Watch with Him one bitter hour

CSPP will again be observing the ancient tradition of not posting during Holy Week. We hope you're all able to track down a contemplative moment or two.

Disposable innards

Susan has kindly shared her cautionary story of unwanted induction and eventual C-section (and the exciting conclusion, which she just posted). I am very sorry this happened to Susan (and everyone else I know to whom it has happened, which is way too many people) not only because it's awful on its own merits, but also because of the CSPP angle. For those of us who don't plan to retire after 1, 2, or 3, what happens to the equipment is a big old deal.

But retiring after 1-3 is normal, and most medical providers operate under that assumption. They might as well hack it all up or leave it a mess because you only use it a few times anyway. During my most recent trip to the maternity floor, my regular doctor (who knows where I stand and wouldn't have given me occasion to tell a tale like this) was unavailable and I got someone else from her group. Assessing my situation (you'll recall this is after the main event), he asked with what I perceived to be uncertainty if we were going for six. Apparently this affected his decision about what kind of care I was going to get.

This made me very unhappy. The kind of care I want is the kind that leaves me optimally operational, and this is the kind of care every patient should get. I can't imagine that cutting corners or "going easy" on a patient in need of treatment is doing her any favor, regardless of her plans for the future (and 30 minutes after giving birth is hardly the best time to ask someone about such plans).

I become increasingly convinced that an obstetrical care provider needs to know not only a patient's medical history, but also her anticipated medical future. I know this business is terribly awkward to bring up. But maybe we also shouldn't sell medical professionals short. A good one will know that it's not his/her business to offer commentary on lifestyle. I certainly don't want to be under the care of someone who holds an aggressive belief that I should be Done anyway. And chances are that if we show ourselves to be reasonable and intelligent people we'll win ourselves a little credibility as assets to the genepool who might be dealt with gently for excessive procreation.

I've got more of a claim on this body than any health professional, and a health professional can only call the shots I want if she knows how I want them called.

(Incidentally, the first piece of advice I'd give to any pregnant lady based on all the birth stories I've ever heard is avoid inductions.)

Have you had your break today?

Go vote in the awesomest tournament ever.

Should I stay or should I go now?

I never know if I should try to go, or just not bother. I want to go--but it's an awful lot of work getting everybody ready. Do I really want to go that much? Because if we go and then have to leave, oh, I will be sad. It's bad enough to have to leave, and then add in all that prep work down the drain . . . but what if we went and everybody was good and we didn't have to leave? Then I would be happy!

So, sometimes I just don't go. If I do go, I go with the assumption that I'll have to leave. Then if we don't I'm pleasantly surprised.

Regrettable foods in action

I've been going through my grandma's old recipe boxes, and wow. Wow. The following are all clipped from newspapers or magazines, and as Grandma never served them to us, I can't help wondering if she saved them just to have a good laugh on hand when she needed it. This is how it happened, Mr. Lileks. I am very curious about the Apple Float, but not curious enough to risk any perfectly good applesauce and eggs on it, so if anyone tries it please report back.

Lima Bean Loaf

2 c. cooked lima beans

1 c. whole wheat bread crumbs

2 T melted butter

1/2 c. chopped green pepper

1/4 c. chopped onion

1/2 c. chopped nuts or nut meal

1/2 c. milk or cream

2 beaten eggs

Vegetized* salt to season

Mix all ingredients well together and place in buttered loaf pan and bake in moderate oven. Baste with melted butter.

*huh?

Carrot Ring

Cook 2 pounds carrots, drain, and put through meat grinder or mash well. Add 1/4 cup butter and salt and pepper to taste. Place in greased 1-quart ring mold, set mold in pan of hot water until ready to serve. Turn out on hot platter and fill center with cooked dressed spinach, peas, or lima beans. Yield: 6 servings. Note: Add one tablespoon onion juice to ground carrots, if desired.

Apple Float for an Emergency Dessert.

