American Cradle Catholic

Just Be Happy

2009-09-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

So, I have now completed the 10th day of my first 30 days of life coaching. Not training, but actually being coached. I should have already linked my website here, but I am not ready to share it with all my readers yet. In time...in time...when I know more about what I am doing.

So far, I have learned:

That I am often my own internal enemy, which causes me to take the wrong external decisions.

That I let other people's opinions define much of what I will and will not accomplish.

That I am great at adjusting to change, but I am not so great at remaining focused, taking care of myself, or starting and keeping good habits.

But this is changing, because now that I am a member of Compass and receiving coaching via my email inbox, and personally, from my coach via phone and email daily, I am understanding things I never did before. All those converts with the mentors, they know something. They know they need this in order to stick it out as a good Catholic. A successful Catholic.

Today, my husband and I faced a personal crisis that we, both, agreed really could and should be handled with grace. We had spent a good portion of last night preparing for it, dealing with it in our sleep, and then readying ourselves in the morning for whatever outcome God would allow.

I did not listen to my MAP (my daily five minute Compass coaching) to know what today's challenge was, but when I did, I would learn that it applied perfectly to what I needed to learn today.

The outcome, in the end, of the crisis was not quite as bad as we thought, but it was pretty undesirable none-the-less. It was totally unfair. It was unkind and should never have happened. But what can we do, my husband and I, about the actions of other people?

Not much.

So, together, we came to the conclusion that we should just handle this with every bit of grace God gives us, and not let the desperation of other people keep us from our goal of taking care of our family by serving God in the capacity in which He has commanded us to personally.

I write down a lot notes from my coaching sessions, but one today sharply embedded itself in my mind.

"The quality of your life is created by what you focus on."

In other words, your life is really only as peaceful, joyous, effective, as your ability to control your complaints about the actions of others. You can't control others - even horribly tyrranical dictators eventually learn this lesson.

So, we did the right thing, after all, I realized.

We know what we want for our life.

We recognized the obstacles when we saw them today.

We rejoiced when we realized God always provides a way out of crisis through that wonderful gift called "attitude".

But a lot of us are not too eager to change the attitude that has allowed us all our complaints, all our anger, given us justification for our unforgiveness or judgement, or that makes us eternally defensive. But it is such a prison to live outside of joy. And joy really is something you must choose. It doesn't just happen. It is what becomes of getting off the wheel of false belief that says, "You can have everything just the way you want it, if you just fight for control of all that is uncertain." That's like suggesting that unicorns will save you one day from higher taxes, for sure!

"It is so much easier just to be happy,"

Meryl Streep in One True Thing by Anna Quindlen (Great book. I highly recommend it. The movie is even better.)

The Post That Was Here

2009-09-18T10:52:00.001-07:00

There was a post here, but it was too long. I will tackle the subject in shorter form after some coffee, a walk with the dog, and a good book. Or maybe...if you read it, you were lucky and something else will inspire me soon enough.

October 17th!

2009-09-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

I just want to remind you, Miss Thang...because I know you always read my blog.

A Favor?

2009-09-16T11:18:00.001-07:00

Hey pals...if you are bored today and want natural health articles to read...short ones...click on my profile below (in two places) and check out some of my work at Associated Content. It seems my page hits have dwindled with my lack of activity (ever since the newspaper promised such large successes).

Anyway...click here to view me and choose whatever is interesting. Seriously, just click:)

I will be forever grateful.

2009-09-16T11:16:00.001-07:00

Tiffani Burnett-Velez's Contributor Profile - Associated Content

http://www.associatedcontent.comuser/130961/tiffani_burnettvelez.html

Give Me a Break

2009-09-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

I have some issues with bloggers who get a lot of praise from sappy women who knit.

True story.

I read some amazing blogs where women tell of their conversion stories, their dedication to healthy living, surviving horrible bouts with cancer, or just living day to day as a stay at home mom and wading through all the physical and emotional strain that can produce.

However, I immediately recoil when their groupie-type readers continually respond with unending praise, even for crappy posts or posts that could bore the paint off a light post. When I write poorly, one of my most valued gifts from my dedicated readers is their singular act of ignoring me.

I used to take this personally, but now I take it as constructive criticism: Post too long, Post too deep for a Chocolate Cake Friday, Post too boring and they stopped reading even when I was still impressed. Post just really not all that interesting to my readership.

Why do others not get this? Why do lonely people want to follow them around crying aloud, "I love you like your words are my big bowl of ice cream on a sad day!"

So, why do these often brilliant bloggers accept so much fluff and wet kisses?

"Oh! You are so brilliant Belinda Blogger! You have such tremendous insight into the ugliness of human nature! How did you keep your pristine spirit so snow white all these years in the coal black world of lust and sin??!!"

Many a moment I have erased my words, "What a load!"

There is no way these people cry over the lost soul of Adolf Hitler while they were sewing their husband's organic cotton underwear in their secret missionary hut.

Come off it! (When I am sickened by mushy kissee-poo talk between virtual admirers/real life strangers, I get a British accent in my mind and insult intelligently).

And lonely lurkers with starry eyes, you should start your own blogs. I imagine your lives are far more interesting than you think. You can link the whole big fat world with this Internet thing. It's a fun ride. Spilling your stupidity for all mankind to examine from the comfort of their messy computer desk at work.

Duh!

2009-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Manischewitz!

All those who know me, know that this is my all time favorite made-up Yiddish swear word. I love to spend time using it when I am really irritated. It makes one instantly feel better.

Today, I am irritated.

We were supposed to have watched the house go to sale tomorrow, but mercifully, the date was rescheduled so that the mortgage company can jockey with the investor who wants to buy the place. Good news. It looks like our house will sell after all.

So the sheriff (who never bothered to notify us of the old date) rescheduled the threatened foreclosure and came by our home when we were not there today to give us the info - at the old house. My brother lives there now full-time. He relayed the message. The sheriff is willing to meet us up at the old house, or even just have us come down to the courthouse. HOWEVER...

My husband calls the sheriff and invites him to come to our new home in the middle of town, where everyone knows us, where people actually just randomly stop by because they heard rumor we live here, where tourists pass all day long, and those who don't know us are just now coming to the conclusion that we are okay. The sheriff even suggested that we could just pick up the papers.

But he is inviting the sheriff here with his car and his blazing lights.

Thank you, husband.

He wonders why I do not like this idea.

I post it because, Manischewitz!, it makes me mad and this concept severely confuses him. But I know, out there in cyberworld, many women will understand my extreme irritation at this and will understand me.

Someone should understand this, right?

I do not speak with him today. He makes his own dinner.

When in Rome...

2009-09-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

Missed the Divine Liturgy today.

Colds. The whole crew.

But, on my sloppy walk with my happy dog - coughing and sneezing in between stanzas, I sang the appropriate Roman song for the Eastern Feast I missed,

Lift high the Cross,

The Love of Christ proclaim,

Till all the world

Adore His Sacred Name!

And I sang it just loud enough to be disturbing to the few who walked the sidewalk with me and Dixie-Lou. While I wait for Divine Liturgy to arrive again this coming Sunday, I will attend Mass in the Roman half of my Church during the week and on Saturday. I said to my dog today, "The longer I live, the more ticked off I get at whimpy Catholics, the more Catholic I become. Isn't it wonderful that I can take the Eucharist East or West?!"

She licked a tree.

I think I have become that annoying lady who doesn't realize when her half of the conversation is no longer interesting - at least - with Dixie.

American Dreams

2009-09-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I know, for sure, that the American dream is not what everyone tells me it is.

That it is much more like the version for my great great parents when they were coming across the Atlantic in 1892, huddled on the lowest level of a steamer leaving the Danube for America.

It is not about convenience and money and career and good looks and smelling like roses and knowing that I "deserve it all".

That it is about the freedom just to be who I was created to be, to worship without fear, to buy and sell freely, to not live under the thumb of a harsh dictator. I have always know this was "it", but I always assume that maybe I am not as smart as so many others, and so this time when I said, "yes," to buying a new big, home, I gave in and adapted to the contemporary version of the Dream.

Never again will I confuse lust with love; house with home.

Now that I have lost the house I lusted for, I have rediscovered my home.

When I first moved to the East Coast in 1992, a hundred years exactly after Sarah-Ruth and David-Jakob Borgos moved to the Lower East Side, I demanded that my father take me to New York where he had visited his mother's family several summers as a kid. The first thing I did in New York was to take a picture of my feet on the docks off Ellis Island.

"Now, I am standing in your footsteps," I whispered to my brave grandmother who did more than I could ever be capable of - leaving older children behind to give younger ones a better future, marrying an abusive man twice her age just to satisfy Orthodox parents and eat better than a peasant, moving across the world to live in a land of plenty, but where plenty would only be available to her great great granddaughters one hundred years away.

This was her dream, to bless her offspring with whatever good America had to offer. It had to be better than pogroms and Czars and angry-fisted Kaisers.

As I unwrapped the picture I have of Ellis Island this morning, where my great grandparents stepped off a creaking wooden ship, I stopped and brushed the heavy layer of dust off it, and thought to myself, "Now this is how it is. I have a roof, and a family, and a church whose bells ring loudly across my street three times a day, and a free public library, and education for my children...and I have the freedom to make mistakes without really suffering on the scale so many other citizens of other less compassionate nations do.

I used to display this picture proudly in my kitchen before I moved to a house where there was no room with all the cabinetry. This time, with the slightly crooked slant of the ceiling, as happens in old and long-lived in homes, I hung it up above my baking table, next to my picture of the birch tree forest in spring.

I feel better leaving the snobby neighborhood behind.

I feel better not having to worry anymore about tall grass where snakes wander.

I feel better that there are people on my street who keep an eye on each other.

I feel better not having to drive my children up and down the mountain in so much snow, having to worry about them playing the same forest where coyotes and bear wander freely and frequently.

I feel better now, because I don't live in the house everyone else insisted I must buy in order to be happy.

I was already happy. It was all the others who were not happy, and so they pushed hard for me to finally financially tax myself as much as all of them. They just could not accept my no, and I apparently, did not know how to express it loud enough.

No, I don't need central air.

No, I don't need a giant yard for my children to play in.

No, I don't need wall to wall carpeting, a huge deck, a four car garage (seriously, this is how many cars we have gotten in our garage at one time).

That old twin in town that I had begged for, this one was better.

The house with the really cheap mortgage and fraction of a yard, that was just fine.

The house without the dishwasher, it would have been okay.

What is right for me, is not right for you. I have learned this lesson in the loss of this house.

What is truly right for my children is always right for their mother.

Love you, friends and family, but your house is selling to a very low bidder on Tuesday. Say your goodbyes to the convenience of our central air and our big yard and our country like setting.

Because it is nearly all finished now...

the understanding of that American dream my great great grandmother had for me -the one that can only be created by immigrants who had so much less in the past.

It's amazing the thick film of dust our modern American "needs" can leave on the good sense of our ancestors.

How my great great grandmother worked from home before opening her boarding house and kosher restaurant. This is the original work-at-home American experience - brading rugs and slaving with textiles to sell on the street corner in the Lower East Side.

True Story!

2009-09-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

I got an email from one of the editors at AC yesterday. My bonus was nice this quarter. Not even just my initial payments for my articles, but my bonus. It's not like I could buy that Cadillac or anything, but it means I can buy a really big bag of chips!

Yay me!

They asked me for three stories in two days. I said yes, mostly because I am fairly addicted to writing things. Any things.

I will direct you to them all. Each lovely (or creepy - cause Halloween in coming) piece.

And I have five articles (not including township meetings - which are quite soap opera in their own way) coming up in my newspaper shortly.

I will direct you there as well.

Enjoy your Sunday.

I have a nasty cold, flu or something like that. We, as a family, have been able to say no to so many undesirable social events, because of the H1N1 scare..."Can't help you with that thing, pal. We have the flu, or something like it."

Bingo. Everyone emails. Except my pal, Tom, who I have already seen three times in town just this morning. I suppose I should have warned him. But there were no hugs or handshakes. Just waves and, "Hey, whasssup?"

So, hopefully, he remains unscathed.

Anyhoo...I know this post is completely about nothing, but I had more tea than coffee this morning. What do you expect?

2009-09-11T06:51:00.001-07:00

Kyrie Eleison

Christe Eleison

Kyrie Eleison

Get Beyond Your Story

2009-09-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful telephone meeting with my new life coach yesterday. She lives in California, where I grew up, and she spoke to several women and men and not just me. As she spoke I had to think of how wonderful and beautiful the day must have been in San Jose'.

Do you know the way to San Jose
I've been away so long...

The words kept ringing in my head. I closed my eyes and remembered the ocean. Not the Jersey Shore, the beautiful and rugged coast of the Pacific. Home. And I instantly had a nagging feeling that I may very well have walked far away from the person I used to be, who once - as a 16 year old - spoke to a panel of businessmen at a tobacco company about giving me money to take Bibles to Russia. Where had the girl gone who said, "God uses teenagers, because they are too young to doubt," ?

When had the fear of trusting God entered into my life? When had I stupidly decided that serving the will and temperament of people was so much better?

She asked us each a question about where we wanted to be. Everyone gave an excuse as to why it was everyone else's fault that they could not get there.

"My mom was pushy and vindictive when I was young...Still is...So I have to spend so much of my time just keeping her happy."

"I grew up in foster homes..."

"Everyone else is more successful because they have some magic ingredient I don't have..."

"I am afraid that I won't impress people."

(The last excuse was my own - but because I am an introvert, I kept it to myself and only volunteered that I now live in Pennsylvania).

"Everyone has a story," says the coach. "Get off your story and give your level best for once."

Interesting. If there was whining, I did not hear any.

Everyone does have a story, and I started to think about the people in my life whom I have had a problem with on a continual basis. But I could never quite pin down the issue that irritated me so fiercely. Then it hit me:

They all have tremendous, self-pitying stories that they love more than the life the were meant to live.

My story? It's that I always live other peoples' agendas. I help every little dog and pony show that comes along, hoping to high hope, that eventually if I make life comfortable enough for them they will have the ability to calm down and then, hear God's voice (instead of their own or their mother's/husband's/spoiled childrens') and start making excellent decisions for themselves. Maybe, I always think, they will stop whining to everyone in their path and stop taking so much energy from the lives of others. Energy they could be cultivating on their own.

This never works.

So, instead, I work on myself, and this is my conviction (and I circled it in red):

I want to live my life squarely for the purpose God created me for, and NOT according to everyone else's agenda and tightly held opinions.

I mean, this is what made me beg a group of tobacco salesmen for Bible money. They were my biggest supporters.

And guess what this instantly made me realize? That I am good enough to do this, because less of my story, means less of me, and more of Christ. And anything good in me, is really Him. So how can I lose in serving Him and not everyone else?

I am surrounded by an abundant amount of Grace through the Sacraments and prayer, through the mighty cloud of witnesses who intercede for my best, and through Christ directly in the Eucharist and just on a long walk where it is He, my dog, and me, my eternal desire to do the right thing. Although, on today's walk, I will struggle with my desire to live according to His purpose and not that of 50 other people.

And I must be good enough as I am, because as I am, Christ died for me - even though I was, yet, a sinner (and always will be).

"We did not come to be successful. We came to do the will of God." Blessed Mother Teresa on her ministry to the dying in Calcutta.

She could do anything, because her conviction was simply to serve Christ and leave all the success up to Him. Now that's a story worth listening to.

I serve Him alone, and He will handle how successful I am at anything I do. That really takes a load off it all. Makes the little rat wheel, I have been running on, stop spinning for mother, sister, brother, and friend.

So, here is my question for all my wonderful, brilliant readers: Are you living God's purpose for you? If your life sincerely sucks, is tremendously consumed with schedules and stress, if you do not know how to even answer this question...Chances are, you don't know your purpose, and maybe, you don't even know God.

And you can know Him and intimately. In fact, whether or not we know Him determines whether or not we spend eternity with Him.

Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."

This is what I said to the tobacco salesmen.

Through the Prayers of the Theotokos, Save Us!

2009-09-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

Today is the Nativity of the Theotokos, and since I am such a bad Eastern Catholic in my ignorant Roman state, I forgot about it. Sometimes I wonder what my great grandmother would have done. But I think I know the answer. She would have gone to church. There should have been a mental hint for me - Immaculate Conception is December 8th...so Nativity of the Theotokos is September 8th.

Why did I not connect the eights?

(Bless me, father, for I have sinned...It's still the only way I know how to go to confession)

I have no Theological insights to impart, no apologetics to share. I have only this to say...

Without her, the Blessed Mother, the Theotokos, I would not have a voice with which to pray in the morning when I committ my children to God. And I would not hear Our Lord as clearly if His Mother was not nudging me when I am bitter or distracted and I begin to turn away...

"Do as He tells you"

I love her more than I could ever express. Without my heavenly Mother, I would not know Christ as He intends to be known. I would not have known to seek Him with all my heart. I could not have know Him if she had not said,

"Be it unto me as you have said," and then welcomed, with human hands, Emmanuel, the One who would save His people from their sins.

"Your nativity, O Mother of God, heralded joy to the whole universe, for from you rose the Sun of Justice, Christ our God, taking away the curse, He imparted the blessings, and by abolishing death, He gave us everlasting life." - Troparion, Liturgy of the Nativity of the Theotokos

Flying and Such

2009-09-08T06:46:00.001-07:00

It is a Tuesday that is more like a Monday today, so I have very few words of wisdom. I can only "report" my latest adventures in living.

I have become more organized. This should impress my irritating friends who love office supplies (my sweetheart is one of these people, so don't feel targeted if you are irritating with your neat little notepads and obsessive need to clean).

I have signed on with Compass as a client and a rep (because if I happen to pass along this great life coaching service, I want the dough for having done it), and I love it.

It is so simple. Fifteen minutes a day is all it requires, and really, it only takes about ten total. I log into my daily MAP. Listen to the pep talk about sucking it up and learning how to dump the excuses (they intelligently call "learned helplessness"), to admit that most of my fears are quite ridiculous and keep me from the sort of success I want, and to make a daily plan to strive for. If one leaves things to chance, chance will happen. Or as some say, **it happens without a pen, paper, and some basic, simple articulation of how I want my priorities directed.

Now, the organizers in my world will suggest that they have everything it takes to achieve all, because they are clean and neat and obsessive. But hold on, Nelly. Really? Is that why your kids are all running away and your husband ignores you?

Yes, cleany. You too have issues. And you need help. Do you ever organize your spiritual life? Actually live for God on purpose and with a specific goal in mind?

Yeah. Thought you were perfect, huh?

Anyhoo...I am just on Day 2 of my map, and I am figuring out how to manage my Compass website (will reveal that soon), so that I might invite my pals to learn how to make people listen to them better, how to assert oneself more effectively, and how treat their husbands and wives with a modicum of love and respect.

And little old creative-brained, scattered-thought me gets to learn how to use a day planner and make use of all these ingenious thoughts I keep inventing and then turning over to others.

"Papa! Watch me fly!" (It's from Yentl. Which reminds me...I have to pencil in that two hour political phone debate/mystery book review with my Daddy for later today)

It's a Beautiful Day

2009-09-04T05:25:00.001-07:00

"It's a beautiful day today, Mommy!"

This was the greeting my 3 year old Mikey would give to me every morning, no matter the weather. In the midst of a blizzard, a torrential rain, a bright summer day, he thought everything was beautiful and I should be happy, and if I wasn't, he would work hard to find a reason for complete happiness...for me. And I didn't ask him of this. Nor did I need it. What I discovered I needed though, was this sweet little spirit that roamed about my messy house, contented and pleased simply to be part of the joy that flowed through his family. A joy he was then, and is now, still a grand and gracious part of.

