So much to say, so little time

On the Move

2008-05-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

As of today (thanks, Doug!), this show is moving over to my website, www.kathleenbasi.com. Come visit me there!

Not like me

2008-05-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

Now that I have my little technical difficulty worked out (some Bible site kept coming up. How weird is that?), I just want to say that it is not like me to be up at 11:11 p.m., puzzling over a craft ornament while my husband watches the questionable entertainment available on TV at that time of night.

I have my first assignment from an editor, and I'm very excited about it, but I must say I'm finding it more difficult than working out my own ideas. When the idea comes from within me, I know the seed of the idea and the circumstances that brought it into being. The idea germinates and sprouts organically.

Right now I am brainstorming, trying to feel my way into a central concept, something to pull the article together. I have no doubt that I'll get it, it's just harder than I expected. Which, of course, is why I'm sitting up at 11:00 at night trying to figure out how to make a 3-D diamond-shaped Christmas ornament pattern.

I think I need to call it quits and go to bed. I'm a morning person. I've been up since 5:56 a.m.

Test post

2008-05-17T21:10:00.000-07:00

Something very bizarre is happening tonight as I try to access my blog, so this is nothing more than a test.

Date Night

2008-05-17T05:23:00.001-07:00

They’re always better when you don’t have any expectations going in. And it wasn’t an auspicious start, with Alex tearing after me wailing as I went out the door. How do you explain to a three-year-old that Mommy and Daddy will be more fun to be around if they get some time together, time to relax and be friends and lovers?

We drove to the opposite end of town and beyond, out into the country south on Providence Road, chasing a Katy Trail access that we haven’t visited in so long that we never did find it. Instead, we ended up at Cooper’s Landing, which looked enormously different than we remembered. Eventually we remembered that the owner had picked up his two-story building and moved it upriver, so it wasn’t that our memories were faulty; it actually was different. A lot busier, a lot noisier. We walked away from the campground, and set up a picnic blanket on the weedy gravel berm separating the road from the river. There we stayed for an hour, eating our picnic dinner and watching the sunset.

The colors on the Missouri River were like nothing I remember seeing before. I can put on paper that the sun shot an orange-yellow arrow across the river toward us; I can write that to the north, the water swirled in streaky patches of orchid and more shades of blue than I can name—one so pale that it was barely blue, another a dark, vivid royal. The colors on the water changed, deepened, molded and melded. But all of that can’t really communicate what it looked like. I understand now how artists can paint the same scene over and over. To us it looks like multiple pictures of the same scene. But to someone whose eye is trained to color, it must be fulfilling to use a completely different color palate to create the same landscape. I desperately wanted the camera, but unfortunately, between me dropping it off the tram at the Arboretum in Chicago and Christian trying to fix it, we now have no camera. So it lives only in memory. And perhaps it’s better that way.

At last we picked up and walked back to the truck. We decided to re-orient ourselves, so we went driving, looking for Easley, where Cooper’s Landing used to be. And we found it. There is a cave up on the bluff at Easley, which they closed several years ago—placed a boulder across the trail and fenced the entrance, I don’t remember why (vandalism? Bats?). It was amazing to see how quickly nature can obliterate the signs of human presence. That stretch of river bluff has always been overgrown, but we’re not sure we ever saw the cave last night. And the trail is almost indistinguishable now. Someone’s still using it—there’s about a foot-wide bare strip—but it’s definitely returned to the wild. We realized we haven’t been to Easley at least since we’ve been married.

When we got home last night, the kids were asleep. I got Julianna up to nurse. Afterwards, I snuggled with her. She was half asleep, her eyes opening and closing at lazy intervals, and she would give me this silly smile. When I put her down in her crib again, there was no protest. She just conked back out instantly. Then I went into Alex’s room and found him drenched in sweat and curled up in a ball with his face pressed against the ship wheel head board, with every animal he owns wedged against his body.

Ah, life is good.

Random tidbits

2008-05-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

I cannot keep up with anything this week, so you get the headlines overview (and perhaps a brief editorial).

JULIANNA IS CRAWLING! Not by herself, but definitely she is driven to move. I can tell that she's going to be a holy pain in Alex's you-know-what once she gets moving. She wants to pull his hair and lick him. He loves it. But then, he can still run away. Or sit on her.

