i found this to be a lovely reflection on the Nativity and wanted to share it...



my thanks to the Institute of Catholic Culture for the excerpt

so how's this for holiday ridiculousness: i had to check three grocery stores before i found candied fruit! you know, the stuff you put in fruitcake...

store number one
me: do you know if you have candied fruit?
clerk: (blank look) ummm
me: you know, the stuff you put in fruitcake...
clerk: (brightening slightly) maybe check the baking department. (note: i'd already done this, but because of past experiences of asking for things that were right in front of my face, i went along with it) doesn't look like we have it here. i'll ask over in produce.
clerk 2: candied fruit? you mean something like this? (holds up container of dried fruit)
me: no, i'm looking for the stuff you put in fruitcake. it's covered in a syrupy stuff and comes in a clear plastic container.
clerk 2: oh, i know what you mean. if we have it, it would be over here. (leads way to displays of specially holiday stuffs) no, it doesn't look like we have it; if we had it, it would be out by now.
me: thanks anyway

store number two
me: do you know if you have candied fruit?
clerk: no we don't carry it.
me: thanks

store number three
me: do you know if you have candied fruit? the stuff you put in fruitcake?
clerk: oh, hmm. let me get someone from produce.
store pa: ---, please dial 521.

meanwhile i wander through produce and find a table tucked half way between produce and holiday baking with, lo and behold, candied fruit! and not just the basic mixed fruit i was looking for, but varieties of the gooey stuff. i was half tempted to pick up samples of all of them just so i could prove their existence. i contented myself with picking up one extra tub to save for next year. who knows where i'll be, or if i'll be able to find enough stores to check.

i want to make lovely things

just wanted to put that out there...

yesterday i wanted to share with you all that i'd seen a gent in shorts and sandals this morning walking his dog and point out that the temperature outside was a balmy 45*. at the time it seemed rather amusing, but has been rather preempted by today's weather: snow! great big fluffy clumps of it falling persistently out of the soft grey skies. it began around 10.30 this morning (it's now just about 3) and news of short trousered gents doesn't seem to measure up.

this morning at 10.30

this afternoon at around 2

such weather is rather condusive to indoor activities so i put together our advent wreath. we were traveling during the first Sunday of Advent and this is the first bit of free time that i've had since we got back. pictures of our Thanksgiving adventures are up here.


i think that it came out rather nicely. since i work through the supper hours we'll just have to say our Advent prayers after i get home...

somehow despite doing practically nothing until well after three in the afternoon (and we didn't even sleep in all that late this morning... might have had something to do with the hour and a half catch up phone call with younger sis...) i still managed to get two loads of laundry washed and dried - though not yet folded, my herb jars filled, a very good supper made, a batch of sourdough bread proofing (hehe more on that later), and breakfast for the morning soaking (bread pudding using saved loaves of french baguette from the market and cultured buttermilk bartered from the lovely mrs. lee - mmmm, yum). i feel almost accomplished... and there are still 40 mins of today left! :)

i think i'll cuddle up next to my dear husband and watch the rest of Charlie Rose's interview with Thomas Friedman. very very interesting stuff.

over the past week i've found myself lacking motivation in the mornings. i don't particularly want to do anything - even to the point of not eating... it's not that i'm particularly bluesy or down (though that happens too); i simply do not feel an urge to so this or that or the other thing. so i end up puttering around the house, half doing things - filling the water filler pitcher and then wandering off before i pour it into the kettle to make tea - beginning to sort laundry or clear off the kitchen table and stopping half way to wash up the dishes (those at least i can usually finish off...until i remember to eat something and make more dishes...).

i think it's because i don't have supper at home anymore. my new work schedule has me working closing shifts at the market so i'm there until at least 8pm most days a week. Geoffrey's home by 6-ish and, since he works 10hr days, i don't expect him to wait for me to eat ('sides which i usually eat while at work). before i started this job, my home life pretty much revolved around food: finding new recipes, getting what we needed from the store, making it in all of its various stages (basic cookery, fermenting, soaking, sprouting, baking) and most importantly, eating and sharing it with my husband. suppers weren't always fabulous (often we were both too tired to talk much), but they were important to me as a time to share with the man i love and rounded out and fulfilled all of the work and time that went into getting the food on the table. and now, since that time to eat together has been removed, the rest of the process doesn't seem as worthwhile. we did go and get a crock pot last week, so i can still have food prepared for my hard working man. but it somehow doesn't have the same appeal... granted i'm still getting used to this new schedule and figuring out how to fit home life around it, so this is likely to smooth out. but it is in a way surprising how much it's affecting me.

perhaps now that i've sat down and thought it out (i'd had inklings as to why this new arrangement was bothering me but hadn't quite worked it out) a bit more effort on my part to get on with the basics will supplement for my lack of motivation... so off with me to the grocery for milk.