All the greatest parenting experts say you shouldn't be your childrens' friend. But I can't help it with this one. He is what my Jewish grandmother would call a "mensch". He is a friend (even if he is one who has to wash the dishes at night, help his littlest brother get pants on in the morning, and take the dog out for walks. Even if he is my son to whom I must teach discipline, he so much still my friend).

Michael's goal in life is to bring honor to those he respects. I know this more than I know most things. He is pleased when we are pleased. But what he doesn't realize is that - even when he disagrees with us - we are happy, because he is Michael and he is ours.

Michael is the kind of kid who teachers have school conferences about just because they want to thank his parents for allowing him to be part of their class. True story. I have had, at least, three teachers say this to me.

I arrive to conferences all messy-haired and unshowered and a suited teacher is shaking my hand, not because of me, but because of the kid I send off to school each day.

When my good friend, Catholic School Sister, was eating lunch with a friend of hers who happens to be Michael's junior high football coach, he suddenly brightened up at Michael's name and said,

"He is a great kid! Tell his parents they are doing something right."

But it is only part our doing and a large part Michael's. A complete part Our Lord's doing. Michael is a hundred times the human being I was at his age. Already, he has more integrity than me in many ways. He challenges me to be a better person, because he is already a better person than I am. He won't just be something great as an adult. He is something great now, and I love him more than the sunshine of a beautiful day. After all, the first truly beautiful day of my life was the late afternoon in early September, the moment he was born.

His father held him in his arms until he they both fell asleep snoring.

His first cry was, "Maaaaa! Maaaaaa!" And I will never let him live that one down.

When he was getting his three year old check up, he turned to his pediatrician, Dr. Meehan, and asked curiously, "Are you Irish, Dr. Meeman, because you look Irish."

"Send this one to Harvard," Dr. Meehan said, and he genuinely lights up whenever he sees Michael at his yearly check up. They chat like old pals.

When I invited friends to offer Michael a word of spiritual and life advice for his 13 birthday (which I am collecting for his scrapbook I will be giving him tonight), without any exceptions every single participant was excited to offer Michael their words. I think, because most of them know that Michael will be excited to read them, be open to heeding them, and will look forward to living a life of great character.

He is just that kind of kid, and he is 13 now. A teenager. I look forward to discovering the young man he will become.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MIKEY!

You make my every day beautiful.

(He will be so embarrassed if he reads this:) I should send it over the loud speaker at his school...It will produce what we in the family call, "Michael's Russian Smile".

Grains, God, and Politics

2009-09-03T13:40:00.001-07:00

You know how you can tell if a new lifestyle is actually working for you? When you naturally and easily become frugal towards the unnecessary things you always insisted you "needed" even if you already had several of them at home. When you make simplicity a virtue with pure adrenaline-hyped rewards.

The night before last, I finally gave into this wild craving all day that I had been having for vanilla ice cream. For people who know me, they know that I generally do not like ice cream. I don't like milk and milk products. I rarely even desire milk shakes. So, whenever I get this craving - about three times a year - I give into it. I headed to the grocery store for a small container of vanilla ice cream. I don't usually even want the loaded stuff. But I figured, and maybe even stupidly, that I am now finally absorbing iron via supplements (though I might still need an infustion) and vitamin D via the daily walks in the sunshine. So maybe my weirdo body is now even wanting some calcium that, for once, it may not dump in the form of kidney stones into my kidneys. It was just a thought...

As I was passing by the magazine rack, the book nerd (and addict) in me noted all the great new issues with pictures of neatly carved pumpkins on the cover. "Easy Autumn Stews!", "50 Great Kids Costume Ideas!" "Trick or Treat Treats That Will Drive the Little Goblins Crazy!"

Can you tell I freelance these ridiculous things for a living?

In the past, the recent past, I would have grabbed one of those senseless magazines in one of my weakened sleepy stupors, because the colors, the words themselves, and the mental picture of a healthy mother with enough energy to carve Halloween pumpkins with her children was momentarily inspiring. But I would have never done what was demonstrated in the picture. Too tired. I would have, instead, let my kids cut up the $5.00 magazine for some lonely rainy day craft, and the mess would sit for a day or so, because I would be too tired to clean it, and too tired to insist that they do it. The latter takes much more energy. And I would have ended up with a small, but powerful, stab of guilt when my husband finally cleaned up the mess himself, complaining quietly that I let the kids "run all over" when I get too tired to control their creative endeavors in the kitchen.

But this time, because I finally had my energized wits about me, I walked straight past the covers saying to myself, "That's a cute idea. I will see if I can find something similar on a free craft site on the Internet."

See? Wits. Energy. Natural simplicity.

I have spent nearly a week now briskly walking my dog for 45 minutes a day, avoiding bagels and whole grain breads, and it has completely changed my life. I have not told anyone outside of the readers on my blog, and yet, neighbors and friends who have seen me throughout town will stop their cars spontaneously, rolled down their windows and yell, "Have you done something different lately? You have so much great color in your face?"

Someone else said, "I love your energy!"

I don't think those words have been uttered about since the early nineties, if ever.

My own sister doesn't know my new blog address (a clerical error on my part that I have yet to correct), but she saw me today walking the dog down the main street of our busy town and she said, "You look great! What's going on? Vitamins or something?"

Then I tell people I just stopped eating wheat.

"Meat? Me too! Vegetarian," they say proudly pointing to themselves.

"No, no. I am not a vegetarian," I reply. "I am not eating WHEAT."

There is usually a heavy confused blinking and then another, "Oh..." No one seems to be able to wrap their head around this one even though it is quite common in this world. But I guess just not in my little hippie town.

I can already see how others around me are wanting in on this new "energy". I have begun to have the wherewithal to schedule my own time, to say no to people who are doing things I cannot do or are not interested in. I have begun to make my reading time a staple again - though only for about 15 minutes. I go to bed with the idea that sleep makes one feel better and not just the same as going without adequate sleep might make someone feel. Before, sleeping never mattered. I was always asleep anyway. I slept for longer times than I do now, but without absolutely any benefit when I ate oatmeal every morning.

I drink maybe one cup of coffee a day. I still love it. I just don't need it as much. Though I still need it. It is part of my morning routine.

How to keep this goal moving along?

This was my only concern. I have no issues motivating myself. All alone in a silent, dark room I can come up with an action plan and an inspiring self-directed speech. But when it is a chronic fatigue and poor immune system you are fighting, how do you stay on track?

I was searching for an answer to a vitamin question the other night when I came across a life coaching company. Very cool. I never thought I needed anything like that. Always wondered how these converts to Catholicism and Orthodoxy got all these "mentors" and "spiritual fathers, sisters,donkeys" etc...But I inquired, got to talking to one of the coaches who stopped me before our conversation ended and said, "Your life inspires me. It is not often I feel that about a client."

Interesting.

I am going to do it though. I am getting one of those mentors the eager, shiny-eyed converts always get. Only I am going to do so with the intention of possibly becoming one myself some day, if I can come up with more than, "Stay Away From Dinner Rolls And Change Your Life Forever!". This particular company is looking for a qualified female coach of the Catholic persuasion. They already have many other churches represented. And now is a great time for the lack-luster spiritual interior life of many Catholics in the Northeast to be challenged a bit. We'll see how this goes...This company is not expensive at all and is just starting. Quite affordable and, I predict, quite worth the guidance. I need a push and some clarity where I might not get it from friends and family. Everyone who knows me now has always known me tired - from college to the present. How can they imagine for me the Tiffani with an energetic future when they are quite happy with the slow-footed Tiffani of days past?

It is amazing what a lack of wheat can do. It is amazing how finally following the path, you know that you know, God wants you to follow can change even your energy level and eventually just spill out into other areas of your life. It's great to know who you really are when you aren't falling asleep between stop signs. It's great to know that I can come up with statements like the one I came up with in the grocery store the other day when someone asked me if I was a conservative,

"Yes, but I am an American first. Sometimes conservatives are as ridiculously hardcore as the rainbow colored left can be. Really, they are just two sides of the exact same gaudy coin that isn't negotiable anywhere. My Right doesn't look anything like Reagan's anymore. It's all ideology and no common sense."

The spittin' Right grew silent and the teeth-gritted Peace Lover in the room, both, turned away from me in disgust. I knew I felt satisfied, because I was just being me.

Now see? That's the swift thought of a woman who hasn't eat grains all day.

Growing Up

2009-09-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, I put my tiny little baby on a bus and watched him ride off to kindergarten. He was so excited, holding his big sister's hand tightly - slightly alarmed, but much more eager than afraid.

He came back nearly seven hours later more excited than when he had left. I had committed him (and all my children) to the Sacred Heart several times throughout the day, begging Our Lord, all His mighty angels, the Blessed Mother, St. Nicholas, Pope John Paul the Great, etc...generally all holy dead people I could think of, to look after my littlest man who has the greatest desire, of just about any human being I have ever seen, to learn absolutely everything he can from morning bus to the afternoon one.

I wait for him and my daughter by reading a Mauve Binchy book on the steps of an old historical building in town - just at the site of the afternoon school bus stop. Whitethorn Woods, and I try to distract myself from my restless excitement to hold their hands again. It's the same excitement I feel when awaiting my middle son's school day. That moment when he become thrilled at having accomplished something new - a challenge he didn't even know he would have. And it's the same when I am waiting for my oldest to come out of the locker room from football practice. He's so big! I say to myself. Once he was like you in kindergarten, I say to my youngest who is, by then, already asleep in his booster seat, knocked out from a day in kindergarten.

My daughter now frequently borrows my clothes, has "girl movie nights" or checks out books just for us to read together. Already, she has dismissed school cliques as "being for snobs and people afraid of personality." Smart one, I say tapping my head.

"Enjoy them while they are young," said an old woman to me as I walked them to the corner for ice cream the other night. "They grow up so fast."

No, ma'am. I think I actually enjoy them every year, every day, just as they are. Young, growing, and old - they are amazing. I have great kids, and I love them completely.

Thought For Your Motivated Day

2009-09-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

Got something you know must get done on a regular basis for good living?...Found this Aristotle quote today. I am already a huge fan, but hey, this quote was new even for nerdy old me:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but, a habit. Aristotle

Goals That Actually Work...

2009-09-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

So last week, while I was preparing for my youngest's first day of kindergarten, watching my oldest move over to the local high school for junior high and become a teenager, guiding my daughter on her new 4th grade adventure, and looking forward to teaching my homeschooled son another year...I could hardly stay awake inside the car as I waited to pick my brother up from work. It seems I have all these things to do for other people, but I cannot even shower myself most days without an immense lead time for rest afterward.

"How am I going to make it to 50?" I said out loud. Truly. How can one person, so consistently fatigued, survive anything? It is like being perpetually in the first stage of pregnancy or wearing an xray jacket around all day while washing dishes, driving the car, and walking the kids to the bus stop.

Maybe it sounds extreme, but that is because you have never been perpetually exhausted. Maybe you have only known such fatigue (the kind that makes you literally collapse) when you have just given birth or have a nasty form of the flu. But I have felt like this on a daily basis most of my adult life - which is why I rarely answer the phone or keep commitments to leave my home. Most of us have felt this kind of literal fatigue, but not most days of our lives.

So, I decided last week (begged God really) to show me a better way. A way that all my brilliant doctors over the years have never discovered. I don't need a secret plan for the entire universe. Just a way for my own body to work properly. Medical professionals have never considered fatigue an issue, while Social Security gives checks to millions in the US every year, because of this kind of clinical fatigue. What the heck causes it? Conventional medicine will long say they have no idea, and truly they don't care. Behind the fatigue is a massive amount of drugs. But I don't take them - they don't work anyway. I just wanted God to show me a way to aquire just enough strength to be normal and not 80 years old inside a 35 year old body. Truly. I can settle fine with normal every day tired that most people feel after a hard day's work.

I grabbed the only available piece of paper inside the purse my mother gave me for Christmas, and I started writing cryptic, messy goals in a red felt marker. What have I got to lose?

The first thing I was going to do was to stop eating wheat and to begin taking the supplements and vitamins I never naturally absorb. More than 80% of the immune system is located in the intestines. If you are not absorbing there, then something is "off", and it is usually (about 90% of the time) an allergy. The most typical allergy is to wheat or eggs. I know I don't have an egg allergy, because when I eat them, I am temporarily normal. It is after the toast when I feel drugged. If I feel awake after avoiding wheat, chances are...I am actually beginning to absorb some of the nutrients I am purposefully taking. Normally, I just dump them.

So far, so very good. I have actually been awake for the last three days or so. I have taken long walks Saturday (needing a nap afterward), Sunday (not needing a nap, but a cup of coffee), Monday (needing neither nap nor coffee, and actually washing the dishes and baking a pie afterward).

My next couple of goals was to find a way to afford my vitamins better. I think I have done that. I order them wholesale when I am not being lazy and begin to refill them just before I run out. I have invited a few friends to order with me, so we can all get a nice discount on the every day stuff - like vitamin C, calcium, and kids vitamins - that we all use. So far, so good...

Then, I decided that even if I could not coordinate the standing up properly, I would exercise - by walking - every day for 30 minutes. This is a real commitment for me. Sometimes, I cannot even walk to the kitchen to refill my morning coffee cup. I am so glad I no longer have an infant in the house. I could not even care for my youngest when he was born without medical professionals helping me in my home all day. And when they left, friends and family had to even help feed me. I don't want to go back to that kind of anemia and fatigue ever again. And I am hoping to avoid more iron infusions after this next one, because maybe just maybe I will actually retain what I have been given via IV.

So far, so good...with the above efforts.

I also turned my debit card over to my husband, because when I am overly tired, I cannot cook properly and so I order easy to cook food or I give into the junk food junkies in my house, and I allow them to order out. This time, I can't do that. So, I work within the budget I am regimented with when I have the energy. I have decided that if I really want something, I have to live as though I am already there. I crock pot everything like I have an amazing physical list of activities to complete by the end of the day, because one day, I will have the energy to complete them again.

And lastly, I have decided that I want to complete my degree in natural health. I will start slow - with certifications first, and by begging friends to let me use their health issues as case studies while I learn...offering them free vitamins and daily really good smelling cups of nutty tea. That part has only arrived in a small sliver of excitement on the horizon so far, as I need the capital and organization skills to keep me focused on my educational goals.

What is amazing to me, is that, since we found out we were losing the house, I have begun repeating the phrase to God, "You are just going to have to surprise me, Lord." And He does. Everytime. It is as if this is what He really wants to do. Or maybe, I have just finally melted into that part of Sacred Scripture that says He will give me the desires of my heart. Perhaps, after all this sleepy suffering, He has created the desire to get better, so I can help others in much worse shape.

Imagine that. Who knows?

I will keep you updated. Off to teach the first day of homeschool now, and to prepare a gluten free afternoon and a long walk with my obese dog who currently has human-imposed weightloss and etiquette goals.

So Far, So Good...

2009-08-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

So far, so good...with the lack of wheat thing. Turns out, when I don't eat it, I am not as tired. When I don't eat it, I don't even miss it. The only time I was tempted was when I ate a chocolate brownie at Through the Looking Glass today. Well, just part of one. Really only a bite.

But even with that, my middle of the day immobility arrived at 2pm instead of 12pm, and more as an afternoon sleepiness and not a weird sudden near-paralyzation.

It has been three full days of no wheat, and I can actually feel the difference. I said to Leonarrrrrrdo this morning, while sitting out on our front porch, "I feel like something has snapped for me."

"I felt like you snapped a long time ago," he replied back sipping his French Roast coffee.

"No! That's not what I mean!" I insist. "I mean, that I feel like something has changed. Like I am still tired, because I have no iron, but that I am not nearly as tired as I was three days ago."

"Oh, that kind of snapping. Yeah, you look different."

I have no huge allergy puff eyes when I awaken in the morning. I actually awake before most in my family and make the coffee. Three days in a row, I got up before the kids even knew there was yet a morning, and I showered! True story. In the past, I had been told that I did not have Celiac Disease, and therefore, not a "wheat problem". But I asked my doctor last week, "Could I just have a wheat allergy and not a complete intolerance to digesting wheat? I mean, my immune system is fighting something so hard that I cannot absorb basic nutrients anymore. Just like a person with Celiac Disease."

"Why not?" he asks. "Definitely why not. It makes sense."

And then I wonder why the heck they end up making so much money...

The truth remains to be seen. But I have contacted a specialist in CFIDS (look it up), and I have been given a list of supplements that I need to infuse into my daily routine every day in order to gain more strength.

Again, so far so good. I notice a difference. I have slept much more soundly, and since I have begun this no-wheat-thing, I have not been awakened in the night with terrible leg cramps that last 15 minutes or more. This time, I sleep all night long and wake relatively pleased that the sun has risen.

I already take vitamins every day, as I don't absorb a good portion of them in my normal food intake, but I have also incorporated a few interesting sounding ones now too, and I have seen a difference. What's significantly different is that I no longer crave weird things like carrots and raw broccoli or copious amounts of citrus fruit.

I have long had a sincere passion for medicinal herbs and homeopathy. I found both to work - the former with greater and often a faster lead time than the latter. But homeopathy always rids me of a cold, sinus infections, and respiratory problems much faster than even conventional methods. When I was in high school, I continued to get tonsillitis when I first moved to Central PA. My father had lost his job and my mother did not have anymore money in the budget for another co-pay. So she pulled out her homeopathy kit and gave me some little white soluble pills in decreasing amounts for three days. Within three days, the tonsillitis was completely gone and I never had any pain from it. I have nearly always had this kind of success with homeopathy.

So, once again, I have embarked on a study of it. Informally right now, but soon, I am going to finish that health care degree but from a "natural" angle. Perhaps, my discovery of dangerous grains will also now start to rid me of kidney stones.

Who knows? It has been only three days, but I have more proof of longevity with some of these "natural" methods than with other conventional prescription ones that have always made eager doctors drool when they promise me, "a sure fire way to get your energy back, dissolve all kidney stones, make childbirth painless, cure infections in 72 hours, knock off a migraine within 30 minutes, kick vertigo straight, and keep strep throat out of the system forever!"

They are about as reliable as a politician's promise not to raise taxes even if they come in, both, generic and name brand. Conventional medicine saves lives every day, but it is also often just a rich lobbyist's snake oil. So I don't care that most people who have never been seriously and chronically ill might think herbs and supplements are "unproven". So is God, but I strive hard to throw myself completely into His limitless care and I am encouraged to do so by millions of people who have never seen His face nor heard His voice in a readily available and audible voice. Sometimes the answer to things comes only through trial and silent expectation.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 1:11

Much more saintly and deserving people have wished for far nobler and important, impossible and ridiculous things than my wish to have energy like all the other 35 year olds I know. I think, maybe this time, I walk on the right path.

Imagine If!

2009-08-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

I went to see my doctor for a follow-up visit for the shingles infesting my ear (sounds creepy, huh?) this past week.

"I am recovering from my old lady chicken pox, but what I really want is to not see you for, at least, 6 months. I don't want to come in here with my normal fall bronchitis or my December strep throat, and more than absolutely anything at all - I do not want to be tired anymore! My baby just went to kindergarten, my little girl is in 4th grade, my homeschooler wants to learn a sport this year, and my oldest is playing football and starting junior high! I don't want to be too tired to experience their lives anymore!"

