wake up, Billy Ray. It's your daughter who's going to wake up one day with the achy breaky heart, and you're not going to be able to fix it.

--Sparki

BTW, I was going to link over to the Vanity Fair site, but there is this über creepy shot of Miley and Billy Ray on the front page that looks...well...just don't go there. Billy Ray Cyrus isn't making very good decisions about what positions his daughter is photographed in. And the article will just horrify you as it reveals that Miley's grueling schedule hasn't included a more than one consecutive day off since Christmas 2006 (she is FIFTEEN, folks!), that Billy Ray and his wife Tish let Miley watch Sex and the City, and that Miley admits to just not having any emotions to speak of.