We had an exciting weekend.  (The post is a little late because I was waiting on pictures.)  In honor of Craig’s Justice Walking theme this week, which is fasting from the artificial and feasting on the natural, we went to Barataria Preserve to “hike”.  We did the two-mile board walk through the swamp, which was really cool.  There were tons of very large spiders, lizards, small snakes, dragon flies, and we saw an owl in the top of one of the trees.  Lucy walked almost the whole way by herself, which was nice.  Samantha got to ride with Dad.

After this adventure we returned, we thought, to civilization, only to find that the power was out.  Craig called Entergy, and they said it would be back on around noon.  (This was 11 o’clock or so.)  We ate lunch, started naps, and when the power still wasn’t on at two, called again.  Now it would be on at five.  When six o’clock rolled around, we called again, and supposedly it would be back on at eight.  So we packed up the girls and went to buy a lantern. (Which we should have had in our “hurricane preparedness” kit, but that gives you and idea of how hurricane-prepared we are.  We generally go running to Baton Rouge, so lanterns and the like have never been a priority.)  We played in the lantern light until a little after nine, when the power actually did come on.  I was so thankful that this happened now, and not a month ago!  We had already had the windows open for a couple of days, and the cool(er) weather held out for us.

(Apparently the problem with the power turned out to be that some Entergy workers had hit and exploded a gas line.  That took a while to fix.)

We had to eat during all this time, so we took to lighting the gas stove with matches.  (Electric starter.  Sigh.)  Craig wanted to make something fun, so he dug a recipe for caramel rolls out of my Grandmother’s Czech cookbook.  They were good.  I had planned breakfast for dinner, and Craig wanted something new and different, so he made cornmeal mush.  We actually ended up going to CiCi’s Pizza after the lantern-buying excursion, but this morning we had fried cornmeal mush for breakfast.  And don’t knock it till you’ve tired it, it tasted like soft French toast.  Mmmm.  I will me making it again.

So today (= Sunday), before the mush, with power on but still with the A/C off (on principle), Craig and I went outside to drink coffee before the girls got up.  While we were there, I wandered to about the back corner of the yard, where we have a square-foot garden, three rose bushes, two basil plants, and a statue of the Blessed Mother surrounded by volunteer loquats.  I was pulling weeds, and Craig came to mow a path to the square and around it with his non-power mower.  We started talking about what I’d like to see there, and decided to go get some mulch to try and clean up around the roses, Mary, and the basil plants.  Since it was St. Francis’s feast day, it seemed like a good time to tackle this.

Load up girls, go to Lowe’s, put down mulch in the rain, and listen to Lucy sing “Row, row, row your boat” over and over and over.

Once the weeds were curtailed and the mulch was down, Craig started to worry that the grass would invade the newly-cleaned areas very quickly if we didn’t put down some kind of border.  I described to him what I wanted in the way of paths and such back there, and after lunch we headed back to Lowe’s.  Then he put out the stones while I tried, unsuccessfully, to get the girls to nap.  More “Row, row, row your boat” followed.

And, finally, here is the (partly) finished product.

Square foot garden, soon to be planted with lettuce and carrots and spinach.  (Done, by the time I got around to posting this!)

Seating area, with fire pit (Craig’s idea) in the middle.

Lucy’s square?

Rose bushes.  (Very hard to see because they’re scrawny and not blooming, but there are three of them there.  I promise.)

Mary and basil.  (The basil are also very, very hard to see.  One took a hit from the lawn mower, and is very short, but recovering.  The other was picked and snailed nearly to death.  Its fate is yet to be decided.)

The point of all this being, I’m feeling like, at least for fall and spring, it wouldn’t be so bad to live off the grid after all.  Of course, then you wouldn’t get to hear about our gardening adventures.  I guess we’ll have to keep the power…for now at least.

Ah, it’s been a while.  Things have been slightly crazy.  Dad had his third chemo treatment, and that is still going as well as can be expected.  He’s tired and sick, but still in good spirits.

Craig’s mom needs prayers now, too.  She had a biopsy done Tuesday and will find out September 9 if is it something they will have to treat.  In the meantime, she’s recovering from the biopsy and the anesthesia, and trying not to worry too much about what the test results will be.  When it rains around here, it pours!