He agreed that this sounded quite sane and reasonable, as I tugged on my ear and screamed a little bit (Shingles are tiny very painful recurring chicken pox). I told him that my neuro was sending me into the cancer center for another iron infusion, because I have virtually none in my body suddenly and again. He already knew this. I told him that I wanted to be one of those normal people who just naturally absorbs iron from their Saturday afternoon steak. He agreed that, this too, is very normal to want and a much more normal physical state to be in than I usually am.

So, for one of the few times in my weirdo medical history, I have taken my own care into my dystonia fingers.

"I think I might have a wheat allergy," I said to my doc.

"Why?" he asked.

I have him all the pertinent reasons (which he agreed in his nerdy doctor way are all quite medically sound), and I then informed him that I am embarking on research and heavy self-medication through vitamins, minerals, walking the dog, etc...as is safe.

"Sounds fine to me," he said. "Just let me know what new vitamins you begin to take and who you are getting them from. Some aren't all that good."

But what I have discovered is that every time I take vitamins, with the exception of iron, I absorb them fairly quickly even with the every day drugstore supplements. But I do much better with high quality ones.

For years now, I have wanted to finish my degree, but in natural health. I tried to get my BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) a couple of times, but got sick in the middle of my way up and had to quit about 1/4 of the way there. It was the all the holistic and natural health classes I loved the most though, while other student nurses found dissection or labor and delivery infinitely fascinating. For me, though, it was learning all I could about the true effects of homeopathy (if any at all), and how an herbalist might get better results in a child with ADHD than Ritalin might in some instances. And so last year, around this time (when I was feeling slightly better for about an hour), I applied to a rather prestigious natural health college, but got too sick to enter. They continue to invite me, and the counselor I spoke with sends me tips on energy retainment nearly every week.

"This worked for me, but it might be different for you," he tells me. "Just keep trying. Something will work eventually, even if standard medicine cannot."

Now, I have this insane goal to finally get healthy (God knows I have tried a million fruitless times in the past) and if I can do it (with Our Lord's help), teach others and finish the degree I have been starting over and over again for a decade now (that this really already a masters but completely non-cohesive).

Like Miss Thaeda would suggest in her shrinky way, I even wrote down my goals. True story. And now I pray my gluten-free living for the next few weeks works.

Already, the whey shake has given my quite a bit of energy today. But that could be adrenaline due to the prospect of health, and maybe just maybe...a life without the cancer center!

Imagine if!

Bar Harbor to Leave PA

2009-08-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

For everyone who lives around here...I have some sad information with a very slim silver lining.

My pal, Russ, is closing his very excellent used book store in the next couple of weeks, but everything is, at least, 50% off for a while.

If you are in my part of the world - google him and go shopping! You won't regret giving back to your community through this disappearing small business.

Bar Harbor Used Books

Almost Over

2009-08-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

For those of who have kept up recently, it has been one heck of a rough summer. Thank God for great books, Divine Liturgy, good pizza, buckets of coffee, vitamins, and friends. Lots of great friends who are really family without the genetic screw-ups.

Anyway, today, I met with an attorney to speak with him about this sudden foreclosure (less than 60 days from threat to actual sheriff sale) to see if there was anything we could really do. I was greeted at the door by a friendly Doberman who led me to an oversized fluffy leather couch where I immediately recognized the secretary and said, "I have seen you before!"

Turns out, I am friends with her identical twin sister - who I was just thinking of and praying for today over morning coffee. The secretary promised to relay my good wishes to her sister - my pal and her twin - as soon as she got home from work that night and could call her.

The attorney was friendly. He immediately shook my hand and said,

"You guys are doing the right thing. You have a strong payment history. You worked hard to keep your mortgage company informed of struggles you were having. You sought out certified financial counseling. You are very frugal. You are selling the home. There is nothing more for you to do," he said looking across the table from me. "And this should probably not be happening to you."

"But this is all happening so fast," I insisted. "Is that legal?"

He said it was, that the foreclosure is ocurring in record time, because it is the most economical response from the point of view of the mortgage company.

"This will effect your credit, but it won't rock it like some foreclosures would. It's not that kind of a foreclosure. It's not the end of the world, and it is clear that you have done all you can. That matters."

He gave me some more advice, shook my hand again, told me we would be okay, refused to take a dime for the consultation, and then wished me a great week. His dog followed me to the door and begged me to toss around a dog bone with him.

I drove home relieved.

It's almost over. It's not fun. It is not without a great amount of stress. It has been painful. I cried last night like some freak, because I realized we had a home that we will never be going back to. The home holds a lot of our memories over the past four years. That is all that hurts anymore. But even that is fading. I never knew I could muster up a backbone so fast, or rather, that Our Lord could create one in me just when I really needed it.

It really is All of Him and None of Me.

The attorney and his dog are right - there are more important things in life that the home that is soon no longer to be ours, and we did all we could. And we didn't neglect our responsibilities. Things just happen. And God always does All- which is so much more than our unperfected minds can fathom. So much more. The picture I see today is not the real picture. I see only a shadow of a shadow. A sliver of a color. But not the whole picture, and so I believe this to be about us surviving the shocking and sudden foreclosure of our house, but it is about even more than that. This is something big that has something to do with the salvation of our souls. Grace is the center of this experience. And that is all my small human brain can comprehend. And so I must trust that this was allowed for some much greater purpose.

All things work together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28

You lose some and you win some. I feel like we have won. We are together. We have friends. We can go to Church on Sundays and celebrate Movie Night in our new living room - rented to us by our dear friends who come down the street to give us zucchinis and tomatoes from their garden. And prayers. We have a ton of prayers surrounding us and they have encouraged us to pray even more. And through it all we have realized the much greater needs of others, and through Grace, we know we are saved - and not by anything else.

He has won, because He is and was and is to come, and what is not nearly as important is nearly over now...and life begins anew each day.

Lessons That Can Save a Life!

2009-08-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

I had a sudden and wonderful lunch with Catholic School Sister today. Comida Mexicana! It was great.

We were so excited to have the brief afternoon alone that we kept tripping over each other (well me mostly tripping in my big shoes) while making up our minds and then changing them again - regarding a lunch location. After lunch we wandered through town to shop and discovered this great quote on a plaque...

There are two theories about arguing with women.
Both are wrong.

I am purchasing this plaque for my husband to hang over his home office (and then to transport with him to work and to carry around his neck when he is home watching football and such).

It is a great lesson every man should WISELY learn.

Now!

Sisters of the Church - True Story!

2009-08-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

Definitions:

Cradle/Cradler - To be born into a faith. Example: A cradle Catholic or Orthodox never had to convert to Orthodoxy or Catholicism because they were born into their faiths.

Convert: An adult who converted to a new faith. Example: Too easy. No example needed.

Recently, I have been able to have a beautiful conversation with a cradle Orthodox about the Eucharist. It has been such a blessing to me, and to her. She is far from an Orthodox church where she lives and finds absolutely very little in common with her Bible Belt neighbors. Not that they are not kind to her, but they just do not fast regularly or use the words "liturgical season" very often. And she is unable to take the Eucharist very often, as she has only Catholic churches near her. The opposite of my recent predicament with Orthodoxy. Come to think of it, strangely, I have had this kind of very pleasant exchange with more than one cradle Orthodox recently - the inability to get to the Eucharist regularly, but not for lack of want.

I completely understand their pain, and what is cool, is that no other faith can fully grasp this kind of longing for the Eucharist.

This recent personal Orthodox/Roman conversation is significant, because I have had many a slap in the face from converts to Orthodoxy in the past couple of years. The converts don't mean to appear cruel. This is the convert's last intention. But this is the result of much of their anti-Catholic remarks.

AKA: Really Evangelicals in Eastern disguise.

Love them. Do not love the sharp Protestant smell their Fire and Brimstone approach often gives off at Mass (or Divine Liturgy), where they are always ready to correct the priest on his "watered down homily" or "wrong offering of the Eucharist". Not that they are incrrect. Most of the time they are 100% right. It's just that they talk like the return to what-should-be is so very simple and "duh!" and somehow their recent invasion has nothing to do with the push against Catholicism to embrace Vatican II. They were the ones who incouraged us to speak in tongues and instructed our small groups....Now when they convert, looking for the Early Church, they treat us like half-witted foreigners who think the statue of Mary in our living room does our laundry when we are asleep at night.

And I am certain that the Orthodox Church is forever grateful for their numbers as well and their sincere fervency. I know they have similar distress though. We Romans are grateful for their conversion as well, because they create all our apologetics material and our nifty websites and TV programs. And I think their constant desire to spread the Gospel even in the grocery store is what we Catholics need - seriously need. But it is not always easy having them in our ranks. We Romans get a little tired of their slappings of us. They have no other enemies. They are kind of like bitter drill seargants who just got demoted to train kindergarten failures.

The cradlers though - the Orthodox naturally - they have become some of my best "Catholic" pals. I say "Catholic", because as a Roman, we are to consider them part of the Church as well. They - officially in Constantinople and Moscow - may not consider us familia, but we consider them as such. Valid Sacraments and all. Legitimate and same Eucharist. The only other place where Christ is fully present in His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity.

Anyway, even when lifelong Orthodox say something that is contrary to Catholic teaching (not very often) it does NOT rub me even slightly the wrong way, as in this beautiful conversation I have had via email with a cradle Orthodox pal. I don't care when they disagree with me. It's never a problem.

We are sisters in the Church, and even though it may tick off a few old men in vestments in both of our worshipping locations, we refer to ourselves as such. We began in the exact same location 2000 years ago. We accept the same Eucharist each Sunday.

And we are the only ones who do.

So why did I not become Orthodox?

Because of all the darn Evangelicals who have invaded the place with their anti-Catholic ideas still fully, and sometimes even more ferociously, intact than before their conversion. This happens even in Roman Catholicism with Evangelical converts to Rome. True story.

They enter with the Evangelical belief that they are privy to some secret contract with Jesus that the rest of the world does not have. Even as Roman Catholics, they often treat cradle Catholics as though they are the ignorant slugs who need their Evangelical wisdom and intelligence imparted to them. It is often as though we original Romans are morons and the original Protesters are the geniuses of the Faith who have arrived to make everything better, shinier, and less "special ed". Now don't go sending me emails about making fun of special ed. I have a son with special needs, and this is exactly how I feel Evangelical converts to even my own Rome treat cradle Catholics: As though we are in need of a hand-holding when we cross the street to Mass.

"This is how it should be done, and now that I am here, I can explain it all to you. Thank God that my clear Evangelical thinking has been reluctantly dragged over to your slow Catholic thinking."

And they are often the bane of my Catholic existence. I guess this is the thing that "sends me to the bin" as my old pal, Fr. Straka would say, more than any other confessional item.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned in my angry thoughts toward the know-it-all Evangelical converts to Catholicism again..."

Father always sighs - any father - and says, "I know they are hard to deal with..." I have had more than one - Catholic and Orthodox - priest say to me, "Sometimes I am not certain they are always good for our future. Sometimes we spend a lot of time cleaning up the pain they cause in our parishes."

True story.

And I don't say this because I believe them to be evil or wrong or bad in their conversion. I want that everyone, even the Orthodox, can unite with Rome and become One Church again. I just think their personal lesson should be to leave the "holier than thou" former Evangelical attitude inside the bin where I leave my cradle Catholic "what's it to them!" fighting Irish anger management methods.

Not all converts are like this. Some come with the very pleasant attitude of, "What the heck is going on here? This is all totally new to me?"

Nice.

Because this means they are really Catholic or finally Orthodox. Because this is how the Saints were from the moment they began to serve Christ. Completely unworthy.

And this is the reason we Catholics drink so often, I am fully convinced. Not because we are these lovers of sin, but because we realize how little is in our control, how much bigger God is than our mediocre human existence, how much we fall short of even an inch of His glory. Again, our coping mechanisms are old world - 2000 year old world. We need instruction in this area, but we don't need the missal handed to us in a Dick and Jane reading fashion.

And so it has been really nice sharing emails from a cradle Orthodox - rouge sister of the Church - who has the same hang ups and trials as a dumb Roman might have. Nice. Refreshing like a huge water ice at a hot church festival in the dirty parking lot. She makes the converts so much easier to take in at a sudden Catholic Bible study.

New Stuff

2009-08-22T18:12:00.000-07:00

Regulars will notice the new gadgets and such on my blog. I had time on my hands tonight while my son and husband watched preseason football...I should be getting that article together for the paper....

Blessings From the Angels

2009-08-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, my husband was speaking candidly with a financial counselor - really by accident - and she recommended this great grocery ministry called Angel Food Ministries. It is not income based, and you can order as much restaurant quality foods you want each month for less than 50% the normal sale price. The whole idea is to fit the Gospel into a grocery box every month for a family interested in buying excellent groceries at a discount price.

Anyone who knows me knows that my greatest adrenaline rush comes from serving my family. I am completely "made" when I am baking something warm and buttery from scratch, or roasting citrus chicken one Saturday evening after the 4 o'clock Mass. Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning heralds in fresh everything - the biggest fast-breaking brunch the world has ever seen. These traditions come from my Catholic Italian stepfather and my Russian/Hungarian great grandmother who owned and operated her own boarding house and restaurant in Brooklyn, New York. Her genes are as strong in me as my stepfather's years of pasta cooking lessons were.

Early on in life I knew that I would be a writer but that, unless I became a mother and a wife, I would feel truly unfulfilled. I realize this is not everyone's vocation, but I knew it was mine. And so each time I roll out cookie dough with my daughter and my five year old son, I am reminded of how God has blessed my every prayer request just to have a happy family of my own one day.

So...grocery shopping is one of only enjoyable versions of shopping (true story), because I know that from many pertinent ingredients come hours of family satisfaction. My kids actually get excited - akin to being promised a movie night or $10 bucks to spend at the Dollar Store - if I tell them I am baking their favorite pie or making them chocolate fudge walnut brownies for dessert. I call my sweetheart ten minutes before he leaves every day from work to give him the dinner menu, so that he has something to keep him awake on the ride home. No matter the stress he endures in a myriad of meetings, when he is home eating his favorite Sephardic Rice Pilaf or Baked Chicken Parmesean, he is a happy man.

I love cooking and serving and making people fat, dumb, and happy. Well, maybe not dumb. Too book nerdy for that. But I love a happy crowd of people who fear fatness because they are so overjoyed at what they have just eaten in my home. It's a love language - to cook unto happiness.

So, when "cheapo/from scratch" me heard that there was a ministry (God-inspired) that would allow me restaurant quality ingredients for even cheaper than my beloved Aldi and in a greater abundance...I had to check it out.

We placed our first order a week ago. We picked it up last night. For $60.00 we came home with two laundry baskets full of...

3lbs Ribeye Steaks

6 lbs Split Chicken Breasts

2 lbs Boneless Center Cut Pork Chops

4 lbs Mac and Beef Dinner Entree

3lbs Breaded All White Meat Chicken Nuggets

2lbs Lean Ground Beef

2lbs Fish Sticks (We cooked these for Fishy Friday last night and there was not a smidgen of grease to be found. There were absolutely the best fish sticks I have ever consumed, and generally, I hate fish sticks! But these, I actually missed when the cookie sheet was empty of them)

2lbs of Fresh Frozen Corn

2lbs Fresh Frozen Baby Lima Beans (Made these Southern style with butter, onions, and a dash of black pepper. Everyone devoured these FIRST. True story.)

2 Heads of Lettuce

4lbs of Fresh Sweet Potatoes (Made these Southern style as well last night - with butter and a dash of brown sugar. They were scooped up in less time than the fish sticks).

30oz of Pork and Beans

2lbs of Rice

2 32oz Cartons of Milk

2 Dozen Eggs

2 Boxes of Baked Apple Tarts (every month Signature Box gets a dessert)

My family had the most wonderful home cooked meal last night, and when we were out school shopping today and had to eat out because of the heat and lengthy drive from home, everyone enjoyed lunch but commented on how much they enjoyed their meal from the night before at home so much better. Cheap and satisfying. How can I ask for more? They wanted my "sweet taters" more than Chili's chips and salsa.

The Signature Box is the monthly menu, but there are organic and vegetarian boxes, food allergy boxes, senior boxes, an amazing fruit and veggie box that I will be ordering with my boxes next month. We only have to get lunch supplies from the grocery store now- most of which I make from scratch for school lunches - so our new grocery bill has shrunken from $150.00-$200.00 a week to about $80.00 a week for a tremendous amount of nutritious food that we are loving. Remember, there are six of us in this family and only two of us are female. Lots of food being consumed around here - and now we have a teenage football player. But our Signature Box is enough!

Angel Food Ministries is for absolutely every income. We saw Mercedes outside the beautiful 100-plus year old UCC Church where we placed and picked up our order. The director told me over the phone when I called with inquiries, "There are families here making a hundred grand who buy 8 or more boxes at a time each month." It is such a savings and it's a ministry...who doesn't want to be part of this? I am going to see if I can get my equally beautiful Eastern Catholic parish involved.

Go to the website by clicking here Angel Food Ministries. Hope to see you on the September distribution day.

The Insider

2009-08-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

Since I now live in town I am trying to pretend that I am outgoing and extroverted. I accomplish this by smiling and offering a wave whenever someone actually spots me in my dark corner on my front porch. I much prefer the back porch on the old swing where no one can see me, except. old Mr. Brogan who only goes outside to fall asleep on his folding lawn chair next to his tomato plants.

Anyway, last night the noise of my house became too much for my shingle ears. (I have CFIDS, so I catch a lot things quite often, new reader, so this is why you will read..."now that I have pneumonia" or "because I got that toe infection last week" etc...) So I went out to my front porch with the pleasantly dead porch light bulb and I stole the quietest, most invisible section of my porch in which to sleep without bother from neighbors. Come to think of it...the old man next door probably likes me alright, because I am like an old man myself in many ways - though I am young and a woman. Must be a writer thing...

I watched teenagers nearly get hit by a car, a young couple run past falsely thinking that a diner would exist or be open in our small town at 10pm. A drunk hick from somewhere up the mountain drove his beat up pickup up and down the street, swerving like active vertigo, from the Old Jail to Through the Looking Glass. He tossed a Pepsi can out of his car and screamed something about health care before retiring for the night.

My brother eventually joined me on the porch in his dirty unmatching socks.

"I can smell those things from here," I said to him with my eyes closed. He was waiting for our mother to pick him up and take him back to our old home on the Mountain. He is house sitting for us.

"Thank you," he said, resting his feet on the Ottoman so that I might get a better look at the crusty critters.

A couple of teenage girls passed us as attempted to flirt with him, giggling about their hair.

"Really? Him?!" I said after them, but neither my brother nor the girls responded.

After several minutes I could hear the noise of my Latin husband and half-Latin children die down a bit.

"Everyone must be asleep," I said to Leonarrrrrrdo as he came out to join us on the porch.

"No. They are totally disobeying me, but because I have threatened them sufficiently they are disobeying me silently," he said leaning back into his cushioned rocking chair.

"Shouldn't you go back to deal with them?" I asked him.

"No way! This is what I wanted. For them to be quiet," he said. "It was all part of my plan, because I know that no one listens to me, so I tricked them into not listening to me but SILENTLY."

He whispered the last part.

"Whatever," I said, hearing the indoor thumping of our five year old as he attempted to spy on us from his "sneaky" place on the hall steps.

After a while my mother drove up. "I didn't even see you there," she said to me as she greeted the men.

"I know," I smiled. "I am the Insider. Sitting invisibly on the porch is as close as I can come to actually engaging with the world."

"I see," she said. "Come on, Dave. I have to get home and go to bed."

Nearly 40 and my brother is still somehow convincing my mother to give him dinner and transportation on a whim.