housekeeping

so i've finally done something different with the page... i put it off for a good long time but i think it now reflects my life a bit more... and maybe that will give a bit of extra incentive to scribble on it... we'll see

part of the reason that i have neglected it is that i don't really know what to use it for anymore... in the past it was my catharsis... and really the only length of time i regularly wrote was during a stretch when i needed catharsis... so what about now? it seems like the need to share stuff with the whole wide world has been pretty well filled by TFB... and the element of anonymity has at this point pretty much vanished (*waves* hi mom)... so what is the point now... i mean we're all busy right? work and home-life does a pretty good job of filling up the hours and minutes... do you still write? or have you relegated yourself to the number of observers? perhaps it was the desire to move from observer to do-er that was at the real root of my initial interest in scribbling to this electronic page... perhaps that same desire is drawing me on again... perhaps it will stick around for a bit again...

so how does one go about changing one's maiden name when it was not changed on the marriage license? this has been bothering me for months now. you see, when we went to the county recorder's office to get our marriage license they had us sign it right there (which i thought was a bit odd at the time i'd always thought it was signed after the wedding, but i figured that i was just nervous and excited). when i asked how i should sign it, i was told to use my "legal name". now my legal name at the time was my maiden name (obviously) and all of my official documents (driver's license, passport, student visa, university registration, etc) had that name. since we were moving internationally in a matter of weeks, i was not about to change anything; but i wanted to be able to at some point in the future.
so i signed the marriage license with my legal name, my maiden name. and thought very little of it for the next year and a bit (except for when i had my passport stolen and needed to get it replaced...).
a few months ago my family was drawing up some legal documents and needed my legal name. my parents called and said that according to the lawyer, it was "whatever i'd put down on the marriage license". i was nearly shocked - i almost felt less married (which is completely silly)...

so now i'm stuck, i want to change my name to my husband's. but all of the instructions seem to imply that in order to do that with out going to court, i need to have signed the marriage license with the name i wanted to take. so now i don't know what to do...

smoking is a bit like kissing a guy that you almost like, enjoyable enough while you are doing it but a little dissatisfying when you are finished...

yay for new city!

yay for having an 'own home'!

yay for having space for my beloved to play musics!

yay for working jobs that don't keep us penned up in a stuffy office!


i've been pretty happy recently and hence have not had all that much to say... perhaps as i get more used to having something resembling a predictable schedule i'll have more time to talk to y'all....

i'm debating which of two lines of thought to rant or ramble about...they are both related to our ongoing search for housing in the little white city and both are elements that we have encountered before. perhaps if i bring them out in something resembling a logical fashion (if i can manage to hold the thoughts together through all of my multi-tasking distractions) it will sound less like a rant and more like a protest.

the first is the world at large's dislike of couples. well, let me be more specific: (young and poor) married couples. don't believe me? just try to find a privately rented apartment or a room in a group house that will take you both. when we were looking for a place to live while in grad school last year "sorry no couples" came up in more listings and responses than i care to remember. i guess we expected something different this time around because we're back in the States. but even here a number of places replied to our inquiries saying they didn't want to take couples. those who were willing to take a couple wanted to increase the rent (one by$300!! there is no way even i could take long enough washing my hair to justify that). now i can understand wanting to cover extra utilities expenses or avoid overcrowding or unwanted drama; people like to have personal space and want peace when they come home. but if we weren't married and i just had my boyfriend show up one day with his few things for an indefinite stay or i were to gradually install myself at his place, chances are nothing would be said. there wouldn't be an increase in our share of the rent or utilities. if it were a group house, it might cross someone's mind that the situation is unfair to rest of the people living there, but nothing would be said. that would be rude and pass some sort of judgment on us and we can't have that. but if you want to do things legitimately (and morally) it's nigh impossible to find something reasonably priced.

the other element (factor? issue?) is one of space, or perhaps stuff. westerners have too much of everything - space, stuff, unnecessary things. they have great big houses in which to put all of their many many things. they are sold gizmos on tv to help organized their stuff so they can acquire more of it. and then they rent a unit at the nearby personal storage complex to keep all of the stuff that doesn't fit in their great big house in spite of all of their organizing and space-reducing gizmos. and this is what led to our current economic crisis - greed and envy. lots and lots of people wanting bigger houses and bigger and more expensive things. put everything on the charge card and paying the minimum balance is all that's required. let's everyone live way beyond our means and spend far more than we make! yippee!
thus people expect everyone to have lots of stuff and to want to acquire even more stuff. and if there are two of you that means double the amount of stuff. last year we were turned away several times because "the space isn't big enough for two people". now the room we lived in all last year was no more than 180sq feet, probably less; everything we owned while overseas fit into four suitcases and a couple of backpacks. even after picking everything we had in storage in various places around the country, it will all fit into the bed of a small pick-up truck. so i guess the root of my problem here is the assumption that everyone has lots of stuff and thus a moderately sized space is not big enough for two people.