ALEX IS WRITING LETTERS! Not well, and not by himself, and his A begins as an H and then he draws a line across the top. But jeez, he's three!

BASI'S ORGANIZE NEIGHBORHOOD TO OPPOSE TRAIL. We all bought for the gorgeous privacy of a woods and a creek in between our streets, and then we found out that our green space was on the city's list to put a trail through. Part of my last few weeks has been running all over the neighborhood going door to door collecting signatures, sending emails, and writing a letter. And today I hand-delivered it to the city council offices and the project manager. I can't help feeling bad for him. He's a very nice guy. We just don't want this trail in here, and we think we should have been told before we paid...well, a lot of money for our houses.

SALES!!!!!!!!! I have clips in hand now--a personal essay for Family Foundations from CCL, and an article for AIM (World Library, who also publishes my octavos). And I received an email last night asking me to write an article for another magazine. I couldn't get to sleep last night. Plus, in the last two weeks I have found out about two people locally and one on the East Coast who bought my flute collection. So I am very excited.

THE GRASS IS GROWING! Which is good, b/c I'm getting very tired of replanting the patches, and trying to figure out what makes it grow in one spot and not in the one right next to it, which is by all indications completely identical.

Speaking of conditions that change without apparent rhyme or reason...can anyone out there explain to me why I 70, which is a mile south of us, sounds like it's right on the other side of the creek sometimes, and other days we can't hear it at all? I thought it was wind direction, or temperature, or humidity, but after living here almost a year I cannot figure out why I hear it sometimes and not others.

Well, I have a wakey baby. Time to go.

My sweet baby boy

2008-05-06T09:37:00.001-07:00

Oh, my sweet baby boy isn’t a baby anymore.

Being a boy, he’s always been crazy about machinery. Especially big, noisy ones (as long as they are turned off.) About the time his vocabulary was exploding, we were in the hospital with Julianna three times, where he frequently got to watch the helicopter taking off and landing. So he began to connect those two words--he couldn’t pronounce either one. We loved it: “Hec-a-co-te-ter” and “hos-a-popo.” He figured out “helicopter” first, about four months ago. Christian and I sniff-sniffed and shrugged. Oh, well, at least he still says hos-a-po-po.

Last Wednesday, on the way home from choir practice, we passed Ellis Fischel and Alex looked over and said, “Mommy, is that a hospital?”

I wanted to wail.

Alex’s imagination is so vivid now. He’s into Peter Pan, but it’s Captain Hook who haunts his bedtime. These days, we send the tigers after Captain Hook, and then the big tigers sleep in his closet, and the babies on either side of him (along with Fredbird, Ruff-Ruff, Raggedy Andy, and Superman (who is a rattly dog) and the Julianna bear (who is baby blue). And on nights when that fearsome red-coated apparition is not present, Alex likes to lasso the tigers himself and haul them out of his room and down the hallway, stomping barefoot, his legs in a wide stance. It is so stinking funny. Yesterday I sent him to the table with forks, and he said, “Mommy, I’m going to eat my hand! My hand is ice cream!” He proceeds to dig his fork into his hand and then take an imaginary bite to his mouth. “Mmmmmm!”

This morning, I was rushing out the door with both kids, trying to get Alex to day care before I had to be at Mass, and because I was putting Julianna in the car, I wasn’t there to get my goodbye kiss from my husband when Alex got his. “Hey!” I protested, “I want a kiss!” But the front door had already closed. Oh, well. I finished strapping Julianna into the van and went looking for Alex, who was nowhere to be found.

Just as I was preparing to go down in the back looking for him, the front door opened and out came Alex, with Christian right behind. “You want a kiss?” Christian said.

Alex looked very pleased with himself. Man, he is SO SWEET. Please pardon the all caps, but he is SO SWEET!

Breakthrough!

2008-05-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

You may recall that several weeks ago I had a story rejected by the Magazine of Sci Fi/Fantasy. Well, I overcame my self-loathing and sent it out again, and last night I opened my email to find an acceptance! This is my first short story acceptance, so I’m pretty tickled.

Here is my testimony to all aspiring writers. If your story gets rejected, there may not be anything wrong with it at all. When you think you’re done with it, when you’ve taken into account the differing perspectives of your critique partners, sifted out what is useful from what is not, and incorporated them…then it’s time to have faith in yourself, and in the story you have to tell to the world.