Part of the reason I’ve been so slow to post is that our computer was stolen two weekends ago when our house was broken into.  Fortunately, the only took that and the change jars I was collecting for the girls.  Unfortunately (?) that means they took less than our home owner’s insurance deductible, so we were on our own for replacing the computer.  (Which, I don’t think I mentioned, we had only had for about three weeks.)  But Deus providebit, and one of the priests from Craig’s school, who knows lots and lots and lots about computers, heard what had happened and built us a new desktop from pieces he had laying around.  Which is how I am now able to write this for you to read.  God sure has strange ways of going about things.

I’ll be updating the homeschooling things soon, but I seem short on time lately, so that is what has been neglected.  Some of the time has been going to rearranging the house, including trying to get our front bedroom in the sort of condition to be used as the homeschooling room.

But you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with “pirate prayer”.  On a rare (these days) occasion, I drop by other Catholic homeschooling mommy blogs (if you know of other good ones, I’d love to hear about them), and I found a jewel today.  Here it is.  Enjoy.

Craig has started teacher orientation again.  This summer flew by, especially since we were out of town most of the month of July.  His return to work, and my non-return, have raised a number of questions for me again.  “Can we really afford to live on one income?  Why did we get such a nice car so now we have those payments to keep up with?  Where can I spend a few less dollars?  Can I really handle two little girls all day?”

Meanwhile, we’re trying to build a homeschool library, eat more locally and organically, and be generous where we can.  Of course, in the midst of my worries, the liturgy came through again.  Just as I was thinking, “How on earth are we going to do this?”, the lectionary brought up the feeding of the five thousand (twice!) and the Bread of Life discourse.  I say, “This is a problem!” and again God says, “Trust me!”  On the heels of our traveling, just as I was starting to get my head reoriented to running a household, and so just as the worries began to build, there was my answer in Scripture.

And this is where I think my *attempted* prayer routine is going to pay off.  The Liturgy of the Hours has never spoken to my heart in the past, but now when night prayer asks for rest to renew our tired bodies, I’m there!  The Psalms are somehow always appropriate, and time and again the daily readings sneak up on me with just what I need to hear, whether I think I’m ready to hear it or not!

So from the depths of the screaming toddler, the sound of the washing machine, buzzing computers, and splashes at bathtime, the Word of God speaks softly, but clearly, as long as I am willing to make the time to listen.

I had been wondering where the burst of cleaning and ordering energy that I’ve had for the last couple of weeks had come from, and I now have a couple of theories.  (For two pregnancies I looked forward to the “nesting” phase when I would actually want to clean – it never came.  Maybe this is what it feels like!)  Freedom from the requirements of a job has certainly helped, since I have hours back in my days with no commute, no papers to grade or lessons to plan, not to mention the time I actually spent teaching.

But I have also been doing some “mommy” reading, some of which has dealt with home schooling, and some of which has been more in the homemaking-without-losing-your-mind-or-your-soul mold.  The later has been most edifying.

Essentially, I have bought into the idea that if God is calling me to be at home and raise my children (which hopefully I believe, since that is what I plan to do with myself for the foreseeable future), then He must expect my experiences in this realm of life to be my ticket to sanctification.  And as Holly Pierlot argues, and I think rightly, it is up to us to take our vocations by the horns, so to speak, and direct our efforts at doing our very best at our calling.  If this means homemaking, then I am called to be sanctified by doing the dishes, laundry, diapers, and more generally creating an environment in which my family can live as God calls us.  That means (I think) an environment without excess clutter and dirt, with order and calm, and with beauty, for starters.  So boxes are making their way to St. Vincent de Paul, shelves are getting dusted and reordered, and the real trick is going to be making the habits I’m trying to form – for prayer and housekeeping – stick.  And doing it joyfully, because it is what God wants me to do.  (Lots on this in Merton – also worth checking out.)  Pierlot talks about offering up each little task, and about following some sort of prayer rule, to help all this happen.  So far, this change in mindset has really, really helped.

In the midst of all this reflecting and reordering, I read the first reading for today:

“Brothers and sisters: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.  Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work.  As it is written:

‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.’

The one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed and increase the harvest of your righteousness.  You are being enriched in every way for all generosity, which through us produces thanksgiving to God.”

-2 Cor. 9:6-11

“Those who love God should attempt to preserve or create an atmosphere in which He can be found.  Christians should have quiet homes.  Throw out television, if necessary — not everybody, but those who take this sort of thing seriously.  Radios useless.  Stay away from the movies — I was going to say ‘as a penance’ but it would seem to me to be rather a pleasure than a penance, to stay away from the movies.  Maybe even form small agrarian communities in the country where there would be no radios, etc.