It's a strange world. But it's Friday and I am going to clean my house invisibly and then spy on my neighbors from my porch swing later on when I get sick of organizing the play room. And what is really cool about this old house that I am beginning to love in a way I could never love a new house (nerd, remember?), is that there are so many stinking awesome creaky crooked 1865 rooms that we have room for a playroom for once! Like an academic's wife, I can say things like, "Oh, my goodness! There is such a mess in the playroom!" when I am on the phone with suburban/new house friends. I imagine a great amount of jealousy when they hear my lilted, city curbed, excessively large, antique house resident excitement. I can't say "owner". The house I still actually own is not nearly as cool and not at all an ice breaker in a boring conversation unless I begin with, "What did I do for my summer? Oh, I lost my house."

Booknotes

2009-08-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

My Daddy (people of Southern birth do not use the word "dad") sent me a great cozy mystery recently. Knowing I was completely stressed out, knowing that I had been through a million things he could do nothing about, he sent me a book. Nerds comfort in their own special way. Luckily, both Daddy and I are nerds, so I immediately understood his intention when I discovered my mailbox overstuffed with a book.

The Body in the Attic by Kathrine Hall Paige. Love it. It has lots of New England dark cornered houses, a long lost creepy collection of love and terror letters, a hint of ghosts, and the main character is a pastor's wife who has to "up and move" so her sweetheart can fulfill his dream of teaching at Harvard Divinity. It's a great read, and I love my Daddy for so many reasons, but one big one is because he is the guy who taught me how to read and gave me my first novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. I will never stop loving good old fashioned mysteries before all other genres. It is his fault.

Under the Radar by Fern Michaels. A thriller about four formerly abused women who rescue presently abused women by completely illegal means. Their methods are controversial, but their motives are not. The main victims in this novel within a series are underage married teenagers from a Fundamentalist LDS polygamy group. It is not the greatest writing on earth. You won't be reading this story for its prose, but its message is clear, and I enjoyed the early morning distraction it gave me over coffee and before the children woke to demand breakfast.

Not fun, but more rewarding than a Boston Creme Doughnut and almost as satisfying as Mass on a Sunday morning...

The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It is the chronicle of a scientist sent to a "soft gulag" for the purpose of harvesting his genius and arresting his free spirit and sense of God. I love everything Solzhenitsyn writes. He is a true genius of modern Russian literature, a Gulag survivor, and a devout Orthodox Christian. However, his words - unlike so many great Russian writers' - are not hard to decipher and you won't get confused trying to understand what he is saying. You will fall easily into the layman's terms for everything, and into the difficult rhythm of Soviet prison life. It is really one of those 600-plus page novels that you will not be able to put down. With each page, you will need to know what happens to this sufferer and that. He sucks you in by vying for your human compassion.

So...enjoy my booknotes. Soon, my latest Reading Stupid For Fun group will meet on my front porch for lemonade and to laugh at how easily our American brains can be amused.

Reconciliation - A Rare Gem

2009-08-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

I am not speaking of the Sacrament here. I am speaking of the human act of reconciliation.

I confronted one of the anti-Catholic remarkers yesterday. She replied admitting that she did not intend to judge or offend Catholics, that she knows the veneration of relics and Saints is not worship. But she said she was tired and frustrated in her non-Catholic ministry, and the words just came out without thought.

The Orthodox remarker said, "I know I have a lot of old prejudices against Catholics...", the Baptist said nothing at all, and the Evangelical said, "I know Catholics love Christ..."

It was nice to hear that, for once, (because it does not happen very often), that a non-Catholic Christian is sorry for their anti-Catholic words. I was not surprised that this would be her personal response, because I had a sneaking suspicion that this particular non-Catholic (an Evangelical missionary) did not really believe what she had said. Often, the worst words spoken are the farthest from our true intention.

Isn't it in anger where Satan gets a foothold?

I suggested to the missionary that maybe if she did not work against the Catholic Church in a country whose population is nearly 90% Catholic that maybe she would find allies in her desire to spread the Gospel. Maybe they would even support her where she feels without aide and friendship. We Catholics are known for our life support systems...education, healthcare, social services, religious instruction...we like to get into the middle of things and start handing our sandwhiches or Bibles. Heck, we like to encourage non-Catholics to live in peace inside their own faiths.

Perhaps, there is hope for Christian unity after all. I must admit, as a lifelong Roman Catholic, I do not believe in its existence much. I believe unity will come only in heaven, only after human death. Otherwise, I have been rarely impressed with the non-Catholic response to Catholics (like me) saying, "Hey, just try and understand us at least before you condemn..."

Perhaps, some people do not believe that because they know a few key Bible verses they know everything.

We reconciled...Yay God!

Dream of Mine

2009-08-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

I had a long post about several anti-Catholic remarks I had to deal with this week. Well, I suppose I could have ignored them, but that would have "okayed" them, and I don't okay anti-Catholicism even more than I don't okay most liberal politics. My Church comes first. Because to attack the Catholic Church is to attack Christ.

And it is to attack me too and Pope John Paul II and Blessed Mother Teresa and St Francis of Assisi and Saint Paul and Saint Steven of Hungary and Catholic School Sister who reads my blog and my four beautiful Rosary-praying/Jesus loving children and my wonderfully faithful husband and my extended family and the sweet old lady who lives next door and goes to Mass and promises to pray for us every Saturday night and the priest who waves at my on Friday mornings when he opens the gates for worshipers and the priest who offers me the Eucharist on Sunday morning...you get the drift...or maybe in your ignorance and separated version of Christianity, you don't "get unity".

I am sorry if you don't understand that...

There is a dream that I truly have had since I was a little girl in a Catholic school uniform. With a Protestant mother and a Roman Catholic father, you can get to feeling this way in life. I think daily I repeat out loud to God, "Thank you for the Sacraments. Thank you for my Roman Catholic baptism way before I could read or reason." All that is left of my earlier post is the statement below. If I could just shrink it onto a bumper sticker...

People can be so hateful with a hefty amount of Bible verses on their lips and a way cool worship guitar in their hands. If I could accomplish one thing in life it would be to convince one know-it-all anti-Catholic/non-Catholic Christian to just try and understand who we Catholics are and to leave the condemnation or salvation of our souls to God alone who is worthy of all praise and in charge of all the universe.

Now it's going to be a permanent quote on my blog sidebar. I like it that much.

Random Thoughts To Start the Week

2009-08-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me the other day why I don't post a million pictures of my children on my blog. My reasoning is quite simple - because they are mine and not yours and I won't share. And there are a lot of freaks in the world. I don't want them seeing my babies.

I have shingles for real this time. A year ago I was misdiagnosed with shingles when what I really had was an abscessed tooth. I complained that it was my tooth to absolutely no end. Finally, a dentist believed me and a small portion of my jaw bone was removed on my 34th birthday when my tooth was repaired. That was fun. I cried while my family ate Kentucky Fried Chicken in front of me. Now I have real shingles, and I cried last night when my pain medicine started to work.

It is not necessary to have a backyard to have fun playing. Our new backyard is just a patio and a flower bed. We are going to fill both with our patio furniture and sunflower seeds. Lee is bring his BBQ over soon. We shall celebrate all our family's upcoming birthday celebrations with all that great grilled Caribbean cuisine that Leonarrrrrrrdo is so good at.

Fat old labs can't be retrained. I have decided that my Dixie is just an old dog with strong ideas about who needs to be chased and where it is most pleasant to relieve a lunch's extra nutrients...if you know what I mean. She is loud when she bothers to bark, has a thing for bicyclists and thinks that if she randomly offers to shake hands that chocolate cake will be given to her at will. She smells, but we love her. She has rolls on her rolls and her neck even looks fat, but we love her. She ate her dog tags and so we need new ones since we live in the Borough. But she slept on the floor next my place on the couch the whole time I came back from the ER with my Shingles. I even woke to her licking my head at one point. Either I had chocolate in my hair or she really loves me. It's a toss up. She has an addiction problem, so her motivations are all mixed up.

Fall is coming. It has been excessively hot and humid here lately - like one of those summers I spent in Oklahoma City visiting my grandmother in her big Victorian home. Those were the summers of biscuits and briskets and lots of laughing and sitting on the oversized porch in rocking chairs. Anyway, this home reminds me of that one and this summer often finds me mentally going back to hot Southern summers with Virginia-Lee dictating my chores in the kitchen and around her big old house while my brother explored the servant's quarters with my little sister. Recently, I had lunch with Grandma and I reminded her of that home and noted how I was always amazed that no matter how many funnel clouds threatened us there each summer, her house was still standing. "Oh, they (tornadoes) don't blow down everything. Just the weaker places." When I told her I had made sun tea in my backyard she was rather proud. "Now don't forget to add the lemon. It is so much better with lemon."

Ukrainian Independence. I am not Ukrainian. My ancestors from Eastern Europe are Russian and Hungarian. Jews and Gentiles - but by far mostly Russian. However, they all moved to the US from Ukraine. True story. So this weekend, while it felt as though someone was randomly shoving a pen in my left ear (Shingles), I decided it would be an excellent idea to go to Ukrainian Fest after Divine Liturgy. My Puerto Rican husband was quite skeptical of the fun potential of this. But he drove us and my much taller little sister to Ukrainian Fest. We pseudo danced to accordion music, ate bags of chips because we came without enough money for Perohys. We bought two Psanky and I am actively wearing a rubber arm band that reads, "SAVE THE DOMES!" An old man's church is loosing its onion domes unless I donate my one available dollar. We met a Russian Icon dealer. True story. He was highly unfriendly and wanted to bargain actively with me in Russian. I pretended only to speak Spanish. It was fun. We were tempted to jump into the pool with all the happy young Slavs, but instead we drove to Rita's and ate copious amounts of Italian Ice. We promised next year not to show up an hour before the festival ends when all the old ladies are wrapping up their hand painted tea glasses and embroidered shawls.

Today we go to the library. The books I checked out last week are all duds.

Oh, and the most exciting news of the week? I unloaded all my goofy thrift store accumulated cookbooks this past week! I found the 1950's one that suggests all manner of dinners made from Cambell's Soup. It is dedicated to, "Mrs. Homemaker who spends many a happy hour creating family cuisine from convenience foods!" True story. I am going to make a recipe from it every week. I am even going to try the "Happy Husband Souper Lunch Pack!" menu that lists a different soup and weird hearty sandwich for each work day for a full month. I warned Lee last night. He seemed mildly interested in Cheese Soup Served in a Wide Mouthed Vacuum and Swiss on Rye with a Fruit Cup.

The Angelus and Such

2009-08-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

I spent the good portion of my Saturday happily pulling weeds from the cracks in my new sidewalk. I love living in town. It feels much more normal to me than the middle of bear country where we have nearly and completely vacated now.

While bent over in the dirt, pulling mint and thistle from the ground, I heard Russian, Spanish, people from England, an Austrailian, lots of New Yorkers, and an Eastern European accent wishing me and my fat, happy Yellow Lab a nice afternoon.

People offered me kind encouragement as I worked the ground. My youngest son spent most of the day with me, slashing at the taller weeds with an old butter knife and weaving tales of two-fingered aliens who can't be trusted when they exit their spaceships in silence.

Each time the sun became too hot we rolled my big red patio umbrella into our path to guard us from the sweltering rays. Every now and then we took a break and drank sun tea while swinging softly on our new porch swing in the back. We have a view of the whole side of a mountain. The kids always complained that at the other house we were actually on top of the mountain, so we had no actual mountain view. Now we do. At night we sit out there in silence, a few of us, drinking ice tea and listening to the creek run below our feet.

People who knew us honked as they drove by today, discovering that we lived in their neck of the woods now.

"You've come over to the Irish side!" yelled a friend who works at the pharmacy.

"Yeah!" I yelled back. "Those Germans on the other side were just too darn happy for us!"

She immediately got my sarcasm and drove off laughing. "Stay away from that grouchy parish!" she warned, jerking her thumb in the direction of the parish we left over a year ago.

"Don't worry about it," I assure her.

I hear the bells from the Catholic Church down the street three times a day for the Angelus, 8am, noon, and 6pm. They ring for Holy Mass as well. I love it. If you aren't Irish (I am 3/4ths) or Catholic, you are so "out of the loop" around these parts.

It's strange to be something everyone else is for a change. It is strange for Catholic to be the "in thing" to be. I laugh every time I think about it.

A Russian family passed me today as I was pulling grass up from the patch of dirt that holds the tree in front of my porch. They were arguing furiously. When they saw me they stopped and smiled, greeting me in Russian. The teenage daughter eyed up my oldest son who noticed nothing except that his father was yelling at him not to drop the dresser they were carrying out of the truck and into the front of the house.

I like it here. I don't care about it over there anymore. It's all gone now. All that sadness and worry. And three times a day, I am reminded to praise God and ask Him for His blessing whenever I find myself pulling weeds in front of my new house.

The Angelus

V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.Hail Mary, etc.

V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word.Hail Mary, etc.

V. And the Word was made Flesh.
R. And dwelt among us.Hail Mary, etc.

V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

LET US PRAY
Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Moving Right Along...

2009-08-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

I have gotten a few emails asking where I have been on my blog this week. Usually, I blog every day, but sometimes I actually pay attention to important things and get distracted by the "ordinary things of life..." (see Joyce quote in sidebar).

This week?

Still moving...Still uploading and unpacking boxes...still driving between two houses and cleaning between two houses.

I pulled weeds in my new backyard. Convinced my brother to mow my old backyard. Broom swept the new carpet remnant in the living room at the new house, as I continually forget the vacuum cleaner each time I go to the old house...

Found out from the investor who wants to buy our house that the sheriff sale has been scheduled for September 15th. That's so funny, because absolutely no one from the mortgage company has notified us of this yet. As far as our lender knows, we know nothing. Good thing most things are gone - except my brother and my parents and sister who takes turns hanging out there with my brother sleeping over.

The bears can get very suspicious.

I will be so elated when all of this is over. I actually love the home our dear friends have rented to us. I feel more at home here than I ever did at the home we worked so hard for...just to lose in the end. Never again will I put so much stake in a house.

I have slept very little lately. Still adjusting to no central air. It doesn't bother me while awake, but I am guessing that the sound of the continually buzzing 40-something year old window fan my stepfather bought shortly after his return from Vietnam keeps my nervous system humming all night as well. Nice of him to gift it to us...but I think it should have probably gone down with the fall of Saigon.

Lack of sleep, annoying shots at the doc...I have a massive ear infection left over from a sinus infection caused by the medicine from the annoying shot offered for pain. I have treated the infection with loads of garlic pills, willow ear/garlic oil, echinacea, elderberry, vitamin c, and some major Arnica. I added some Tylenol as well. Can't hurt to back up the pain fighters. My head feels like half of it is spitting somewhere over my ear. I should be better by morning. Hopefully, tonight, I will sleep and tomorrow's post will be something great to behold.

Blessings to all...thanks for reading...I am signing off with a Stupid For Fun next to my veteran window fan.

A Night Out - Velez Style

2009-08-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

On Friday night, the Velez Family usually celebrates "Movie/Game Night". Most often, we just get very lazy and watch a movie and eat junk, but sometimes we play a game as well. This past Friday, we decided that we had suffered a lot these past few weeks and needed to go to a double feature at the drive-in. The new Harry Potter was playing, and so we were off with our cooler of goodies, our pillows and blankets, and our dirty minivan.

Leonarrrrrrdo decided that it would be a great idea if we added ice to the cooler. But it was a Friday and on Friday Catholics don't eat meat, so we had egg salad sandwiches and tuna salad sandwiches - along with brownies and fruit - in our coolers. Since I have not yet had the chance to do any major grocery shopping since moving in, I have forgotten some paper/kitchen items. I had to wrap my sandwiches in tinfoil. Tinfoil is leaky when ice begins to melt on a hot summer night...

We arrived, eager and excited, at the drive-in. Parked. Set up our chairs and blankets and arranged who was going to sit in the car and who was going to sit outside. It was warm, so we all gathered around the back of the open minivan. Leonarrrrrrdo pulled the sandwiches from the cooler, because everyone had heard they were there and suddenly decided they were hungry. All but one was a drippy eggy/fishy mess. We ate brownies and - even though Lee insisted that he was going to eat all the sandwiches rather than waste them - we all marched over to the snack stand and bought burgers, chicken fingers, nachos, and hot chocolate. Oh, and mozzarella sticks. From the time we had unwrapped our draining sandwiches to the time it took to get to the snack stand, we had forgotten it was a Friday. This is very unusual for us. But I guess the devistation of trying to be cheap, but failing, was too overwhelming for us.

The first picture began, our bellies were full, and the sun went down. It dropped about 10 degrees and we all started freezing in our short sleeves. By the time five hours had passed, somewhere around 1:20am, Harry Potter had accomplished absolutely nothing, I had snored my way through half the last movie, and one of the back seats that Lee had taken out of the van for more snuggling room, had gotten stuck in a nearly backwards position.

Every other car in the drive-in had long gone except for workers and a man who wanted to know if we had jumper cables. After about 15 minutes of Lee shoving the car around, while trying to fix the seat, I finally convinced him to just let the stupid seat sit askew as it was and drive home in our now weird and dirty minivan.

We all drove home screaming at each other because we were tired and irritated and angry for Harry Potter, who we all agreed - is really a complete priss who manages only to get beaten up, let at least one good guy (a film/book) die, and allow the pure evil bad guy to get away. But he has friends. Lots of them, and they are as boring and wimpy as he is.

We are done with Potter, and our car finally got fixed the next morning just in time for us to go to, Knoebel's, the biggest redneck amusement park I have ever experienced. There were lots of gap-toothed smiles and mullets and balding women, but we had a blast on all the rides and with our hands continually inside a 3 lb bag of PA Dutch Kettle Korn.

We hope to stay home for the next Movie Night.

We, the RiffRaff

2009-08-07T06:23:00.000-07:00

Last night, my husband and I got to drive (ALONE) to our old house on the mountain to pick up some filing cabinets and utility cabinets for the bathroom in our new home. Lenya - our gracious pal - agreed to stay behind in the new house to watch my tired and overfed children (as long as we returned with a selection of decent ice cream).

Thank you, Lenya:)

Leaving town for the mountain is weird. Leaving anywhere for the mountain is weird. In town, my favorite restaurant of the past 10 years since we have been coming to or living in Jim Thorpe has live jazz blasting as you pass slowly by in your car. The tattoo parlor is blinking obnoxiously. There are children on the sidewalk playing everywhere. Even very young children, and the schizophrenic lady a couple houses up is pacing up and down the street talking to herself and rubbing her Thorazine patch.

But the mountain is dead silent. We pulled into our driveway and stood for a moment just to watch the fireflies light up all around us in the bear-saturated forest. The last two days we spent living on the mountain last week, we had more than 6 bears walking through our yard and driveway. We had two coyote pacing hungrily in our backyard. We had to keep the kids on the deck and watchful. In town, the dangers are very different.

"Are you sad anymore about leaving this place?" I asked my sweetheart.

"Not sad anymore. It just feels like I threw away $40,000.00," he sighed, speaking of our down payment.

"Like we saved for nothing," I said.

"Yeah. For someone else to live here much cheaper than we did. That's irritating. And there are all the comforts of living in a house that is brand new," he said. "Central air, excellent insulation."

It has been said to us, by an attorney, that the investor behind the loan probably doesn't want the Spanish name in his neighborhood where he also invests in several other mortgages. Who can prove it? I don't know. But it is not hard for Lee or I to believe.