Pictures

2008-05-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

I've been talking a lot lately and not sharing images. So here are three pictures, a little slice of our life.

Alex at the Museum of Transport (St. Louis)--dozens of trains. You do the math. (No comments please, Count. :) Just kidding. I love it when people comment.)

Alex's train cake at his 3rd birthday party

Julianna at Alex's birthday party. She loves it when I "rasberry" her feet as she swings forward to me.

Orchestra Concert

2008-05-03T04:28:00.000-07:00

Last night I took Alex to his first orchestra concert. Christian thinks he’s too young, and I knew we might have to leave quickly and early if he just couldn’t handle it. But I think that early exposure is the best way to ensure that there is an audience for classical music for generations to come. So we went to see MU’s University Philharmonic.

It’s been eleven years now since I graduated from U Phil, and ten since I played in any orchestra (unless you count the disastrous sub gig with the Missouri Chamber Orchestra, which I’d rather forget). It was hard to be in the audience. I wanted to climb the stairs, re-explore Jesse’s backstage, steal somebody’s flute and sit down behind the violas.

I loved playing in orchestra. At some point in every semester, I’d have to grit my teeth and tolerate every other ensemble I ever participated in, but I never minded the hours spent in orchestra. Part of that was Ed Dolbashian’s charisma. But part of it was just because I love the literature.

It’s not the same to listen to a CD. When you’re in the hall, there’s this shimmer in the air, caused by the friction of bow on string. It’s magical. My body and soul relax whenever the bows first draw across the strings in unison. That ambient noise doesn’t make it onto the recordings.

Well, I think I’m going to quit, because I’m wandering rather than being concise and “teleological,” as another of my music professors used to say. (Go look it up.) Besides, I have bread to bake.

Deep Quiet

2008-04-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

It’s something that hardly anybody experiences anymore. I go looking for it, and I can’t find it: the deep quiet that comes in the complete absence of all manmade sound. The subsonic rumble of the city pursues us almost everywhere—so pervasive that you don’t even notice it until, suddenly, the weight is gone, the pressure lifts from your ears, and you can breathe. You breathe softly, afraid to disturb the stillness, in which a rock shifting or the step of a chipmunk sounds as loud as the ringing of the phone.

And that is when I hear my muse speak.

Have you ever experienced that? Have you really?

The last issue of Writer’s Digest made me wildly impatient, quoting its “literary hot spots,” in which one of the authors talked about the hiss of espresso machines, the buzz of ambient conversation, and the music playing, and how any author would be in Heaven. A loud, noisy, distracting, bustling coffee shop. The perfect place to write.

Well, whatever floats your boat, people. Whatever. I guess the laugh’s on me, since there are coffee shops on every corner of every city and town, and virtually nowhere is there quiet.

I challenge you—-those of you, particularly, who live in the big cities (by that I mean anything St. Louis sized on up). Find a vacation spot where there is no ambient human noise. Spend a week there. Or a day. Or even an hour. Spend your time sitting quietly, with nothing more than a piece of paper and a pen. And if, at the end of that hour, or day, or week, you don’t feel like a whole new person--full of hope and inspiration and energy--then go back to your coffee shops, your dens of white noise and distraction, and feel free to ignore to the hick Midwestern writer/mother.

And I’ll keep the quiet places for myself, thank you very much.

This morning at the library

2008-04-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

Julianna is getting tired, Alex's ibuprofin is wearing off, and it's about time to leave when I hear a solid "THUMP" from the children's stacks, and a woman starts repeating, "Oh no, oh my God, oh no, oh my God." Over and over, this dull panicky tone of voice, not screaming--just that particular timbre that brings people running. I realize that her kid has bumped his or her head. And I can't help thinking, Calm down, lady, it's just a bump on the head. We've had five this morning already.

When my children and I pass the children's desk on the way out, she's got a 5 month old baby over her shoulder, a girl on her way into unconsciousness (or sleep, who knows?), and the mother is on the phone with 911 saying that she was carrying too much and the baby slipped out of her hands and fell 5 feet.