i heart pandora.... they just played this for me

Friday 13, lights go red, green, in a coffee shop
I'm giving you the look
While someone else
Is fingering your wallet in my pocketbook

It's a mean town but I don't care
Try and steal this
Can't steal happiness

man, limbo sucks...

so i have a job waiting for me in the little white city. i just don't know when it starts, 'cause they want to check up on my past lives before they tell me.

oi...

i ache. my legs ache and are doing that funny prickle thing that they do when i make them do something after doing little to nothing for a good long while. my beloved and i went for a bit of a walk around the neighbourhood this evening. the air had a slight chill and the breeze brought wrapped cool fingers around bits of exposed skin, so we walked briskly. by the time we were a few streets from home my legs were telling me that either i need to do this more often or stop expecting them to do much at all...

so we'll be going for another walk tomorrow evening...

the evening has gotten late. i'm writing in the dining room on a borrowed computer hundreds of miles from the no-where i last wrote, thousands of miles from my old home, half a world away from where i've been observing the goings on of the country. the time has passed oddly for the last few months - quick and slow all at once. i commented that St. Paul's words from the readings at Mass a few weeks ago particularly struck me. at the time i was mainly thinking of post-election and inauguration reactions, mostly on the part of the "right". perhaps my time out of the country has influenced and changed my perspective, but i have found them to be rather overblown and boding little good. this piece from a popular Catholic site rather summed it up for me. the author observes that she has suddenly found herself living in a country that is foreign to her and that this change has seemingly happened overnight. she observes that

"The U.S. has unequivocally, unabashedly and electorally embraced a subjective reality where truth is changeable, depending upon how it can serve our pocketbooks and our uninformed consciences...So where does this leave aliens like me? Totally reliant upon God, and for many of us it will be the first time in our lives. I used to define myself as an American Catholic, but now I realize I am a Catholic in America. The nation I used to depend upon to accept my spiritual composition is gone. No longer does our citizenship agree that our laws are, and should be, based on Judeo-Christian concepts. No longer can a Christian assume his moral beliefs will be given fair representation or even toleration in the public forum."

two things bothered me about this article. the first was an underlying tone that seemed to say that if the other party had won the election the country's moral ground would be fundamentally different. considering the margin that they lost by perhaps one could make that argument. however i doubt that it would have signaled much of a difference; it would have simply taken longer to realize. my problem with this tone is that the author comes off sounding as though she was simply unaware of the actual current moral standing of the country. the author's tone seems to say, as long as the people in power were favorable to some of our positions things couldn't be that bad. perhaps if the moral quagmire had been noticed to the degree that it is being harped upon here the new administration would not have needed to be elected. in reality it was fully apparent, all one had to do was look around. instead, she is like someone just raising her head from out of the sand and realizing that the world she is living in is not what she thought it was.

the second was her presentation of Catholics' future course of action during this newly realized era. i did not have any difficulties with the actual substance of her suggestions. i actually found them to be quite good. my trouble with it was that there was little to no mention of the fact that this is how we as Catholics should have been living all along. again, if American Catholics had been living vibrantly Catholic lives perhaps the course of recent history would have been different. we as Catholics (and as responsible citizens) ought to have held the leaders whom we elected accountable to us as their constituents, demanding they truly represent us. rather we remained content with the scraps thrown to us in the corner we'd been backed into. a few pro-life bills here and there throughout the last 8 years; but that was essentially it. the whole of Catholic social teaching was what, condensed? prioritised? realistically approached? or just plain compromised? "give us just this and we'll be happy to help keep you in power" seems to have been the running theme of the "conservative" voting block throughout the whole of my politically conscious life. and the politicians took us all at our word; they gave us just that and then not very well. but nothing is said of this in the article; it's not even hinted at.

in summation, yes i agree that our country is moving into a new era and that it is not likely to be an easy one for Catholics. but frankly, this life is not supposed to be easy and if it is becoming so then it is time to re-examine how we are living in relation to the world around us.

you know, train whistles do sound lonesome...

the train line runs right past our motel in the little junction town we rolled into at one in the morning. we'd not gotten as far as initially planned, but that was all right. the important thing was to get past the big city's influence on traffic and out of range of the weather system moving in off the coast. an open truck bed, piled high with boxes and suitcases, and rain do not mix...

this sentiment has been kicking around in my head for the past few weeks and was put into words in the reading from Mass this past week:

"For the world in its present form is passing away." (I Corinthians 7:31)

i'll expand on the events inspiring soon...