We both remember the times in our 1905 house, before the new one was purchased in 2005, how difficult it was to heat without a pellet stove. How we lost our heat for four months, because we just did not have the $400-plus a month to heat the leaky place. We learned some tricks, but all utilities on the mountain only totalled $225.00 at its peak through any season. Those things are hard to give up.

"And the kids had all the room in the world to play," I noted. Our five year old has become very difficult as of the last 7 days. He has nowhere to run around when he becomes cantankerous. We have to walk to the park or drive there for him to have all that play time. That can be hard when you have medical chronic fatigue as I do. But, we have already walked to our favorite library in the world without having to pay for parking for once. We have gotten pizza at our favorite pizza shop a couple blocks away. Our children are haggling for ice cream from their favorite candy shop. So, our disadvantages have been replaced with advantages.

But none of these issues are the end of the world. None of any of this is the end of the world. It isn't even the end of our world. We know that most of the stresses we are currently experiencing will be gone the minute our home is sold to the investor who is very eager to purchase it.

What irritates me, and has finally begun to irritate my husband, is the pure discrimination we have faced with home ownership and renting since that day in July, 1995 when we got married.

Our first place assumed that we were not married and openly said so, "Because your husband is 'Spanish', we just thought you were living together. Does he have any children who will be visiting?"

What? It was assumed at our first apartment that we could not be married, because a Hispanic was involved in the relationship. It was assumed that the Hispanic had other illegitimate children hanging out somewhere who might need to be put on the lease in the future. I was incensed at these thoughts. Lee just ignored them.

The second place was fine, because it was in town and full of Hispanics and African Americans and immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa. They didn't even notice Lee and I or my brother when the three of us moved in. A great place to live, and we had friends there and a huge courtyard.

The third place put us in an unready apartment with no updates, because they "assumed that it would not matter to us, because surely your husband grew up in the city and would be grateful for what he gets." You can argue such things, but every attorney I have ever spoken to says that white America still very much denies their prejudices, and it would be our word against theirs. That's not evidence.

We were poor and had a baby by now, so we just lived there with all the bug infestations, the bees who made a nest in our master bedroom, the mice we had to kill ourselves - even though our friends lived in the same complex (as did my brother) and they had all these great updates and services and paid less than us to live in a much better four walls. Even my pal, Yulia from Gorky, (Russia) said, "Why is your apartment so dark and ugly? I have white everything. New everything. I think they do not like Hispanics here."

And they didn't. Lee got a new job an hour and a half away and so we moved there. This time, into a beautiful town home community. Everything seemed fine until we went to sign the lease. The manager had written up a new clause just for us. "We need you to sign this agreeing that there will be no loud music, none of those low rider cars, and no riffraff. We absolutely will not tolerate any riffraff."

"I have a degree in Music Education from the second best school of music in the United States, ma'am. I am a claims adjuster for Allstate Insurance. I don't have any riffraff."

The crooked haired woman looked dubiously at my husband and just tapped her hand on the paper. About three months later, we got a continual pile of literature on our front step from the American Nazi Party and the Aryan Brotherhood - located just 10 miles away. I called the office and told them to have this stopped. They were quite incensed that I should bother them with such a command. They insisted they could not stop someone's freedom of expression, but they promised a white neighbor whom I had shown the literature to that they would stop it at once. "We do not want our residents feeling uncomfortable in any way!" the same woman from the office insisted.

When we moved out, we had the carpets steamed, the place repainted - all at our own very tight expense. But they refused to rent the place for several months after we left, replaced everything and charged us for rent and fees for months after we had moved out and purchased our new home. "I said no riffraff!" the rental manager wrote on one of our bills.

Our first home was humble, built in 1905, but we were immediately excited that it was our own place finally. Behind us lived a nosy PA Dutch couple who spoke to me and the kids at every chance. They offered us their Sunday papers after they had finished reading them. "Then you can just recycle them for us," Eva (as I called her) suggested. I really didn't care to read the newspaper, but I wanted to be neighborly, so I agreed. The minute Eva spotted my Leonardo coming home from work in his dress clothes and tie, she withheld the newspaper and all conversation for the next 5 years. She told our realtor how disappointed she was that he had sold the place to a "dirty Mexican with a gaggle of loud children".

We had three kids. The American average, and we weren't home very often. No matter that my husband is not Spanish or Mexican. He's Puerto Rican. How hard can it be to get that simple fact correct for an educated American public? The neighbors were rude. Eva and Adolph, as I called them proudly.

We moved to "the mountain" and all of our neighbors, immediately, refused to speak or wave to us. Except for an Italian-American girl at the bus stop and her Puerto Rican husband. Their house had been burned down by the adult son of a local township board member, when they tried to move in, and homemade signs like, "Spic Trailer Park!" lined the road leading to their home. Our road.

My husband is big, and so no one ever threatens him personally. But our very rude neighbor next door has never returned our waves or face-to-face conversation. Now all the rude people who never acknowledged us even when we were speaking to them, see our home almost empty, us moving, and they wave and smile uncontrollably.

When we were moving into this new rental home (which we are very grateful for) we were warned that the old grouchy man next door might not like Hispanics. Sure enough, he doesn't. He liked me until he saw Lee. Now, he doesn't even wave to me. He smiled at my oldest son - who is my coloring, but he doesn't acknowledge my darker children who look more like their father.

Recently a friend asked me, (and she is not the only one who has asked me this), "What do I say to my children when they hear people speaking Spanish in the store? What if they are illegal? How should I suggest they treat them?"

"Mind your own business," I said to her. "If they were speaking English it would not be your business what they were saying."

"But what if they are taking American jobs?"

"You mean crawling through mushroom fields, changing old people diapers at a nursing home, working far below minimum wage to build a multi-million dollar suburban home for some American family?"

She just looked at me, "Yes. What if the economy gets so bad I need those jobs one day?"

I just laughed. "Be serious. If you could live with less you not be overtaxed and overspent like you are now in every area of your American Dream life. You would not be worried about illegal immigrants, desperate for a better life, eager to take your job."

Whatever.

And three out of four of the women who have asked me this very same, very strange, question in the last couple of years, are way behind on many of their bills. Way behind on paying their credit cards. Way behind on making church attendance a regular part of their lives. None of this bothers me, none of this bothers their credit scores too much, but Leonardo has to reach so much further just to get the respect most of them were simply born with. The ones who have asked me this who are up-to-date on all such things told me once that when she sees her Puerto Rican neighbor walking down her street, she runs inside to lock up her antique silverwear. These people are supposed to be my friends, and they wonder why I sometimes find it hard to spend a lot of time with them.

Leonardo is getting kicked out of his home and he paid his mortgage, paid off his cars, pays his credit card bills, pays his tithes, has served every church he has been to, is a proud son of a US War Veteran, and is a proud American - as all Puerto Ricans are. Americans.

And I grew up in Los Angeles where 1 out of 3 people are foreign born. But I have yet to meet an immigrant - outside of most Canadians (but not all) that I have known - who didn't proudly call themselves American and dream of becoming a citizen one day, even if they did so desperately, coming here illegally and speaking Spanish. The language that made up half of the US long before the South West belonged to America. Think about it...Texas (Spanish for "tiles), Colorado (Spanish for "brown"), New Mexico (duh), California (Spanish for "beautiful island"), Nevada, Arizona...all Spanish and Spanish/Indian names. Long before there was a Baltimore or a New York City there was a Nuestra Senora La Reina de los Angeles (The City of Our Lady Queen of Angels - or LA as we white people shorten it and call it).

I wish I could just tell bigoted America to grow up. But it is stupid and has a long way to go. And I assume that Lee and I might face such further insults in the future. If I could encourage just one American - non-Hispanic - to view the language and people they don't understand as human beings looking to care for their family just as good native-born Americans do - to see Hispanics as mostly Christian with pro-life values and an extremely strong, unmatched work ethic - then, perhaps, I will have accomplished something for my Hispanic children in the future.

I do not like all her politics, but hats off to Judge Sotomayor for working her way to the Supreme location of the land. My olive-skinned/Indian-haired 9 year old daughter cheered when she saw the news last night. "Look, mommy! She is Spanish like me and she is a judge on the Supreme Court!"

I didn't even know she had been paying attention. "Why isn't she pro-life, mommy?" my daughter asked. "Isn't she Catholic and Christian like us?"

It is a true rarity to see a pro-choice Hispanic in either party. And it is just as rare to see the Republican Party not slamming Hispanics at every turn. My party - the Good Old Party. In the last election, out of respect for my husband and my children, I had to turn off the radio - turn off Rush and Beck and Hannity, because every show was about how Hispanics (all of them are illegal or refuse to assimilate according to these shows) are the greatest threat to the American way of life.

I am assuming these conservative Americans do not know the truth? That the largest number of illegal immigrants in America live on the East Coast and are Russian Jews or Israelis. A far greater number of illegal Chosen People live in this country than Catholic Spanish speaking ones. I wonder how many conservative Christians would hear Russian, see a Chassidic black hat and think, "That rabbi refuses to speak English and he is going to take my job in the drycleaner/deli/or Yeshiva!"

An Open Public Thank You

2009-08-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

Thank you, pals, Bob and Jennifer for the use of your home! It is beautiful - even with us in it:)

Thank you, pals, Bob and Jennifer for the recommendation to the investor who may purchase our home.

Thank you, Bob and Jennifer for the clawfoot tub. I feel like a millionaire in the golden age of Hollywood even though I just got kicked out of my home:)

You are beautiful friends (especially Bob with is Larry the Cucumber T-shirt), and we appreciate you more than you know:)

Soon, we will have you over for dinner or something edible...in your kitchen. (There are going to be a lot of jokes like that. Just warning you...)

Chicken Ice

2009-08-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

I had a doctor's appointment today. A visit to the pain specialist who had helped me two months ago very successfully and without to many meds. I was thinking of cancelling the follow-up since I was feeling so much better with regards to my back/sciatica/crookedness/dystonia...all exactly the same thing with various names depending on the location of discomfort and the doctor involved.

Anyway, I did not want to pay the "failure to show up" fee either. Usually that's pretty high. So...I drove contented to the office 45 minutes away.

"So you still have some pain?" asks the doctor.

"Sometimes."

"So it's not complete relief?" he probes.

"Not complete, but what in life is perfect?"

"I recommend another shot."

Now I am not one to shy away from needles - God knows I have had my share of spinal taps and I get iron infusions for hours at the cancer center at my local hospital all the time. I am the queen of kidney stones and get IVs at the ER several times a year, even if I don't get anything in the IV.

But...I didn't want another shot. I told the doctor so. He recommended again anyway, suggesting that the pain would be completely gone if I were to get one. This is the point where the smarter patient starts to hear equally faulty statements inside her head like, "This won't hurt at all."

In less than 10 minutes I found myself lying flat on my stomach with an 8 inch needle in my spine. Last time it hurt a tad, but within minutes I had very minimal discomfort from the procedure. Today? He did not numb me adequately and I could feel the jabbing of my vertebra the way I have in one of those many spinal taps or epidurals. Only with those procedures I am often given a heavy medication to make me think of sandy beaches and flying penguins. Today I got nothing but a fast talking humming doctor.

When it was all over I was told to go home.

I could barely walk across the room, drive home, or even cross the street to my house. I prayed - the entire 5 minutes or so it took me to walk the 20 feet from my car to my front door - I asked God not to let a car pass while I hobbled along.

I took a very slow walk to the top of the stairs, popped completely inadequate pain meds, and lay in front of the television in my bedroom (placed there against my loud better judgement), and yelled occasionally, "Mother of God, save me!"

I asked my sweetheart (who is a true cranky heart when he has to care for children alone on a hot summer day) if he could make me or get me an ice pack when he went for pizza. Because I was flat on my side (never again my back) then, he saw no reason to assume that his family might eat dinner.

"What are we going to do for dinner?" he asks me.

"There's ground turkey and BBQ sauce. You can make sloppy joes."

But he did not like this suggestion, crying that it was too hot, and so when his work from home day ended, he drove the block to the pizza shop to buy extra large pepperonis and cheeses with an order of hot wings. The place is very cheap, so that was my consolation.

I read lots of children's books to occupy my five year old, and I let my daughter watch some stupid "I woke up pregnant, but I don't how it happened," Lifetime movie with me. But mostly because I could not move over to reach the remote.

I got up every few minutes, hoping that movement would keep me from stiffening. But I have a strong sense that the lay flat for 4 hour rule that applies to spinal taps applies to this procedure as well. I could have called my doctor to demand stronger pain meds, but I have a feeling that this will all be gone tomorrow, and I can returned my three year overdue books to the library on a short walk tomorrow with the kids.

Since I am still waiting for the ice pack from my easily distracted husband, I hobbled for 10 minutes down the stairs to make my own pack. Realizing that I had no Ziplocs with which to zip my ice collection, and no ice because the trays had been emptied in my absence from the kitchen today and never refilled, I grabbed 3 lbs of iced-over chicken tenderloins and now have them thawing behind my back. They come in their own handy Ziploc and so I grossly wrapped them in a stained kitchen rag and every now and then I think how disgusting I have become today.

I am not allowed to shower for 24 hours and I smell like rotting jiggly chicken.

Thank you, husband.

Thank you, children for using the ice as hockey pucks and the empty trays as space ships...so says my five year old who has been dressed in an Iron Man suit all day while running up and down the stairs fighting evil spiders.

Tomorrow is a new day! Amen!

New Bishop in Town

2009-08-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

We, in the ever-increasing churchless Northeast, have a new RC bishop in our diocese. I am quite excited about this. I have heard he is a "house cleaner". Finally! Even though I am switching rites. I have had enough. In fact, the more I try and attend any one of the local RC parishes within walking distance of my home - either home - I experience something sharp and painful and I am reminded why I love the Divine Liturgy and of why I have left the West for the East.

I had so hoped to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, partly because Orthodox priests had warned me that the Byzantines "could not be trusted", and I was told that I could still love Il Papa and pray my Rosary daily. I would just need to keep it secret - on the Catholic down low. I took this information to a Byzantine priest - identical in liturgy and feasts to that of their brother Orthodox - and he said,

"The Orthodox have had a burr up their butt for centuries now. "

It made me laugh and I realized that I believe this to be true as well. Though I love EO, I love hearing, "We pray for our Holy Father, Benedict..." as a regular part of the Divine Liturgy. So, I am switching rites and not churches. I just can't get over the words I continually heard in the EO, "We have long memories." Everyone else, it seems is bound to forgive their enemies, except, the EO who is allowed to keep a long list of the wrongs committed against them. Now, I am certain they would argue this point, but since my Catholic Church is the brunt of their struggle and anger...I have to scoot quietly out of the room. Too Roman. Too Roman...

Thank God. Because I just cannot leave Peter behind. No way.

I love my new priest. So does the rest of my family. He is smarter than 10 priests I know. Forget about rabbis and pastors. He blows them all away. Whatever question I have, he just answers with that Catholic authority that seems to be lost on may of our RC parish priests around here these days. He reminds me of why the Truth is the Truth even if you twist, detract from it, make it all your own...The Truth stands aside from our opinions or personal revelation and authority.

"On this Rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it..." So said Christ. You can cut yourself off from it, reform it, protest it...but the Truth is still the Truth no matter what winds of change are blowing or selling these days.

"I am not here to help you get in touch with your feelings," my new Byzantine priest says about the Sacrament of Confession - too rarely practiced by we Catholics anymore. "Just tell me what you did and how many times you did it. If I need to talk to you about it, I will. Otherwise, get over it, quite sinning, and move on in grace."

Reminds me of the priests of my youth. I am old now - 35 remember? Memory is becoming rusty in parts, but not in the parts that matter. I remember what a priest is supposed to act like. That he is supposed to love his job and make his focus Christ and not employment and career advancement.

So...have fun with the new bishop, my fellow RCers. You won't see me around all that much. Not since I started making the Sign of the Cross from the opposite direction. Enjoy all those guitar Masses. Enjoy all those hippies in collars. Not that any of you will notice I have not been in attendance in months. I have the Dormition of the Mother of God to decipher and fast through now. I am busy moving and praying and begging God for all the help He can spare me.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a big, fat sinner.

You Can Still Go to Heaven

2009-08-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

So said Brother William to me about 20 years ago...

I was notoriously excellent at achieving the highest grades possible during my high school academic career. Especially at my Catholic high school in Southern California. Not the Evangelical one just a year before, and not the public high school my senior year. I was okay at both those locations, but I hated both equally and therefore, did not "apply myself" to the standards of anyone who was paying attention.

Not too many adults were paying attention...except for Brother Edward and Brother William and Fr. Barney and Mnsgr. O'Gorman (Fr. Charlie to my family) and all the nuns who taught me music and art and morality and sacraments and Earth science, etc...

They were my teachers at my Catholic high school, and while my grades excelled there, I sucked at math. Royally. In fact, until I had to budget a grocery bill for the Velez family which formed in 1995, I was convinced that I could not even add. Now I can add the price of every item, including the occasional tax, down to the penny every week. I am that talented at being cheap with sausage and bread. If Brother William were alive today, God rest his Latin soul, he would probably sob with shocked pride.

But, in my junior year, in my Geometry class (should have been Algebra II, but I took Algebra I twice and never got beyond a D), Brother William from Amsterdam was filling in for Brother Edward (also of Amsterdam) until his sudden vacation back to Holland was over. For two weeks, I had Brother William - the ever smiling monk - frowning and actually wiping sweat off his forehead each time I scooted in my Catholic school girl uniform to his desk with a confused look on my face.

"Brother, I don't understand this," I would say about adding 2 and 2 or multiplying 1 and 3. "This doesn't make any sense."

He would stand up at the edge of his desk, bend over with both hands behind his back and search my paper for answers. Then he would look up at me,

"Teeefahnee, you are a special girl."

Then he would smile at me knowingly, as though I should understand why the subject suddenly changed.

"In all my life I have never known anyone as confused as you with simple math."

And then I realized he was talking about "special", not exceptional.

It went on like this for a while. Finally, a midterm test came and Brother William (who was often the brunt of stinky European jokes and would find a fresh bottle of deodorant on his old wooden desk with a red bow around it) would invite all "special children" to join him for a late afternoon study session.

He would call Fr. Barney to bless us, and then we would work for two long hours underneath the stern missionary face of the Fr. Serra painting. Everyone obtained "ahah!" moments except for me. I would leave with a fake smile on my face, but without any understanding still of adding 2 and 2 or multiplying 3 and 1. I could not fool Br. William (of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mercy).

In fact, the day of the midterm test came at some point in autumnless Southern California, and I remember wearing a red sweater and my lucky ill-fitting brown leather shoes my mother had bought me at some Dutch (truly Dutch, not the PA version) from some store in Solvang.

I was the last to complete my work, and I was so engrossed in my mathematical equations that I failed to notice everyone was waiting for me to finish so that Brother William would let them leave for the day. It was as though I had been involved in one of Brother Edward's Church History courses like any other young nerdy liturgical addict might be. I had studied to the point of forsaking all TV and hang outs at the A&W across from the Fox movie theatre in Ventura. I prayed more Hail Mary's and Glory Be's and Our Father's than I had ever allowed to accumulate outside of Mass and Stations of the Cross.

But I failed none the less. Turning in my test long after even the other "special children" had done so. But I had the utmost confidence in myself.

"We shall see," Brother William said as he took my test from me.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!" I yelled inwardly while everyone else planned their drunken Catholic high school bashes for the weekend. God would not let me down, as I was the star of all the religion classes. Every nun and oblate loved me above all others.

But I failed.

