If you must swim

There are three things I have to buy new for myself and the kids because they're hard to come by (or hard to come by clean) secondhand. Sometimes I have to buy new shoes. More often I have to buy new pajamas. I almost always buy swimming suits new (although I did get myself a great used Speedo for bottom dollar on eBay once).

It's February, which is the perfect time to find them super cheap for you and the girls. The bad news is that the Birqini is a hot commodity and never goes on sale. I showed this picture to my daughter and asked her what she thought. She said, "It doesn't have socks." Great kid.

Lutherans, of course, are free in the Gospel to forgo the hood.

Motherwear is having an end of season clearance including nursing swimming suits for crazy cheap if you know how much they usually cost there. Having attempted to nurse a very annoyed baby under a t-shirt while wearing the aforementioned Speedo at a waterpark, I can vouch for the fact that one of these would be real handy to have if you're looking at a lot more summers of nursing. Coverage looks pretty decent, although the jerks charge separately for the skirts. Sizes and colors are running out, so order while you can.

For the girls, there's a great overstock sale at Land's End. I'm splurging on the 50 SPF Swim-mini skirt bottom and Short Sleeve Rash Guard top for my Scandinavian princesses, and hope to discourage pervs in the process. I hate dropping this much cash on anything, but I really want them to have decent swimwear that falls somewhere between eye candy and Amish. This is as well-priced as you can hope to find it if you have this problem every summer too.

Um, did everybody see this?

In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help.

From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.

Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him, thick clouds dark with water. Out of the brightness before him hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds.

The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And he sent out his arrows and scattered them; he flashed forth lightnings and routed them. Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the LORD was my support.

He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me.

(Ps 18:6-19)

Times when you shouldn't ask someone if she's pregnant

--When she looks thicker than you remember

--When you know she's a card carrying Concordian Sister and figure it's about time

--When you notice her wobbling during that Invocation-Collect stretch

--When she turns down a margarita

--When she eats four cheeseburgers without seeming remotely embarrassed

--When she's looked ill for five weeks

--When you figure it doesn't bother you to be asked so why should it bother anyone else?

--When you can't think of anything else to talk about

--When you really, really, really want to know

--When you've got $8000 riding on it

--When you're on a lifeboat carrying 13 people and provisions for 10

--Ever

To whom it may concern about the unbalanced washing machine crashing into the basement wall over and over

I think it's overloaded. I mean . . . I overloaded it. Again.

In my defense, there were more dirty clothes than usual because I didn't wash them sooner.

Your daily dose of Eng Lit 101 and Neuroses 401

One of the most difficult legs in my CSPP journey to date was the off-ramp that took me from being a Person in the World to being . . . here. All the time.

I'm feeling a little conflicted here...

Not long after I arrived . . . here, when I had just begun to feel quite keenly that a gilded cage (i.e. a large and lovely parsonage) is still a prison, I was subjected to a most unhelpful conversation. A fellow was reminiscing about how his wife had taken a leave of absence from her career after each of their kids was born. When she was on those extended maternity leaves, he found her to be “sorta boring.” Because, you know, she hadn’t been out and done anything interesting or talked to anyone or anything. (The wife seconded this observation.)

Hypersensitive as I admittedly was, this little exchange was mental freak-out primetime for me. To recreate that particular mental maelstrom: Mix equal parts indignation at such jerkiness with wretched worry that I myself would become boring to my husband. I wished I could’ve been just righteously indignant, but niggling insecurity at my new role whispered reminders about those days—those confounded, compounded days—in which the Poop Report, and possibly a passable supper, were all I had to offer my husband upon his daily return from being a Person in the World. (For the record, when my mental freak-out later went verbal, I recall that excellent husband reassuring me that even our baby’s poop, and my report thereof, would always fascinate and enthrall him. Good man, that.)

I’ve since mellowed into the proper response to that fellow’s remarks: “How sad for them.” Sure, there are still days a-plenty when I feel a little…mousy? Caged? Housewifely? Mind-numbed? But I don’t waste any more time worrying about becoming boring to my husband. I actually used to think that Dad would somehow find it wearisome to end his long day by coming home to us, always us, with our variations on the same old themes of cacophonous chaos and maternal madness (all senses of the word). ‘Twas a pleasant surprise indeed when I finally verbalized my trepidation and learned that I had been exactly wrong. Knowing that I’m here, yes, always here, energizes him. He looks forward to coming home to us (though he has, understandably, stated a preference for coming home to Sane, Happy Wife over some of the other manifestations). Suddenly, being always here became a bit more bearable: it matters. It’s not just what I do because it’s cheaper than daycare, or even because it’s the best thing for the kids: it’s a gift I can offer my best friend, who so willingly gives his everything, his very self, to me. (Note to self: gifts are better received when rendered graciously, not grudgingly… :P ).

Surprise! It's me!

To illustrate the point that dudes across the centuries have relied upon knowing that their wives were tending the proverbial home fires, and have thought not less but indeed more of them for it, recall John Donne’s conceit of marriage as a compass (the geometry kind) in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”:

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do. . . .