“Let those who can stand a little silence find other people who like silence, and create silence and peace for one another.  Bring up their kids not to yell so much.  Children are naturally quiet — if they are left alone and not given the needle from the cradle upward, in order that they may develop into citizens of a state in which everybody yells and is yelled at.  (pp. 301-302)

“…When you gain this interior silence you can carry it around with you in the world, and pray everywhere.  But just as interior asceticism cannot be acquired without concrete and exterior mortification, so it is absurd to talk about interior silence where there is no exterior silence. (p. 302)”

-Thomas Merton The Sign of Jonas, excerpted in Henri Nouwen’s Pray to Live, pp. 118-119.

Quiet children.  Now there’s an idea…   Not just shut up, but naturally peaceful and quiet.   But how to go about it?

On that note, Samantha is now crawling!  It’s not perfect crawling, she uses on knee and one foot, but it gets her across the room, and she can now crawl up to me and pull herself up a little on my pant leg and express that she wants something.  Along with crawling has come a banshee baby sound, which tends to mean, “Lucy took my toy from me again!”  But for the moment they are actually sleeping, and I can think about silence.

Lucy woke up last night (after she had come to our bed) saying, “I need my coffee!”  I told her to go back to sleep, but she got up, went to the living room (where Craig was still on the computer) and got her sippy-cup of chocolate milk with a splash of coffee and brought it back to the bedroom.  The she got up again and announced that she wanted water.  Before Craig could get it, she was saying very loudly, “No, I going to sleep!” but she had closed the bedroom door on her way out and couldn’t open it again.  All this woke up Samantha, and thus ended my half-hour or so of comfortable sleeping.

In other news, I am officially and thankfully unemployed.  (But, also thankfully, my paycheck doesn’t stop coming in until August!)  On Friday, Craig helped me clean out my classroom, we went out to lunch to celebrate, and then Craig went up to Shaw to do some of his own work.  Everyone at school gave me hugs and told me how sorry they were to see me go.  When I got home, Samantha was angry because she was still suffering from the cold she caught earlier in the week, and Lucy was angry because, well, she’s two.  And it was naptime, and she had already had a busy day.  And I thought, “Why am I leaving the company of kind adults for that of screaming children?”  Certain Roman bird-watchers might have something to say about this.

And yesterday I read several posts pointing out how wonderful motherhood is.  And today we tried (unsuccessfully – it rained) to take the girls to the zoo.  We got ice cream instead.  Lucy threw no fits until after 8 PM.  We napped well.  We ate well.  We played well.  We ate tomato and basil from our own garden.  This is why I’m staying home – so Lucy can paint in the back yard, and Samantha can sit on a blanket under a tree while I hang out the laundry.  So we can go to the zoo on a Tuesday.  So I can put band-aids on cuts, snuggle sleepy infants, and spend half the day with a child on my hip.

I think it will be a good life.  I am really, sincerely, looking forward to it, however much I may fear the responsibility.  Because now if something goes wrong, I have only myself to blame.  Two little souls have been entrusted to me so that I can help them find their way to their eternal home.  All those blogs I’ve been reading are right, what a privilege!  What faith God has in me to entrust two of his most prized possessions into my hands!  It is all making me very aware of all my own shortcomings and all the work I have to do to set even a decent, let alone a good, example for these little ones.  So I’m working on my prayer, and I’m asking for your prayers, because the enormity of this task feels overwhelming sometimes.  But what joy comes with this work!  I now work every day, all day, for joy incarnate.

This post made my day.  Craig’s dad is growing strawberries, and we have been the beneficiaries of his bounty for the last month or so.  We are exploring new and exciting ways to use them all, but Lucy still likes to eat them plain, preferably daily or twice daily.  Craig’s dad has beautiful, neat, raised, mulched rows for his plants, but neglected strawberries for ground cover, now there’s an idea!  The book list at the end of the post is great, too.  I’m going to have to head to the library for a copy of Jamberry.  That was one of my favorites growing up.

We are experimenting to see how long we can survive without air conditioning. I’m shooting for Memorial Day. (We will get a respite on Mother’s Day, since Craig’s parents are coming over and I’m not going to impose this penance on anyone else!) We didn’t use it last month, and our electric bill was less than 1/3 of what it had been. We’ve been spending lots of time outside (in the shade mostly!) and leaving the house open for the breeze. It’s not terrible, just a little uncomfortable, and I have a new appreciation for those little breaths of cool air!