Did I mention that I failed?

Worse than I had every failed, even with Brother William's undivided sweating and aide.

When the day came, a week later, to hand out the tests in the order they had been received, Brother William had the widest smile on his ever-smiling face that I had ever seen.

He carefully placed my paper on the cira 1940's dented wooded school desk as though it were my life thesis on the Shroud of Turin.

"No matter what, Teeefahneee, you can still go to heaven, and you are truly a special girl."

F

The only F I ever obtained in high school. Yay me!

But Brother William's words echo inside my head today as I fight with my credit score to make it raise above the place it lived just after I left Hannemahn with a $60,000.00 a day hospital bill for several weeks of Guillian-Barre treatments in ICU. I should have an excellent score by now. But it has budged very little. And I cannot figure out why. Perhaps, I will always be "special", but at least, if I accept all graces given me and go to confession this weekend, I can still go to heaven.

Yay God!

To Him, I am worth more than my mathematical failures or my credit score. And in this present family crisis, I had to admit that this last parting line of Brother William's to his "most special" student of all, is the one that comes to me at night when I am most conflicted with stress. Even more than he was a consultant to NASA, and a few other highly important mathy locations, he was a Catholic brother and he put the eternity of my soul above my incredibly low math score. He knew of my potential in other areas and in the fervency of my crazy amount of Hail Mary's. He must have seen me at the chapel during the morning break and in the library every lunch (nerdy me). High school is not fun for the liturgically obsessed, but it is memorable and we Catholic obessed tend to remember the life-enriching parts.

Cause we were not fun enough to create any other sort of memories...

*I tried to find a picture of Brother William with his genius hair and eteral blue faded sweater, but no luck so far. I will keep hunting.

The Future

2009-08-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

We have sort of moved into our new home, while still living half in our old home, and cleaning both homes at the same time.

I am stinking tired. I need a vacation again.

Our old home is beautiful, and the buyer will be quite happy. We already have three investors who are seriously interested and begging for our permission to haggle with our mortgage company already.

Our new home is beautiful, and we will be quite happy here once we are truly moved in and the extreme stress of an unsold home on the mountain is long gone.

I cooked the first home made meal in weeks for my family last night - BBQ country pork ribs, cheesy/onion cornbread, green beans and rice, and walnut fudge brownies. I think they were happy and feeling a little more like normalcy might be in our future.

I woke them all with breakfast this morning, taking orders and serving them all so that they would not look for distraction inside a fast food joint. Last Friday night, against my strong objections, my family chose to eat at a local burger place and three out of four of us got food poisoning. And we all still had to move and carry heavy objects all day the next day.

I have painted a fresh coat of paint in just about every room of the old house, steamed all the carpets, washed all the windows and bathrooms, and vacuumed four million times. Tonight, we go there to get more stuff and mow the lawn. In the new home, I have been working on training my children not to run up and down the stairs and scream at will when playing. The nearly deaf old woman next door says we are not loud, but she can feel the thumping around.

I think it has been more than a decade since I have felt such stress. We have all lost weight and there are migraines and stomach ailments abounding - though there is very little complaining. It is a very strange adjustment. It is as though we have only been renting our home on the mountain and now we are returning to our 1905 home in the last town that we lived in. Both older homes are very similar - though this rented one is nicer. The only thing I am really obsessing about at this moment is selling our other home before foreclosure and making our rented home economically sound during the winter. I have lots of tricks I employed at the 1905 house that may work here. We shall see...

Who knows anything about the future? Not me.

Forgiveness is Hard

2009-07-30T06:36:00.000-07:00

Forgiveness provides us with much graces.

Forgiveness can be a real pain in the butt at first.

The other day, while moving my cookie sheets into my new home, I spied our elderly neighbor.

"Do you go to that church?" she asked, pointing to the Roman Catholic parish just a few feet from our front porch.

"Oh, no," I started. "We are Catholic, but..."

But she didn't hear me. She waved her gnarled Rheumatic fingers toward the building. "I go there. I have gone there for 60 years," she said. "I just love it."

"How do you like the new priest?" I asked her.

"Who cares?" she asked. "He's alright. It's the Eucharist that matters."

True enough, I agreed and we started to talk like two cradle Catholics on a Tuesday summer evening on our porches - about All Saints Day parties and Easter egg hunts and house blessings and priests who used to like to play baseball with the kids of the neighborhood.

Gone are those days, I thought.

She asked where we had gone when we lived on the mountain. I pointed to the other Roman Catholic parish across town. She said her ladies club meets there once a month.

"Beautiful church," she said, allowing a wide smile across her face. A pretty face, even for one who has gone to the same parish for 60 years. "But not very friendly."

I just nodded, and told her nothing of my husband's hard work and effort there, of the three years he served the parish children in the Sacraments and religious education. And especially, I kept quiet about the youth group - his true passion - that he had spent more than a year planning, designing, regulating with the diocese, and fasting and praying over. And then how he was chased out the very first fall meeting, because Sunday nights interfered with sports - even though all summer the youth group had been growing and was quickly much-loved by a small group of local kids.

The old woman went inside her home to get me a bulletin from her veteran Irish parish. I did not read it until my sweetheart and I were back in our car, driving back up the mountain to the home we are selling.

Clear as day, the bulletin noted the "new regional youth group" being started by a brave new Director of Religious Ed.

Interesting...

When Lee left the parish, he left all his curriculum, his notes, his keyboard for music, his lesson plans, his diocesan contacts, everything a future youth group leader would need. They took it completely from him without a thank you, used his format, and then claimed all the work for themselves, and this new Director of Religious Ed gets paid handsomely, where my husband was told, "This will have to be volunteer, because we cannot even pay a janitor anymore."

This DRE takes all his work without notice and pretends the wheel has been reinvented and gets paid full time for Lee's work. Nice. We are getting kicked out of our home, in large part, because of all the work Lee did there without reimbursement, and this new youth leader probably gets that really great diocesan health care plan.

I hope the ungrateful parents who threatened the youth group last year, will at least, give this paid leader a tad more respect.

In one year, we get kicked out of our parish and then, out of our home...Thank God for the Russians. They make all other suffering seem so minuscule.

I have much to forgive. Thank God this week I go to confession.

Excerpt From My Daily Solzhenitsyn

2009-07-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

Goryainov-Shakhovsky! The little old man, slovenly in his old age...he was purged in the interests of "freshening up" the staff. He went to Moscow, and returned with a note from Kalinin: "Don't touch this old man!" It was rumored that Kalinin's father had been a serf of the professor's father's.

So they did not touch him. They did not touch him in a way that was awesome. He might write a research paper in the natural sciences containing a mathematical proof of the existence of God. Or at a public lecture on his beloved Newton he might wheeze from behind his yellow mustaches: "Someone just passed me a note: 'Marx wrote that Newton was a materialist, and you say he was an idealist.' I reply [said the old man]: Marx was wrong. Newton believed in God, like every other great scientist."

From the Rosicrucians, The First Circle, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (pronounced, Sol-zhen-neetzen, for those who were wondering and found the title too daunting).

14 Years

2009-07-30T05:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, July 29th, Lee and I (sort of) celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. It's funny, because only two days ago, while packing up books in the garage we are soon to leave, I found pictures from our honeymoon from Hilton Head Island the summer of 1995.

"Look how skinny we were!" I said to my sweetheart, who immediately replied with, "Look how much hair I had." But there was no enthusiasm in his voice.

We painted yesterday after Lee finished work, and I steamed most of the visible carpeted areas. We scrubbed all bathrooms and consequently, had no place to sleep last night. Our bed was covered in boxes to take outside and shove into the back of the Jeep the next morning, and we were too tired to move them back to the newly cleaned carpets. So we spent our anniversary sleeping on the floor, with Lee barely able to breathe since he had hurt his back carrying something heavy up the stairs of our rented home.

"Happy Anniversary!" I whispered before we fell asleep - which was hard to do since both our 9 year old and our 5 year old were sleeping with us in the living room. They on the couches, we on spread out blankets with the dog. Around 1am, a 5 year old fell off the love seat and onto our heads. He continued to sleep with his head on the ground and his feet on the couch. We had to reposition him back onto the love seat twice in the night. I had a headache this morning when I woke to drink hot Styrofoam cups of coffee with my sweetheart.

And while he showered, I had this thought...

I would much rather go through all that we have been through together (even before this present conflict) just to hold his hand for 14 more years. On the floor, with messy hair and a burping yellow lab, with children falling on our heads and calling out to us at all hours of the night...I would so prefer to have all that trouble just to have Leonardo for 14 years + forever.

Surrounded By Prayer and Oversized Dinners

2009-07-29T09:01:00.001-07:00

Our friends are making our lives so much more livable.

Our pal, Nancy, has brought dinner two or three times. Catholic School Sister has worked her Italian magic and made us piles of sausage and stuffed shells ("manicot" as my Italian stepfather would say). My brother has helped us move boxes from this side of the mountain to the other in town. Nancy has also agreed to let our precious kitty (formerly her precious kitty) bunk with her family, because we cannot keep her anymore.

Our pal, Homeschool Jennifer, and her family, have agreed to let us rent their beautiful Victorian home from them. They are breaking their own rule of not doing business with pals, because we really need them and they are kind enough to understand that. They have also recommended us to some real estate investment acquaintances...we shall see what God allows.

Our friend, the Byzantine priest, has offered to bless our new home as soon as possible, and wonders of wonders...he is making time to hear my confession this week! True story!

Our pal, Lenya, has packed and cleaned and babysat for us. So has my sister who recently returned from her stately apartment in Europe to sleep in my parent's basement and look for new employment in this fledgling American economy. But she is a teacher, so she will find something soon, and we will help her as she has helped us.

Skinny Sarah called to suggest a mutual Latin Only friend who rents near the home where we are moving. "You could talk to her. I am sure she would help you as well." But we have not needed to do that. Still, she offered and is thinking of us and feeling our pain since she has faced her own financial crisis in the recent past.

My Pentecostal grandmother has prayed incessantly for us, insisting that the Holy Spirit has revealed to her that all will be fine in the near future. That this is all part of His grand plan. I absolutely agree.

Without our friends and all the oversized amazing dinners they have offered us, where would we be? Insane? Feeling completely downcast?

Even more than the dinners, and the cat-caring, and the house renting...prayers are the most coveted around here these days. And they are being offered for the Velez Family from all across the country and world. Even in Eastern Europe and in Africa, people are praying for God's will in our lives. We cannot lose.

And when our friends need us, we will be there. They can count on it.

Sea Sick

2009-07-27T10:06:00.000-07:00

I feel like I am riding in a very narrow boat on a wide and randomly stormy sea. Today, I spoke with a representative from the office of the PA Speaker of the House. She informed me that many of our rights appeared violated, though she had no proof. And it is interesting that our mortgage company has been sued for discrimination against Hispanics in many more states than our own.

I have no idea where this will lead us. My prayer, and please pray with us, that we can simply offer the deed over and be able to offer some other family a beautiful new home to live in affordably. The attorneys - who refuse to mail us our reinstatement amount, which would allow us to stay in our home - are charging us $41.00 a day. Already, they have been working against us for more than 20 days. We did not even know they existed until they had already charged us several hundred dollars for two weeks. No one informed us of anything.

Some nights I go to sleep praising God that He simply loves us all enough to offer us His life. And other nights, my husband tells me, that directly after making both the Western and Eastern Sign of the Cross, I grind my teeth so sharply in my sleep that he prays that I won't bite off my tongue or break a tooth.

I have this sense of numbness now, like I am experiencing things from the outside of my own world. People stop me and ask me about the situation and I can actually speak about it as though it is someone else who is living through this. Perhaps, it is a survival mechanism of some kind. My pal, MT - the world's greatest shrink - could probably verify this for me.

But in the end, when I have awakened in the morning and have a strong cup of Swedish coffee in my hand, I am aware once again that God is the Reality that is more real than the world I touch every day.

Somehow, we are alive and well and will get through all of this. Glory to God for All Things...as every Orthodox I know says. Glory Be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit...as all Romans I know say.

The First Circle

2009-07-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

"The happiness of incessant victory, the happiness of fulfilled desire, the happiness of success and of total satiety - that is suffering! That is spiritual death, a sort of unending moral pain. It isn't the philosophers ...but I personally, Gleb Nerzhin, a prisoner in harness for the fifth year, who has risen to that stage of development where the bad begins to appear the good. And I personally hold the view that people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth. When Lev Tolstoi dreamed of being imprisoned, he was reasoning like a truly perceptive person with a healthy spiritual life." Gleb Nerzhin, Gulag Prisoner.

"You are poisoned by the stink of prison-latrine talk - and you want to see the world through that haze." Lev Rubin, Gulag Prisoner.

- From The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Most of our lives are packed in medium to large size moving boxes. The realtor comes to our home this week at some point to put a price on the house we are leaving. The mortgage company wants the house before Halloween. Even sooner than Christmas. We shall see. I am supposed to be writing them a hardship letter, telling them why we were late a couple of times and why they should help us. This, after they have already told us that they will not help us. We still do not know what our reinstatement amount might be. They refuse to offer us that as well, even though they are required to do so.

Today, we did not go to Mass or Divine Liturgy. I accidentally packed everything except a pile of work clothes and some underwear. Not very liturgically appropriate. I emailed pertinent Fathers to let them know of our absence. So, we prayed the Rosary instead. Too covered in dust and debris to receive the Eucharist just now.

In one week, we were visited by the sheriff informing us of our right to argue foreclosure - though we have no idea what our rights are other than paying off the entire loan. No one will answer our questions.

My uncle is dying in a VA hospital in Oklahoma.

And my iron has fallen so low that I will shortly need a new infusion, because my iron loss is causing Dystonia. This is something that I have had for years, and was probably some of the reasoning behind an incorrect MS diagnosis, but it makes the muscles in my hands, arms, legs, and face contort and contract very sharply so that they cramp up and I can't use them. I have to quit my packing jobs every half hour or so. I have single handedly packed most of my 2000 square foot home, and I have to take pain killers every night to get and do more of it in the morning. The strangeness of all this has certainly made me far more acquainted with my local thrift store, where I have deposited a good 1/3 of our needless household goods.

Yes, even books. I have rid myself of 99% of all my Stupid For Funs. No more Grisham, no more Roberts, no more no names. Just Chekov and Hemingway and Joyce and Doyle. And Twain. All the classics - except my extra Les Miserables. I have a new version now. I kept that and gave the college version to the thrift store.

So, off we go soon. Off to a new home and new life. Truly. My parents can't peak in my windows or insist on weekly angry BBQs with doomsday talk on the horizon. Instead, we will be on our own without the entire world walking in and out of our front door like it is a revolving entrance to the Grand Marquis.

And no one will follow us the Eastern half of Catholicism, so we will be free to worship without irritation as well.

Just some friends. We have several who already live on the street we are moving to and this is great.

Sometimes good things happen in the middle of things that look very bad.

And just as a side note that proves such a notion...I am reading Solzhenitsyn right now at night when my arms get too monkey-like. The First Circle. I highly recommend the Russians when one is struggling with any life-changing event. Well, honestly...I recommend the Russians at any time. Books are my compass. Thank God for the Bible, or maybe I would have become a pagan. Who knows?

My American Hero

2009-07-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, my father emailed me to tell me that my great uncle had finally succumbed to his Alzheimer's and that he had been admitted to the VA hospital in Oklahoma City. I have always loved my uncle. He is one of my truly favorite human beings. And even if he wasn't my uncle I would feel this way.

He has suffered from his disease for several years now, but even two years ago, he knew me.

"Darlin', I am so proud of you," He was speaking of my book. "I keep readin' the same parts over and over again cause my memory is not what it used to be. But I have a book group now and we talk about you every Wednesday."

And I couldn't figure out why. My Uncle AC served in the Battle of the Bulge and fought all over Europe against the Nazis. He kept a diary and, later, turned that into his memories of World War II. As Uncle AC lays in his hospital bed today saying his goodbyes and looking forward to heaven, I think of him with great pride in my own personal American Hero. In my own Private Ryan.

His memoirs have recently been published on a veteran's site for the state of Oklahoma. I encourage everyone to look through them. I leave the link below. And pray for my great uncle - who is truly great - a man who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in Memphis when it was still illegal for African Americans to eat at a diner table with a white man. And he fought Nazis and saw proof of death camps and still had the faith to be dedicated Christian all his life.

An excerpt from his experience in France at the end of the war.

About this time, we knew we were completely surrounded by the enemy. I am sure man's, especially young men's, hypocrisy shows itself more in war than at any other time. You do a lot of praying, Bible reading and agonizing. The next day, maybe the shooting stops and maybe you kind of say, "Lord I don't need you now that the shooting has stopped." Anyway, I thought it was predestined that we would win. Nonetheless, I was doing a lot of praying and Bible reading at this time. It was about this time that I read the following, "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed but not in dispair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body of the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our own bodies." (II Cor. 4:8-10). I was scared a lot of times after this, but I always believed, after this that I would get home.

and on finding death camp survivors...

We went north along the west side of the Rhine, crossed the Rhine, then went south. We went through all kinds of areas where Kraut gas chambers had been used, but I never went to see all the dead bodies. The living were terrible enough. I can't believe one creation of God's could treat another that way. Let it suffice to say, we literally saw many walking skeletons.

Read on. This is your American Hero, too.

Click Here

Amidst the Bad News...

2009-07-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

There is something wonderful happening in America!

A dream...

A miracle...

A birthday gift for me...

President Obama's ratings are plummeting!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Amen!

(Dont' screw this up, conservatives. Let's keep this trend going and squeeze our obese capitalist agendas back into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave)

Birthday Wishes and Really Big Bears

2009-07-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

Today, after I packed up a good portion of the upstairs - while my kids played at a friend's house for the afternoon - I sat down to read the mail and drink a much-needed cup of coffee. Amidst the bills and newspaper (whose articles I have neglected to participate in as of late) was a card addressed to me from my pal, the Orthodox priest.

"Happy Birthday, Tiffani. May God bless you and your wonderful family for years to come."

Fr. N

Really? Priests do that? It was such a nice gesture, I decided to carry the card around with me all day in my pocket. A neat little reminder that we matter to people.

And then I had this thought...How do the Russians always seem to know when my birthday is, how to reach me nearly 20 years after our last conversation, when to encourage me? It is like they save their words for the most important moments. Like they get information whether I offer it or not.

"You survived Siberia. You can survive this."

Yes, and I thought you had forgotten who I was completely, because you rarely speak even when spoken to. And you never reply to emails or letters. I exist still in your world?

"Happy Birthday."

Did I ever mention my birthday? How nice of you to know it and to care. Truly. It makes me feel more like I belong somewhere in this world.

It was a wonderful and unexpected surprise. But still surprising. The Russians are like that. They are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They appear and then disappear and then reappear again when you think they had finally disappeared for good.

"We are watching you, friend. Just know that you are still one of us."

And on my birthday, this gigantic black bear crossed through my yard and looked up into my window. I laughingly said, "Look now, kids! One of the Russians is coming!"

Can I use the big 900 lb bear as a representative at any foreclosure hearings? Cause that might make this whole thing quite enjoyable. I can put a hat on him and call him Uncle Volodja - just like my fictional horse in Siberia. I wonder if I might be able to train him to hold a briefcase and lie like an attorney?

The Russians have come, and they are wishing me a happy birthday and reminding me that I am stronger than I think I am. I am happy today not to be French. I would probably not appreciate a Baguette as much as a reminder that I had once survived Siberia under the forceful guidance of my quirky Russian friends who insist they are family. And I would much rather be reminded, by a card with an Orthodox cross on the outside, that birthdays are supposed to be happy occasions no matter the circumstances that surround it.