The telephone has rung--you are to have guests for dinner--and your previously planned dessert was just applesauce! It's hardly "dressy" enough for those particular people, and besides, there is barely enough to serve the family without any company. You have but little time. What's to be done? Eggs are generally available. Make an apple float, suggests the bureau of home economics, out of two cups of applesauce and four egg whites. Here's how:

2 cups thick applesauce

2 egg whites

Sweeten the applesauce to taste while hot, add a litle (sic) salt, and set away to cool. Beat the egg whites very stiff, and fold the cold applesauce into them. If desired, add two or three teaspoons of lemon juice, or sprinkle a little nutmeg or cinnamon on top.

Murphy's first law of mothering

If the baby remains asleep for a decent stretch of time, an older kid will need a weird amount of attention in the middle of the night.

Shoes

Everybody who walks needs shoes, and everybody pretty much needs an everyday/outside pair and a church pair, and everybody needs those for warm and cold weather, and everybody's feet keep growing. So that's a minimum of three or four pairs per kid per year (boys can wear the same church shoes for warm or cold), assuming everyone does me the favor of not outgrowing of a pair mid-season which is obviously ridiculously optimistic. And also snow boots.

No one is allowed to have more than the necessary shoes in our house. It just can't happen. That's a matter not only of frugality and storage, but also circulation. In order for us to get out of the house in a reasonable amount of time, there can only be a reasonable amount of shoes to dig through since they're all jumbled in a big box by the door.

I read in Real Simple to use wine boxes to store shoes--finally, a magazine idea that actually works and is free. A pair of little shoes can fit into one bottle compartment. Bigger shoes need a compartment each or even two compartments (fold the divider up or down). Sturdier shoes go on the bottom to keep the compartments from collapsing. Then I label them by the gender and size. I check them out as we need them and return them at the end of the season.

I get empty wine boxes at the grocery store. The ones that are the full height up to the top of the bottle are better. The boxes that just come up to the shoulders work fine too but they look messy, as I have demonstrated for your benefit:

Get thee behind me, Imelda.

We have this many shoes stored (55 pairs), and our oldest kid is only seven. I am afraid.

We use boots often enough to need them but still rarely enough that I won't buy another pair just to keep a 3-yr-old boy from going out in the Strawberry Shortcakes in a pinch. Easily accessed and size-organized boot storage is harder than shoes. For now, I'm keeping the boots on the bunk bed ladders we're not using. You can see that there are some unfortunate estrangements I need to work out, but I'm not giving up until boot season is officially past:

I look forward to finding a nest in one of these before my life is out.

And that's what I know about shoes. If you know something I don't, please tell me, because I find the issue rather overwhelming.

Pitching in

One of the weirder things I find myself doing is throwing things away for people. I can understand why they don't want to throw them away themselves; I don't like throwing stuff away either if it seems like it still has some use in it. But I end up on the receiving end of a lot of very strange items, and they're just not always things I or anyone could use. I freecycle what I can, but if nobody my entire freecycle group (which includes a decent sized population center) wants it, I take that as a sign. I have to throw it away. I don't know why it's my job, but it is.

Give me a break. No, really.

There's another thing I don't get about this Women's Leadership Institute business (of which WLI proper is only the top fish in the bucket). Something that's come up a time or two here at CSPP is that fruitful multiplication is, you know, challenging. That's true whether you do it once or thirteen times, or in a lifetime throughout which that gift is withheld, and regardless of your hermeneutical approach to "be fruitful and multiply."

Now, I am a huge wimp and as such want to get as much sympathy as possible for my pains. So when I hear clucking about women "being allowed" to do more, the first thing I want to ask is what the heck I'm doing right now and why it isn't good enough. Respected eldresses, don't you have the same scars I do? Weren't you as tired as I am? Didn't you feel as alone and overwhelmed and unappreciated? Weren't you flattened by hopelessness when you saw how shamefully unequal you were to this calling? Didn't you have to fight against the pride and contempt that threatened your soul when you considered your hardships in comparison with . . . other people?