One benefit of being outside so much is all the nature we get to see in our own back yard. We found a frog in the laundry closet! Here is a pic, and we have a video of it making its escape, as well, but it’s too big to post at the moment. These are the sort of things I am really, really looking forward to with homeschooling.

My book list on the side has been updated. I’m on a homeschooling binge at the moment, re-reading Elizabeth Foss’s wonderful book, as well as a couple of new ones Craig decided to order from Amazon rather than get from interlibrary loan.

Our seniors are done with school, and we will be, too, at the end of the month. I just have one quiz and exams left to make!! This is all very exciting, and coupled with the encouraging homeschooling reading, is giving me back some of the energy I’ve been lacking lately.

Here are a few more pictures of the girls doing what they do.

Samantha attempting to eat grass.

Lucy drawing.  The Easter eggs she made at Grandma’s months ago have been recycled into Easter season decorations (on the wall behind her).  Most of them have now been removed and the stickers rearranged again (and again).

Lucy’s block house.

Samantha is teething like a mad woman and enjoys the pieces of Lucy’s puzzle.

Cutting play-doh

Clearly, it’s been a busy week.  : )

There are goats living down the street from us.  Not on the end by the freeway, fortunately for them, but on the other end by the convenience store.  There are two of them, and they wear collars.  I’m not sure who the belong to, but I saw them a few days ago on one side of the street grazing in an empty lot, and this morning on the way to school I had to wait for them to cross the road.  It was a little surreal.  I was wanting to move to a farm, and it seems that the farm has come to me!  (We also have a chicken next door, whose purpose is termite removal.)  More details on goat sightings as they become available.

…but here they are.  You might wonder what I’ve been doing with myself lately, since I clearly have not been posting here.  (Besides telling my Latin students that the preceding sentence is an example of an indirect question, and would require and accusative-infinitive construction in Latin.  If that doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry, it doesn’t mean anything to my students either.)  Here are a few pictures to help you imagine what we have all been up to.  I’m a little embarrassed by the blurriness, but I’m still figuring out these digital thingys.

The garden has been busy.  I don’t have a picture of the garden itself, but here are some of the things which were growing before we left for Baton Rouge and Easter:

Jalapeno, somewhat blurry, and much larger now, since this pic is a week old.

Strawberry, the only one we got to eat before the birds.  It was very yummy.

A rose and a flower whose name I forget, but it grew from hand-me-down Dollar Store seeds.  That’s hard to beat.

While we were in BR, Craig’s parents got Lucy a car to play with there, which happens to match JJ’s (next door) car.  They also enjoyed playing on the hammock.

While we were in BR we also picked up our first portion from the CSA we joined.  It was small, because it’s the start of the season, but we got lettuce, greens, turnips, and some herbs.  (My mother is wondering who hijacked her daughter’s blog…turnips???)  Craig almost immediately purchased a turnip at the grocery store for comparison, and the CSA turnips won by a landslide.  The herbs are pictured below.  Besides looking nice on the counter, the mint went to tabouli (or however you choose to spell it), the garlic chives (which were amazing) joined some mashed potatoes, and the oregano (somebody please tell me if that is not oregano – I didn’t ask!) is holding out for spaghetti tomorrow night.

Yesterday we got Samantha (or me?) a belated Easter present, so that she can swing with Lucy.  (And so that I don’t have to hold her while I swing Lucy.)  This required a trip to Wal-mart to use last Easter’s gift card.  I guess it is good for me to go every once in a while to remind myself why I hate going to Wal-mart.  But at least now we have a swing.  Lucy likes to swing Samantha, also.  And I’m sorry I haven’t figured out how to turn the picture.  You’ll have to turn your head, I guess.

So we’ve been busy, sort of.  I have also been sewing a little, indulging in gardening blogs (although if anyone knows a good one for this area, let me know, I keep finding people in England!), and trying to crawl out from under the never ending piles of laundry and dishes.  At least they’re seperate piles, I guess.  

Things to look forward to (I have much more to say than time to write at the moment):  from the reading list, I See Far; my new diet (and it’s not to lose weight!); more antics of Lucy and Samantha (who now has two teeth, did I mention that?); why heirloom vegetables are really, really cool, and much more.  Christos anesti!