He Loves Mankind

2009-07-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

Life is busy, and I am tired. Very tired. We are boxing up every inch of our lives except for the Icons and the Rosaries that most matter - the ones already frayed from years of prayer and contemplation. We won't actually wrap up any Icons and nothing that is blessed. We will hand carry all those very necessary reminders of the mighty cloud of witnesses who intercede for us - and all who need them - every day.

We are going to see our new home in a few days, and we are all looking forward - amazingly - to being out of this one. We are selling the big beautiful home and praying that it beats the foreclosure date. The sheriff stopped by today to very apologetically inform us of the court order against our property. Even he seemed surprised that we have been denied a reinstatement amount, and that late payments can result in such harsh treatment. We could have our home sold out from underneath us by Halloween. Even the mortgage company employees seem appalled for us.

Several friends have called or sent encouraging emails. My pal, Nancy, is making us dinner tonight - which is great, because I only have the energy to make everyone more peanut butter and jelly. Several people have told us how odd this treatment is, especially in this economy. Especially since we have been paying our mortgage all along. Several more friends have remained completely silent, and one even suggested that she really can't speak to us until this whole thing is over, because it is too upsetting for her. I know several more are rightfully (and hopefully) enjoying their much-deserved summer vacations, and will have no idea why we no longer answer our phone on the mountain when they return in the fall. Why the phone number no longer exists. I am not going to email everyone. I write about this for two reasons: One, I have no ambition to write about anything else. This is taking all my concentration. Two, because I know so many who are in worse places with their mortgages and it could be any day for them. Perhaps, our example will encourage them to starve the cable bill a bit. Not that we didn't. It seems that mortgage companies will work with those who have lots of extra money they are tossing at "non-essentials". On things other than food and gas. We don't have extra, so we are getting kicked out.

It's all very strange. To be moving this fast. But, in all this weirdness - while others who truly are behind in their payments remain safely in their homes - we are grateful for God's goodness, for His hand on our lives. What else can we do? Absolutely everything except our attitudes are completely out of our hands. It is a harsh realization that no one with a mortgage actually owns their home until the mortgage is paid off. Thus, it can be taken when payments are late. The true owner (the mortgage company) wants their property back.

I am reminded of the Divine Liturgy as I pack and run through reams and reams of Duck Tape..."For He loves mankind."

In all of this, I know His love is real forever. And this is all the information I am privy to these days.

You Survived Siberia...

2009-07-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

You can handle this.

So said a friend of mine from Russia.

True. I did survive Siberia, but as an American traveling there. A little different than, say, those millions who survived it as Russians in prison.

Anyway...

Today, I am so incredibly exhausted, I don't even know how I am going to complete all the packing and painting for the rest of the day. I am way overdue for another iron infusion at the cancer center. I suppose that soon my doctor will order me one, and all I can think about is how much time that is going take me away from all the moving work I need to get done.

How am I going to paint when I have spent the day with a mega IV in my arm?

Oh, well. I survived Siberia, and my iron was probably low there, too. It's just that Siberia is so darn fun I was completely distracted from my fatigue.

We are praying our home sells soon. We care not at all if we make any money on it. We just want it to sell so that we avoid the foreclosure we had no idea we were even close to. The sooner the better. I think I packed most of the shoes and all the sugar, so only dog food and cereal is left. And the cable is on. One needs Lifetime, and other trashy TV, at a time like this. But one with four children cannot live this way for long.

Off to toss unsold Mary Kay eye creams into a used shoebox. I dream about Siberia...the Ob River and the cruise with the great cookies and the Volga where we swam until the rats chased us out, and how the sun never set so one could never sleep, and how no one in the entire country knew how to smile.

Yes, I can survive this. And the home I am losing is not my dream home in Siberia. Losing a wooden shack without running water and driving my horse to work would be really sad. Having to say goodbye to both would be devastating. The dacha and Dadja Volodja would be so hard to part with- this is what I would call my trusty Siberian steed. The impending winter would seem so insurrmountable. At least, I am losing my home in America. That's better.

Home Update

2009-07-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

After my post about our sudden and unexpected move from the home we have worked for and lived in for nearly five years now, my pal, Nancy, sent me an email about MakingHomeAffordable.gov. We had not heard of this, so we called late last night, and well after midnight when my husband hung up, we discovered that we had several options - all of which could save us from foreclosure if our mortgage company chooses to work with us. Up till now, they have refused to speak with us, as had the attorney they sent us to.

A couple of things every American homeowner should know:

*Even if you are a day late on your mortgage, your mortgage company can slap you with foreclosure papers. So, if you are a couple of months behind and you have not yet heard from them, do not just hope for the best and think a late payment will cover you. Behind every mortgage company is a group of investors. Your investor may have information on your income and how much money you spend on "non necessary items". If that number is large enough to make your mortgage payable, they may have left you alone for a while, but sooner than you think, they will shut the door on you. Be sure of it. Time to get your money in order and learn how to spend reasonably, because when attorney fees start mounting on you, it will be hard to sell. If you do the calculation at the Making Home Affordable site and you are not eligible, it means that you have been spending money where you really do not need to be spending it, and it is time to streamline. This is your big advantage, your way out of the mess you are in. This may sound harsh or unfair, but trust me, to be within or below your means with no way out is even scarier.

*If you are eligible for this program, various lenders/mortgage companies have different options to help you. You might be able to have your interest rate lowered, have your loan lengthened up to 40 years, sell your house for the market value only, sell it for less than the market value within one month and still have all your debt forgiven, or hand over the deed to your home to the mortgage company. This last option is certainly not the best, but it is much better than a foreclosure and most mortgage companies will give you between $2,000.00 - $5,000.00 in moving expenses for willfully turning over your home when you know you can no longer afford to live there and selling is not feasible.

When we spoke to the woman last night, she went over all our expenses and immediately let us know that we should be easy for our mortgage company to work with, as we live well within our means. She was amazed at how little - if any - that we spend on entertainment and cable, on clothing or gifts for each other. Even our food bill was amazingly low compared to the average American household. She told us we had done the right thing paying off both our cars and cutting our utilities by barely using air conditioning and unplugging all appliances not in use. She said our mortgage company was not allowed to tell us that we could not speak with them, that we can always speak to our mortgage company. She also said that it may be too late for them to work with us, but she sent off some information to their loss prevention department anyway.

Now we wait and see, because our dear friends at Visionstone Properties have offered to let us possibly rent one of their homes, should we need it. When we saw the home, we became instantly excited and it propelled us to proceed with our selling idea no matter what. It's an amazing old home. They have done a phenomenal job at fixing this place up. No, you cannot take it from us. We may be in there very soon.

So, this is where we are now as we scrub and paint and pack and wrap China and try and figure out what we will do with our extra family members - my brother and the dog and cat.

Even the mortgage counselor who helped us last night was amazed that our mortgage company was so unwilling to work with us, as we have a great payment history, an excellent record of paying down nearly all our debt, and we live well within our means. She found it very upsetting, but not at all surprising, that we had worked very hard to improve our credit but the score had not risen with the hard work and effort. She said this happens a lot, especially in this economy.

She was a Christian and noted our consistent tithing, asking our forgiveness, but suggesting that we tithe with our time only. We do not give much, we just give every Sunday, and this is considered our one somewhat unwise note of money mishandling. Lee told her that we were not going to budge on this. Where we receive the Sacraments is where we offer God our thankfulness. She didn't make the suggestion again.

We have no idea where we stand at this moment right now, but we do know that in a couple of days we will find out if our mortgage company will work with us. If they won't, we are in a new old home as soon as possible and someone else will have the privilege of growing their family in our old new one.

I write about this - forsaking my well overdue news assignment to my local paper - because I know that most of my friends who have mortgages are behind by around 2 months. Fix that now, because you are already in the foreclosure danger stage if you are behind even one day. All those late fees will be accumulated and added to an attorney fee that you will be expected to pay along with your late mortgage payments and whatever else is due. Even if you do not qualify for mortgage help at Making Home Affordable, you can certainly speak to one of their credit counselors who are loaded with information and financial knowledge. Even if you rent, you can call them for advice.

By the way, renters, a recent study in a leading business journal suggested that renting in this particular economic turn down is the best way to go. It will save your credit and save you money. Renters, you are wise. Think before you buy even if an eager realtor tells you it is a buyer's market. Oh yeah, and thank you, Miss Nancy for your suggestion.

Our Sundays

2009-07-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

This is where we have been worshipping in the Divine Liturgy lately. I just thought I would share the beauty of the Eastern Catholic Church.

This is where I am most at home. It is the perfect seam between East and West, between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.

So while we live through this difficult time in our lives, we find strength in the Ancient roots of the Catholic faith.

We who mystically represent the Cherubim,

and sing to the life-giving Trinity the thrice-holy hymn,

let us now lay aside all earthly care:

that we may receive the King of all,

who comes invisibly upborne by the Angelic Hosts.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Amen

The End of the Beginning

2009-07-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

Written while on assignment tonight for my local newspaper. I arrived a half an hour before my appointment time. So I wrote what was seriously distracting me in order to focus on what I had been sent to the township meeting for.

Today, July 16, 2009 - just five days before my 35th birthday - my husband and I sat on our neatly made bed and discussed creative ways to shield our children from the loss of a home smack in the middle of their Christmas break from school.

Already, we have dragged them all over the better part of a 45 mile radius - during the last few days of their lack-luster/watered down vacation and into our work week - to search for much more affordable housing. But today, every lender in a page long list (handed to us last night by a very kind elderly woman who'd walked us through five available homes far below the price of our current one) said we had no business begging for a loan from any of their fine establishments. It seems that all that hard work we have done over the past four years to improve credit long destroyed by medical bills is not being represented in our credit score. The many thousands of dollars we have spent paying old debtors, reinstating credit we barely use, and living frugally far away from the normal American spending radius, has amounted to absolutely nothing. Every door we have knocked on was immediately slammed in our faces if it was even opened at all.

As our lives stand right now, we have no place to go, and just about the time St. Nicholas is to arrive with promises of blessings, our home could be empty of the Velez family and opened for eager "house flippers" at the sheriff sale arranged to liquidate us. Only this time, the flippers will look to one another, salivating. "These people really took care of the place. They really loved living here."

They will get lots of money for our hard work and effort. Something we, apparently, have no right to. We don't even want to make lots more than we paid for our house. We don't want fancy food or new clothes or books that everyone else is reading. We tithe to three churches - even the one that slaps us continually in the face with indifference. All we want is what we were promised - that some people get without effort. Just a decent credit score reflective of our diligence. Some people get life very easy and others do not. All those people who come to our home so often for cups of coffee and my oatmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies will have to chose another home to do this in, because we may very well not have a home at all.

I realize we were stupid now in listening to all those snappy financial people with Jaguars and spiritual platitudes. That when they said, "Just pay down your debt any way you can. Refinance and take more money to pay off those medical bills. It will greatly improve your credit," they were only saying these things to line their own pockets.

It was a lie. It hate it when people lie to me. It is the hardest thing for me to forgive, but I hate it even more for people to lie to me in such a way that it will possibly hurt my children, punish their complete innocence by forcing them out of their home for a couple of late (not ignored/not unpaid) mortgage payments. How is it that some people spend months paying absolutely nothing and they are still sitting on their front porches?

We have no car payments. We have almost zero debt. We have paid nearly everyone - even those we probably would have stood a good case against paying had we wanted to pursue it. I did not sue the doctor whose reckless abandon in misdiagnosing me with a terrible disease I never had, and using equally terrible medication that has seemingly permanently made me only a partially functioning friend, mother, employee, nearly killed me. I prayed for him, and honestly, wished him no harm. I cannot physically sustain anything for very long, thanks to steroid induced anemia - thanks to steroid induced arthritis in my spine - thanks to steroid induced vitamin deficiencies that give me kidney stones - thanks to yet another lie from a professional I was urged to trust - at least - a little. Sometimes I think it would be better if kidney stones were deadly and I had some huge trust fund upon kidney failure to offer my children.

I willingly gave my doctor mercy. I was glad to give him mercy. I still am. I hope it was just an accident that he was able to reflect on and learn from. Where is my mercy?

A little has cost us a lot. The statutes of limitations ended before the proof of the damage he did me appeared.

What to do now?

Get a another job that will jar my kidney stones loose?

I called my mother for advice tonight.

"It's only going to get worse," she said, speaking of the nation's economic slowdown. "The Lord will take help you though. He will work it out."

This was only 10 minutes before the last rejection of the day arrived. No one, it seems, will give us any money. Just as my eager and obedient 12 year old had helped his mother pack away most of the kitchen where he prepares his famous egg sandwiches for his five year old brother every morning.

Unlike several sets of friends I have, we have no parents with which to live. I pray, at least, one set will find enough mercy to help us. Mine cannot. They care for my grandmother, and my sister has returned from her teaching job in Europe to live with them for a season before returning to Europe - via Spain most likely.

My brother - who we have supported for the past year - though now he has a job and is preparing for vocational training - still occupies the lower half of my house. My obedient 12 year old's former neatly cared for bedroom and our family room where - in better days - friends came over and watched movies and played air hockey in.

"Are you okay?" I asked him tonight when he heard me brainstorming with my husband on how to make our credit score reflect our efforts.

"Yeah," he said. But he has no idea how high the odds are securely stacked against us right now. But he is exceptional beyond his years - with secret and purposeful stealing of the Jerusalem Rosary to pray in the silence of forest he many get to enjoy for one more bright red and orange PA autumn. It is for him, the 12 year old who makes a point of pretending to be heading toward the bathroom after Divine Liturgy, but when he thinks we are not looking, is really heading toward the Icon of the Theotokos and the Crucified Christ to pray. It is for him that my heart breaks the hardest. For each of our four children. One, two, three, four. We obeyed and were open to life. Now we can no longer provide for it. My head swirls with terrible images of where we will end up with the Pocono winter sets in and the kids are well into the second quarter of the school year they are working so hard to make exceptional for our approval.

I hope God loves them more than He loves me.

If people who pay their bills can have such things happen to them, what more those of you who are even more overtaxed than we are? Heed the warning, and sell your mega house. Mine is far from mega, but it is better than we have ever had - by appearances. We will never attempt this again. For sure. We will tell all those who insist that my husband and I owe it to our large family to give most of them their own room, a large yard to run in, the perfect redneck school to attend - I am literally going to slap them with the attorney fees that have now been added to my ever exceeding home loan.

The one for the house so many have enjoyed, but who will maybe not see us with such gusto very soon.

"This is the beginning of everything for you guys!" one friend said when she first saw our four room bi-level four years ago. "You deserve this."

Really? Why?

I regret everything north of the tunnel that leads to where we are now.

I Know That My Redeemer Liveth

2009-07-16T05:13:00.000-07:00

Handel simply copied Sacred Scripture, but he believed what he copied onto paper and set to beautiful Sacred music. He signed every work, "For the Glory of God". And it worked, because when people sing the Hallelujah Chorus, they sing the Mass without abandon. They sing of the glory of God, whether or not they even believe it. Even if they are simply copying Handel's words.

It is a good thing my husband and I have decided to sell the house. Yesterday, my sweetheart called the mortgage company to see what our payoff was, to find out what the lowest and highest is that we might be able to get according to what we owe. Already, because were behind - but only very slightly and nothing close to so many other Americans - our account has been sent to an attorney. No one bothered to notify us. It was done a while ago. While on vacation, we still had not decided to move. We were praying as a family to be able to simply keep our house, all the while our mortgage company decided that our dedicated payments (minus a couple sent late many months ago) were not enough.

Now we have to pack today. We have to box up the glasses and the books and sell 90% of what we have, because we certainly will not have room to take it. We have paint and scrub like our lives depended on it. We have to do all this in time for our children to start a new school they have never even laid eyes on.

Last night, we had already made earlier plans to view some houses. We found three we really liked. They are selling for about a third of the worth of our house. We are praying that someone will give us a new mortgage, let us move in before school starts. We are praying that our house sells fairly fast. I have several friends who have sold their homes in less than a month, and I find this miraculous - especially up in the PA mountains where we live.

Should I be blogging this? Who knows? I am not one to keep deep, dark secrets. In fact, I learned long ago not to toss my pearls to swine and share every important thing with everyone, and I learned, equally, that sometimes speaking your struggles out loud can bring the light of reality to them and put them in their proper place, and it can help those who are struggling also, but who are too ashamed to mutter the truth.

I have been there. And this situation is not the worst we have ever faced. We have gone without food and health insurance and without heat and hot water for months at a time in the past. I have had to give my babies half and half, because there was no more formula or pray that a friend invites us over for dinner, so that my little ones can eat something substantial. We have been there before and all while our upper middle class parents watched on and told us "this was God's way of molding and shaping us" and that their hands were tied when they clearly weren't. We faced eviction notices in the earliest part of our marriage and parenthood when I was still paralyzed and pregnant and recovering alone all day at home from Guillian-Barre Syndrome.

We have been in worse places.

This is why I took my brother in last summer when he had no place to go. Who leaves family behind when they are hurt the most? But this effort is what is costing us our home today. It is the bigger part of it. Taxes soared to nearly three times what they were when we moved in four years ago. Gas was $4.00 a gallon when we first began to struggle, supporting ourselves and my brother who remained out of work and solely dependent on us for 8 months.

So now what? We can only pray. We can only get slapped around and beg God for mercy. There is no other way around the many trials and trails of life. We can only know that while we may feel like lots around us is dying away, our Redeemer Liveth.

So said Handel when he wrote those words to music. If this is something you need to know today, I hope my story somehow will remind you of that. So pray for us, and we will pray for you.

"Faith is like a dark tunnel: God gives us the Light to take one step at a time. The Light is not given to see the end of the tunnel." Fr. Walter Ciszek

"Let God rule; be affected by Him. It is like being affected by TV. (contemplation) Learn the prayer of listening. With it comes unconcern, eternal wisdom, and a passive attitude with a total readiness to act." Fr. Walter Ciszek

Job 19:26 "And though...worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: I know that my Redeemer Liveth!"

Highly Recommended Listening!

2009-07-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

While scrubbing down my kitchen early this morning before all my babies woke up and started demanding breakfast (or at least wondering how it might magically appear without their personal effort), I decided to listen to Ancient Faith Radio, as I often do when working closest to my treasured coffee pot.

I dicovered an EXCELLENT podcast today. It is suitable for all listeners: Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Mainline Protestant, etc...My Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters might disagree, but Christians will not. You won't regret this brief piece on Humility.

Listen Here to Descending Into Humility by Fr. John Oliver.

Don't be afraid, dear Baptist, AGer...It won't convert you. You won't start suddenly and unconsciously muttering Hail Mary's and Cherubic hymns. Promise.

In the Market for Less

2009-07-15T05:27:00.000-07:00

I got many a reply to my last post. See below. Most replies were sent to me via email, but every single one of them was affirmative: Everyone agrees that times are hard, tightening the belt is needed. Our family has always been quite frugal, eliminating many things other family's consider necessary. We have gone without a TV for months at a time before, because we could not afford even basic cable. We have eaten what we refer to as "the WIC diet". Meaning, I have actually looked up the requirements for infants on the state agency, Women, Infant, and Children, and eaten the kinds of foods they cover, so that I know my children are getting all their nutrients, but I am shopping like I am on welfare - even though I am not.

Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.