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Vortex of subgroupery

Totally weird convo here. Seriously, what planet are we living on? (good-natured laugh ha ha ha ha ha!) Anyway, I like TQ's note on the concerns for cultural subgroup over world at large. I've made my way through a lot of subgroups to get to this one, and I don't know that this is one most people would want to dive straight into. There are, or so I've heard, women who never wanted anything other than to get married and have kids. I imagine that would make a lot of things easier as long as you've got a nice cozy subgroup to affirm you about it, and if my daughters are so inclined, I will rejoice for them.

But I would never want my daughters to think there's something wrong with them if they want to go to a school worth their time and money, pursue an interest, develop a professional skill, etc., or that they're just doing those things to kill time until real life starts. As working for a man, not for the Lord, as it were.

I wanted to get married, but surveying my depressing options, I concluded early on that I'd never find somebody who met my extremely stringent requirements and so found other ways to occupy myself. Then I liked those things and giving them up was hard. That's part of the marriage deal for men and women alike. There is life for women before and/or without marriage, and there's no point in failing to enjoy and enrich it by going through it half-heartedly as if it didn't count.

Then there's the problem that prospective husbands these days usually don't go knocking on doors to inspect the embroidery of the young ladies of the house and check their gravy for lumps (girls, I can help with the gravy. Email me). I'm bracing myself for the possibility that my girls may have to leave our town of 950 to meet a nice young confessional Lutheran man with suitable notions of vocation and chastity (his own especially). They might have to go to Indiana! Or, good gracious, Michigan!

Let's also not rule out husbandolatry and childolatry as likely hazards of natural inclination toward hearth and home. Ain't no bosom pure enough sin can't pervert it. Here's a sometimes melancholy Dane to demonstrate. (But don't read it if you're pregnant, nursing, weaning, TTC, menopausal, perimenopausal, having a fat day, or otherwise hormonal. Is that everybody?)

If God grants a woman a husband, may he also grant the her grace to leave behind those things which must be left, to whatever extent they must be left (ditto for the husband). For whatever amount of her life she is without a husband, may she find full contentment in the life and gifts the true Bridegroom has given her, Himself above all.

Why you see so many rotten kids

Because they are undisciplined. But who wants to live with rotten kids? Why don't their parents discipline them? Because disciplining stinks. It is much easier to just clean up the mess yourself than it is to force the whining, lazy 4-year-old who made it to clean it. Disciplining is not just unenjoyable, but ungratifying. You don't see your kids improving, because they are growing and changing constantly. For all you know, all those battles of the will over whose job it was to put on socks were totally wasted; she'd have grown into putting on her own socks eventually anyway.

Furthermore, no matter how many times you tell them to chew with their mouths closed and say thank you, they're still going to horrify you with new heights of rudeness when you take them to see Great Grandma. So why bother?

Every day here feels like a bad day. Someone is always stuck in a cycle of bad moves. Someone always gets yelled at. Someone always ends up crying and neglected while I'm dealing with someone else. I've only got one fuse, and it only takes one kid to burn it down for all the rest of them.

You see so many rotten kids because all kids have rotten parents.

Today's low

I sprinkled craisins on the floor so that I'd know where the baby was while I finished making scones.

Irresistible!

I resemble that remark

While I was leaving church this morning, more than one kindly woman assured me that I look miserable. I also heard: uncomfortable, rough, in pain, and, most cleverly, big. :D In the past, I used comments like this to gauge how close to delivery I was; a girl does begin to look a bit ripe, after all. This time, the gauge is broken. I’ve been hearing about how afflicted I look for close to a month, and I’m pretty sure I’ve several weeks to go.

I feel pretty! Oh, so pretty!

Granted, I am a bit funny looking when pregnant, so the comments don't hurt my precious, precious feelings. After awhile, they do make me tired. I’m just not sure how to respond when so many helpful people helpfully attempt to describe this, my current state of gibbousness. I think I have two options:

1. Commiserate. After all, the commenters just want to be friendly. Their genial elucidations are best viewed as extended hands, warm attempts to draw me into the large, blissful circle of womanhood.

2. Slap each offender square across the face.

Wait. Sorry. I didn’t really mean that. Of course not. What I meant to say was:

2. Laugh sweetly and assure my friends that the belly looks worse than it actually feels. After all, there’s a wiggly little person in there, which still amazes me (and weirds me out) even after having experienced it before. And, no, my hips don’t hurt . . . much.

Achieving either course of action is more cumbersome than lugging the belly, of course. But I don’t suppose imperious stares have a place in the church narthex. No. Naturally not.

Thy stro o ong Wo o ord wi ithout end

Give us lips to smile through one more verse
Tongues to click at the kid who's a schmuck
Throats to bluff through these smug triplets
Mouths content a binky to suck
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Tight grip on the hymnal, legs unbend
Get me and the baby up for the doxology
Martin Franzmann, not my friend

(Great hymn, though. I promise to love it again in 20 years.)