But apparently it really isn't good enough. Apparently women need "leadership" too. Kids, you were just an aggravation necessitated by conventionalism, a sidebar to the real me. I suffered purgatorially to sustain your life; raised you hour by lonely hour because that's what people do, but now I'm ready for something that matters. Now that I've got you over with, here come my opportunities and my props. I mean, my ministry and service and stewardship of my unparalleled gifts.

The poor esteem in which the draining work of motherhood is held by mothers is absolutely staggering. I mean, it makes no sense! Demand less, girls! If we say it's not enough, the world is all too eager to wring more out of us. Sheesh!

Anyway. Here's what I like about my husband besides his mad skills and how he looks in a rose chasuble. A while ago I asked him what I'm going to do with myself a million years from now after all these babies grow up and move out. I have a teaching degree but zero desire to use it in any professional sense, not to mention that with all the continuing education and certifications and licenses and whatever other fabricated hoops will exist by that time I'll be pretty un-employable. Visions of becoming a 58 year old Sandwich Artist started dancing in my head.

Ham ministry is ministry too.

He looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "Read books and make my supper." No speech about using my gifts. No plans for me to finally start contributing to our retirement savings. Not even any bogus encouragement about pursuing my dreams or, worse, getting serious about ministry at long last. He sees what I do, and he knows I've got a break coming one of these decades, DV.

Should God see fit to grant me that break, I certainly look forward to reading books and making supper for my much adored husband. But I also hope to spend lots of time as a postpartum doula for my daughters and daughters-in-law. I hope to spend lots of time with my grandchildren. I hope to pick up some of the slack at our church, wherever that may be, because all churches have slack to pick up.

For now, though, I hope that more sisters in Christ will recognize that the work God has given us most directly and plainly is a fire deliberately appointed to consume the dross of the daughters of Eve; that he intends for us to reap from that work fulfillment rather than discontentment and bitterness; that we would find our identities by utterly losing them; that we would embrace our crosses in humility rather than bloating our grotesque ambition with gaseous pride. Sorry, leading ladies. This is our primary duty, and although I may not always like it, I do love it, for what can one do but love what God has given her?

Say, "Mom loves her super cheap camera! And us!"

I have a confession to make. I'm one of those awful moms who doesn't send a kid to the mailbox without taking a picture. Baby 4 learned months ago to waddle up with a huge cheesy grin on his face whenever the silver cube comes out.

In my defense, I was like this before it was cool. I made a photo documentary of my AP English exam in high school and gave it to my teacher for the sheer joy of it. I know absolutely nothing about photography, I just find it awesome to take pictures and write commentary for them. Now that the annoying and costly step of film development has been removed, I'm completely out of control.

For a while I just took the photos and filed them on the computer under names I found terribly humorous. But in the selfless interest of keeping the distant grandparents in mind of our existence, I started a private family blog that gives me another excuse to take pictures of everything. Now taking pictures isn't just something I do for fun. It's for our family. It's full-on ministry. The grandparents love it now that they've got the sign-in figured out, bless their Boomer hearts.

We almost never get professional portraits of the kids because they're a huge rip, and why would we? I take 3000 pictures of them every week.

This experiment has yielded the benefit that our youngest kid will not be able to complain that there are tons of pictures of the older kids but none of him/her. When cost is not an obstacle, it's usually the baby who has the most pictures taken. They're just so darn cute, even when you've already had a bunch of babies move through.

It's weird how the photos make it look like we're just another one of those goofy, crazy families full of love and fun and good times. Maybe all those goofy, crazy families full of love and fun and good times have just as much fine and gross catastrophe raging between photos as we do? Could it be?

Will our kids have huge heads and think each trip up the stairs is worth preserving and sharing with everyone we know? I'm hoping the forms of deprivation to which we enjoy subjecting them will counterbalance it.

However, I do not have an illustrative photo for this post.