By the time we make it outside I know that the distant sound of sirens is headed right for us. Alex is jumping up and down. "Can I see the fire truck? Can I see the fire truck?" So we stop at the corner and wait for them to arrive. A ladder truck (why, I don't know), and a Universtity Hospital ambulance scream around the corner, not twenty feet from us. It's surreal to be excited for Alex and covering Julianna's ears, simultaneously hoping that that woman really is flipping out for no reason whatsoever.

And all the way to the van, I can't talk around the lump in my throat.

love me

When life intersects Hollywood--however tangenetically

2008-04-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

(Is that even a word? Spell-check doesn't like it.)

Last night, Christian & I finally got to watch “Michael Clayton.” We’ve tried to rent it three times, but it was always out. And then after we finally got it home, it took us three nights to get all the way through the movie. But anyway, last night we did finish it, and the most interesting thing happened right as we turned it on (Scene 18 on the DVD), when George Clooney is saying goodbye to his family members after a birthday party, and in the background I heard Mike Kelley’s voice saying something about the Tigers.

I looked up from folding laundry, and sure enough, there was a basketball game on the TV in the movie. Christian didn’t catch it. He had to back it up and listen again.

Nothing particularly earth-shattering—just cool. The Kelley’s have moved on now, but they used to sit in the second or third row at Lourdes every 10:00 Mass—we even had their daughter in the choir for a few short weeks—and it was pretty cool to have something so close to home show up in a movie.

Change of focus

2008-04-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. But I wanted to codify the purpose and focus of this blog, which, by its title…well, has no focus.

This blog is about the intersection of parenthood, writing, and faith.

Thanks to those who comment or email me so that I know you’re reading.

Finished!—Signed, Supermom

2008-04-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

On Thursday night, just at dark, I finished the back yard. This was supposed to be an intensive weekend project that Christian and I would do over spring break. Instead, it rained for four weeks, and when we finally got a four-day stretch of clear weather, I just had to dig in and do it myself. Hence earning the label: “supermom.”

Well, I should qualify. I sort of did it myself. Actually, my uncle Jerome came over and spent most of two days with me. And Christian took 2 hours of it on Wednesday night so I could go lead choir practice. :)

The project involved a garden tiller, a walk-behind trencher (now THAT is a serious piece of machinery…good thing I have an uncle who can figure out and fix any piece of machinery ever invented!), 250 feet of buried corrugated pipe, a roller, an old, borrowed riding mower (which Uncle Jerome also tuned up), and a spreader full of grass seed—not to mention a lot of dug dirt and aching shoulder muscles.

My kids didn’t get much attention last week, and I did virtually zero writing of any kind. But the project is done, and we got two days of nice, gentle rain on it as soon as we finished.

And hopefully, six weeks from now, we’ll have a nice smooth back yard, without potholes or a swamp in the middle.

It's in the genes

2008-04-12T18:56:00.001-07:00

Alex made up his first story today.

We had just come home from the library when he padded over to me with his new books and said, “Mommy, I want to read you a story. Will you listen?”

“Of course I will!” I closed my book.

He flipped through his book and found a photo of two fire engines emerging from a fire station. “Once there was a fire engine,” he said. “Once there were two fire engines. It was getting dark. It was night. Then they all went to bed.” He finished in a whisper, then slammed the book shut. “THE END!”

Is this writer's block, or just procrastination?

2008-04-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

I’m finding myself in a strange position the last few days. Strange for me, at least.

I don’t want to write. Or, more accurately: I do want to write, but I’m terrified of the project I’m working on.

As a mother, flute/voice teacher, liturgical musician, choir director, NFP teacher, composer and writer who has a new house to landscape this spring, I am very smug about never getting writer’s block. It’s a luxury that I can’t afford. In fact, I told a reporter last week that I spend all day thinking about what I’m going to work on, so when I get the time to sit down, there’s no fumbling about-—I just plunge right in.

About a month ago, I made a list of all my projects. Not the ones I want to work on (like the novel ideas or the children’s books). Just the ones I already have in process. The count was:

Nonfiction—4
Short stories—5
Novels—1
Music projects—6

Maybe this isn’t much, for a full-time writer. But with my splintered schedule, I decided that I needed to clear the plate a bit. I can’t focus on major revisions to my novel when I have fifteen other projects demanding my attention. So for the past several weeks, I’ve been a busy little bee. I’ve finished two stories, one nonfiction essay, and one piece for my “Walking in the Woods” flute & piano collection. (And submitted the prose pieces. Very important. Very time consuming.)