We cancelled our away vacation to Maine this year. Instead, we packed lunches and hiked at various local state parks every day that it wasn't raining. We only ate at diners twice. Diners are cheap. Very cheap and most make excellent Reuben's. We camped in our own backyard and pretended it was the great New England wilderness. We have only driven away from our immediate area for vacation twice in our whole lives, and we always had to travel with others, so that someone else was paying for half of it.

I have attempted to work in the recent past, but I have CFIDS, so when I am tired, I can't move. That happens very quickly. This includes even writing. It sucks a little, but what can you do? Life is life.

And I don't mind my own personal cheapness. I am proud that I can do this and with a strange burst of adrenaline. "See how well I can feed all of you on cheese and Cheerios! You will be amazed!" And I get the job done. Or rather, God does. Just like He did with the loaves and the fishes. I wonder if that was a Friday...

So, we are tightening our crazy cheap belts a little more than usual, and attempting to aim ourselves towards our goal of selling our big and beautiful home for a smaller, beautiful one. Because wherever we go, we always think our life is beautiful. Except for that apartment complex way back when...with all the ladybugs and mice. We called it Plague Place. That was a long time ago though. We have already purchased two nice homes after much savings and work. We can do it again. And that is something I promised never to say once we had settled into our present house. "We can do it all over again."

But we will.

So many people emailed me and said words like, "I wish we could downsize, but we don't have anything to downsize to." I have two sets of pals who live with their parents. The husbands lost jobs and living in the Northeast is just too expensive to do on their own. One set doesn't see any future wisdom in moving out, and the other is purchasing a very nice manufactured home in a community with a pool and miniature golf course, because the husband has lost his job twice in several years.

Others said, "I don't blame you. If my husband could swallow his pride before we lose this house, we would be moving into a nice manufactured home, too. I would totally do it. But I fear we will just lose the house instead."

And what's funny, is that there are those who did not comment, but I have heard them say before that people who are struggling with their mortgages today are doing so because they got these huge interest rate or interest only loans. None of my friends did that. Neither did we. We acted very wisely and even greatly, greatly improved our credit which had been ruined by mountains of medical bills from one the world's rarest neurological diseases. We simply moved into an area that we could not afford, an area all our "wisest friends and family" insisted was the best thing for us. This is our stupid move. Though I do not doubt God brought us here. It's all too much of a mystery for me to personally decipher. We simply are not uber rich. Neither are any of my friends who suffer as we do, and none of them are one of those high risk mortgage people.

Things happen. Credit ratings do not effect entry into eternal destiny. So, we move on. All of us. And I have a strong sense that by the time we have made our actual move, several of my readers will have done the same thing. I don't say all of this, or share our personal story, because I somehow need approval or need for everyone to know our plans. It is simply that I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that many are doing the same thing, and they need lots of encouragement, because their cheapness bone does not run as deeply as mine. They need to read the story of others before they can create their own. As the Catholic writer, Matthew Kelly, might say...we are simply inventing a better version of ourselves.

An even more frugal version. We are in the market for much less material, thus offering us much more freedom. It's like the scene in The Mission where Robert DeNiro (Jesuit Priest) finally drops his old load of mercinary armor over the edge of the falls in South America. He joins the mission and finds his true life purpose - which wasn't ever truly created for "having it all".

Anyone who tells you that you can have it all is selling something, and it isn't going to amount to anything. No one gets to have it all. Sometimes, like we who never assumed everything would ever be ours, gets to learn again and again that only God Himself can truly sustain us - no matter the size our house, the rating of our schools, the quality of our parishes. The rest is all vanity, and mostly, a huge waste of time. To chase it will only spin you closer to a tired heart and an early death.

Life On the Cheap

2009-07-14T04:50:00.000-07:00

From Big and Beautiful To Something More Like This...

Recently, I have started to hate the mortgage attached to the house I love. I said to an Eastern priest pal, "I love my house, but I hate my mortgage."

"Back up," he said to me, completely taking me by surprise. "You actually love your house?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's beautiful! It's almost 3,000 square feet, four bedrooms, three baths, two levels, two car garage, mountain setting, brand new - only four years old this fall..."

"But it's just a bunch of wood and metal and glass," he said, tucking his hands into his vestments. "You can't love it. It's not possible. Unless, of course, it has become your idol."

"Not my idol, exactly," I said, "but I definitely feel like my husband and I are its slaves - forsaking all others to meet its demands."

He just nodded. Both hands now inside the vestments, folded across his chest. "You are smart enough to know how you should take this from here, cradle Catholic. I am not going to say anymore."

True enough.

Our house never started out this way - too expensive. In fact, it was insanely affordable when we first purchased it. It was everything else that was taking too much of our funds - food, gas, car payments (which are also insanely cheaper than most couples). But, then we refinanced and took out a loan or two and paid off most of our debt. Which was all fantastic, but did you read the part where I mention taking out loans to pay down the debt? What have we actually paid off?

Our credit score is nicely high now. We can get approved for much less house now at any moment - thus, offering us much more in the way of happiness.

Time to scrub the floor and repaint the walls. Time to put the house of up for sale.

Everyone Lee and I know who are our age, or who have as many children as us (most of our pals), and who have a mortgage, are strapped these days. Only one of those couples, maybe two, is actually strapped because of job loss or because of lowered income. Most of us are trapped because once upon a time in our pursuit of the American dream, we were stupid. Real stupid. And now we are all slaves to our stupidity. To our needs to have bigger and better and nicer and brighter or the best. The best neighborhood, the best schools, the best church, the best friends, the best shopping, the best view, the best hiking, the best house, etc...

It's such a pale of pig slop, friends. It really is.

"We have to downsize!" I said to my husband excitedly during the last couple days of our vacation. "Why don't we sell our big, beautiful house and buy one of those hot ranch/modulars with lots of room and hot appliances, but with (literally, because I have done the math) one third of the mortgage we have now!"

At first it was hard to convince him, and then I said...

"I would never have to take one of those stupid jobs that I am too uninspired to keep. All that tension in the back of your whip lashed neck would probably leave. We would still have great friends, a great universal Church, an exceptional family, the best neighborhood (because we will have moved in:)! What do you think?"

He was still a little unconvinced. And then we drove around for three days looking at homes, speaking with realty professionals, etc...None of them thought we were insane.

"My mortgage has gotten too dang fat, and we have four children who still need raising and, at least, one of them is homeschooled. Maybe all of them will need to be again one day, and I don't have the time or blind ambition to leave my family all day to work outside my home. It makes me sick. Literally," I said to this one sales professional yesterday afternoon.

"I don't want something that looks like a trailer. Our big beautiful home is already a modular. But I am willing to take it one step down and live like one of my absolute favorite Orthodox priests and writers lives. I am ready to go manufactured and have a teeny weeny mortgage." I made a sign with my fingers as though I was holding a very tiny piece of something special.

"Makes perfect sense," said the guy who would get our tiny commission, should we buy something much less than we have now.

"You are not alone," said the woman we spoke to at another location who has dedicated herself to searching out the perfect home for our needs. "There was recently a family with four children who did the same exact thing as you. They had a lovely home in the Lehigh Valley, but two older kids going to college, and they wanted to actually be able to assist them, so they sold their home and bought one of ours. A three bedroom, but they completely made it work. You can make it work if you want to," she said.

This can be said for us keeping the big beautiful home as well. But, like I have said in past posts, I write because I can and because I can't do anything else adequately. So I can't actually add to the needs of this monster house anymore. I can only take care of the family I cooperated with God to create. Time to make that the center of my vocation and not how to help pay for this neatly formed collection of wood, metal and glass.

Downsizing.

And that does not include buying a much older home that I will have to spend billions on to fix up and soothe because of its many aches and pains of aging. I have done that before. It can lead you to the same exact place as a big and beautiful can.

Don't even try to talk us out of it. Get thee behind me, Satan, to all those who think I should - for some stupid reason - slave for a deaf, dumb, blind, and lame master.

"No man can serve two masters: For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (emptiness)." St. Matthew 6:24

"...a man's life consists not of the abundance of things which he possesses, but in being rich toward God." St. Luke 12:13-21

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also...

Time to push my mortgage out of my heart. Out of the heart of most of my prayer and make room for the needs of the starving and dying, of those who have lost their faith, for the pathetic nature of American Christianity....There are greater and far more important things with which to work so hard on in prayer.

The sum of my prayer life should not consist of begging the Master of the Universe for more income and a greater ability to leave my family, my much more beautiful children, my husband whose life and love is my true vocation... in pursuit of the things my big beautiful house (AKA: Mountain of Ugly Debt) demands of me.

Click Here For A Much Better Article Than Mine About Manufactured Housing.

Cradle Catholic in the East

2009-07-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

So, if I have any friends left (after reminding them all I was on vacation) then, life is nearly perfect.

Yesterday, I went to a local Byzantine parish whose priest I have been in frequent email contact with. Lee and I have attended Divine Liturgy there already in the recent past, so it was great to bring the kids with us as well. The kids loved it. Before we had left the church for our usual Sunday summer drive after services, I spied my oldest venerating the icons of the Theotokos and Christ in the far corner of the church. He is completely taken with the Divine Liturgy.

"Mommy! That was the best Mass I have ever been to!" said my second oldest son. "Even though they don't have a coffee hour with doughnuts, I want to come back!"

"It was like Mass where people cared," said my oldest.

There was another half Hispanic/half blond family directly across the aisle from us. They had, at least, six children like us.

"It is very hard to find a traditional Catholic parish anymore in the Northeast," the mother said. "I converted from the Assemblies of God to Roman Catholicism (a very big trend, might I add), and was very disappointed with the very unCatholic edge to the parishes around here. So we have gone Eastern."

My husband spoke up and informed her that he, too, is a convert from that same denomination. I told her I was a cradle Catholic. The converts lamented together, but both seemed to have found a home in Byzantium. I know I have. It feels like Catholicism in the rest of the country, in more interested parts of the world.

"Father, that was a beautiful liturgy," I said to the priest as we cornered him outside the sacristy at the end of the Divine Liturgy.

He smiled. "Thank you."

Strange. I have not gotten a response like "thank you" from a Catholic priest in many years around these parts. I shared with him my complaints. He nodded knowingly.

"About half my parish is made up of disaffected Roman Catholics who are wondering where the Mass is going."

One last day of vacation, and it has started off perfectly at the DL, as my sweetheart calls it. We all received the Eucharist Eastern style and took a pal with us.

"Our Lord does not give us what we want all the time," said Father Michael this weekend. "He gives us what He knows we need."

Steaming Catholic

2009-07-10T06:54:00.000-07:00

It is difficult being a Cradle Catholic. I am sure a convert from the Church of What's Happenin' Now, or from even a liturgical Protestant denomination (there is the Church and then there are all the denoms that denominated from it) still has a hard time. But we Cradles have a unique pain-in-the-butt experience with our Church. Especially if we are faithful.

Yesterday, while still on vacation with my beautiful family, I watched the movie Henry Poole Was Here. Great picture. But it nearly made me cry (death and illness), which is a hard thing for a movie to do. It didn't make me nearly cry for the obvious reasons though. It made me cry because it reminded me of where I grew up - LA - the same place where Henry Poole grew up and returned to when he grew into his thirties, lonely and dying. And it reminded me of the Latin Catholic Southern California where I learned to know God, to trust Him through my Church. It made me long in a very sad way, for that past. For that style of Catholicism that is completely foreign to the cold Northeast.

I hate the way my faith is twisted into Oktoberfests and mom and tots groups and nearly absent pro-life movements in this part of the country. I hate the way priests can live completely apart from Canon Law -as if the Pope is not their boss. Not their Holy Father. I hate that they can refuse me confession, because they have more important things to do. How they can rush me along in it, because my confession is "boring".

It must be hard for converts. If you convert while living in the dead, rapidly Catholic-shrinking, priest sex scandal Northeast, and you never experience that profound, devoted, Latin missionary version of the rest of the Catholic part of America, you might actually believe that this is all there is to Catholicism. That this is being Catholic.

That must suck.

It does for me. It sucks so much (I apologize for completely tossing aside all my years of study at great American universities and colleges to write like an eighth grader) that I have actually had to step over to the East in order to recognize that beautiful, incense-filled, Western Latin Church I grew up in.

"So, Father," I asked a wonderful Byzantine priest recently - whose liturgy I will be part of this Sunday - "is the tiny, mostly ignored East now saving the huge, elephant, train wreck West?"

"Not exactly," he said. "Most Catholics who were never taught to be Catholic - which is the Church in the Northeast - are just leaving or only showing up for Easter and baptism. They would never put up with all this." And he sweeps his hand across the view of the Icon screen, the Eucharist centered in the middle of the Church. "We are too strict. Too in line. But we are booming out West and in the Midwest. Even the Bible belt is loosing Christians in every denomination - including the Church. Don't let those Baptists fool you. They are shrinking like a soppy balloon, too."

Washington's Colonies are becoming Marx's thought center. "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Just ask anyone at Starbucks today.

I am still so freaking mad at my last miserable parish - the indifferent parishioners, the sad priests who quote popular movies in order to draw the sleepy congregation into the Gospel, the three-person 80 year old Rosary group, the parents who demanded that my husband forgo a much needed youth group - one of only three total youth groups in a diocese of more than 700,000 - because it was "inconvenient". Where as in Oregon, when I visited my father two years ago, every parish in the state had to have an active, Eucharistic-centric, youth group. "Otherwise we are fooling ourselves thinking the Holy Spirit is going to pull dead old Catholics out of their graves to fill the pews. We must allow God to envigorate the youth or else pay for the sin of completely ignoring them," said a kindly Indian missionary priest from Bombay when I visited this parish two years ago in the Portland Archdiocese

Thank God the West (of America) has figured this one out.

In the Northeast, they speak like the priests who don't really care if they hear any confessions at all. But they will rage if you screw with their summer fundraising beer gardens.

I am so mad. I can only take the Eucharist in the Eastern Rite. They still keep the Eucharist in the center - like they do in just about all other parts of the Catholic world. Even in Europe where they rarely go to Mass - they go with chapel veils on and mostly remain on their knees. You can't even enter a French, Spanish, Serbian Catholic parish without getting, at least, a piece of white paper slapped on your head if you are a woman. "Respect," they will say in their own language.

"It's not that we do not want you," says an Eastern priest to me. "It's just that we do not want our Church going in the direction of the Catholic Church. If you can even call it a direction."

So, in other words..."We don't want to look like those crappy partying parishes that only have pseudo membership unless they are 'illegally' 100% Latin. And that's where you are coming from, my dear. From the Catholic Northeast."

Yes. I would love to move "back home".

Yeah. But I am here. In the crappy version of the Catholic Church God chose to stick me square into the middle of. Why? What could I possibly do other than complain to disinterested collars or unknowing converts who repeat, "Well, everything seems fine to me. I don't even understand your complaints. It must be cultural."

No, former Evangelical. It is just that you got a sad catechises and you don't even know it. You have no idea how beautiful it is to receive the Eucharist in mid-genuflect. Unless of course, you have somehow discovered a hidden Latin only Mass ordered far outside High Mass times or in the basement of your local church.

It would be nice to go to confession about now....

On Vacation!

2009-07-10T06:47:00.000-07:00

I know I have been gone for a few days. Vacation, friends. Remember? It seems that the minute I say, "Hey! I will be gone on vacation for a week - give or take a few days," everyone and their favorite dog has to send me an email, leave me multiple phone messages, ask me if I want to go grocery shopping with them since...'you're not really going anywhere.'"

I am on vacation. You are not on vacation with me, dear pals. Love you, but not hanging out with you.

Now, don't be offended. It's just that before this vacation began, my husband demanded, "You will not reply to any emails, you will not be around to encourage anyone, nobody is getting a ride, you won't be babysitting, you are not to answer the telephone."

Except for my father who keeps calling daily to report what he has forgotten from the day before - that he has a new webcam and wants to use it.

Except for my parents across the street who come over daily to see what we are doing and to ask if they can come along.

Except for my friends who leave me, oh.....at least four or five messages on the phone a day..., just to let me know that they are available to hang out should I want to make my vacation just like any other summer day where I am working my day around them.

Do I sound angry? I am not. I promise. Just without my morning coffee, and just leaving a final message (since I can't do it on my telephone and Hotmail does not allow me to via email anymore), "I am on vacation. Will return on Tuesday, July 14, 2009. Even if you see me in Walmart purchasing a new tennis racket, it is just because I am still on vacation and making good on the opportunity to play a snobby sport with my family."

I am just saying....this is why you are all being ignored.

Something Strange...

2009-07-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

I was deleting old blogs I had connected to Blogger when, suddenly, one of my blogments here has disappeared. No worries...It's not like I can't rewrite things. I just don't want to.

So, in place of the post that is now lost somewhere in cyberspace (or dead to us all) check out the intensely cool place my sweetheart (AKA: Leonarrrrrrrrrrrdo) took me for dinner last night. He is so hot....xoxoxoxoXO!

Moya

And happy 4th, Americans!

And just as a note...(because the post explaining this is gone)...I am not a convert to Catholicism. I was actually raised this way...As much as I love them, please don't confuse me with the ardent, strident, stickler, Pope-like, converts. Please! I am nowhere near that great of a Catholic. My conversion happens every day - as yours should as well. And I am looking ever closer to Eastern Orthodoxy, because I love my Catholicism so much. I am a nerdy, Liturgical, incense addict. I just cannot get enough. This love began as some of my earliest vivid spiritual memories, from the "olden days" (around age 5 and when Charlie's Angels was still prime time) when I smelled the incense of the Novos Ordo and demanded from my Oregon-hippy-priest, "Fr. Schwab, is that what marijuana smells like?" And he introduced me to my first penance a full year before all the other kids were getting their First Holy Communion.

Yeah, that's me...the American Cradle Catholic. Enjoy!

On Vacation At Last!

2009-07-03T06:52:00.000-07:00

We were supposed to be leaving for Acadia National Park in Maine this weekend, but because I had outpatient surgery on my back and Lee needs an MRI of his...we had to forgo the 10 hour drive and just keep the family here...to do this.

We are still "on vacation" and will not likely answer too many phone calls, meet anyone for get togethers, or eat more than hot dogs, burgers, and the usual fishy stuff on Fridays. But we will have fun. This is imperitive, and we'll take lots of pictures of places like this...

And we will marvel at small sights like this...

Sometimes it is great just to experience your own backyard.

Theophany

2009-07-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

So I disappeared for a boring while, because I felt like it, and all my friends and readers (generally, one in the same) demanded to know...

"Where the heck are you?!"

Though some said with more passion and with some words I cannot post on a blog adorned by Blessed Mother Teresa.

Every now and again, I get sick of the view of my own words/the sound of my own voice, and I have to take a vacation into someone else's words. I am reading three books at once, and one is profoundly stupid - some of you will be pleased to know.

I begin a new blog here. Same old sidebar with a few additions.

Same old poor grammar, with a few exceptions. I think I can finally spell "occasionally" and "privileged". Though I had to spell check these. So maybe the treatment is not complete...

I am still attending Mass every Saturday night, and going to Divine Liturgy every Sunday morning. I am still heartily displeased with my wimpy diocese, but I realize I am at fault, because I am part of it. Part of the diocese, part of the problem.

I still love the Orthodox. Though I am not certain they love me after they have heard all my love/complaint for my own American Rome.

I have nothing exciting to say today. I had nearly 1,000 posts on my last blog. Today, I have just this one.

Feels good.

Say something, lurker. Okay?

Add your words, so I can get sick of hearing your voice and not just mine.

So here is my first post...and it's my name too. Theophany. Though, I can't blame God for any revelations I may have.