And now it’s time to face The Novel.

I know what I have to do to the novel, at least in general terms. The trouble is, the list is overwhelming. At least three times this week, I have pulled out the binder and begun physically trembling. So I push it away, bury it under some papers, pretend it isn’t there, and work on something else that I can still call “writing,” but which really boils down to procrastination.

At last I decided enough is enough! So I sat down on my deck, put a sticky note on the binder and began breaking the job down into small tasks. First: merge all the comments from critique partners into one MS. (Whew! Start with something fairly brainless.) Second: title the chapters. (Oh yes, this is procrastination.) Third, figure out what to do with those pesky in-laws who aren’t important to the story, but should be. Fourth: resolve the hero’s brother subplot…

And now I have a list of eleven jobs, relatively small, all of them involving brainstorming rather than typing. As a bonus, I got a whirlwind tour of my novel, re-familiarizing myself with the characters and events. The cogs have begun turning again, slowly but surely. Today when I sat down to begin, I still got a little trembly, but now at least, I have a list. And I can cross things off, darn it. One at a time!

Rejoicing and Rejection

2008-04-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

Part A: Rejoicing

Yesterday as the kids were playing in the living room, Alex suddenly shrieked, “Mommy! Mommy! Juweenanna just sat up ALL BY HERSELF!”

Later in the day, I witnessed it myself. And when I put her to bed for the night, she woke up and began howling with predictable outrage. When I came in to comfort her a few minutes later, she was sitting up in her crib, absolutely furious. And this morning Christian went in to get her up and found her sitting up, too.

We have decided to set very narrow goals, and to hit them one at a time. Transition to sitting was the first. It took two weeks. The next one, we have decided, is crawling. I think it’ll take longer than two weeks, though. Nonetheless, it was a very good day.

Part B: Of Rejections

Two weeks ago (more or less), I sent a story off to the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Yesterday I got a short rejection letter in the mail. The editor said it “didn’t interest him.”

OUCH.

Christian laughed at me. Not to be mean, but just b/c he never did "get" this story. --much like 4 other people who have critiqued it. Their words, not mine. But I have faith in my story. Thus, I was kind of offended that someone had the gall to say it “didn’t interest them.” Offended, and hurt, and laughing at myself for being so. Trying to focus on the positive, which is that the rejection was very quick! How can I complain?

Marketing is the pits.

And I don’t feel like writing anymore today. I feel like scrapbooking. So I think I will.

On a lighter note....

2008-04-07T12:38:00.002-07:00

...I wanted to share a family picture. Not the most picture perfect one ever, but certainly it illustrates everything you need to know about our family. :)

More on the Bible and Literalism

2008-04-07T12:38:00.001-07:00

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about the Church and the seven deadly sins. I’ve been thinking about this, and I want to add to one of the points I made--namely, that you can’t read the Bible word-for-word literal. This assertion is heresy in many circles--even I cringe at putting it into black and white (or pink on pink, as the case may be). So I’d like to offer this example, to explain what I mean, and what my Church means.

Christian tells this joke that he calls “The Three Beers.” The basic story is: a man walks into a bar and orders three beers, one for him and one for each of his brothers. One day he only orders two, and people offer him condolences on losing his brother. The punch line is that “it’s Lent, and I’ve quit drinking!”

Neither Christian nor I remember where he got this joke; he thought it was so funny that he claimed it as his own, and for more than a year, he told it to EVERYONE. This means that I heard the joke something like 400 times. As unbelievable as it sounds, that number is not an exaggeration. I heard the joke at least once a day for a year, and frequently more often.

My point is this: “The Three Beers” matured in the telling. The essentials never changed--not one bit--from what you read above. But the words used, and the details of the story, did. By the time Christian had been telling the joke for 6 months, the words were virtually the same from one presentation to the next--but they were not the same as when he first heard the joke. He added dialogue, and expression, and made it his own.

The words changed--the story didn’t.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

In the Gospels, each evangelist was writing to a different audience; thus, different details were more important to one than to another. Matthew was talking to Jews, so he focused on the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Luke was writing for Gentiles. Luke’s Gospel is the only one in which the Magi appear; this was the first time God’s salvation was proclaimed to the non-Jewish world. John skips the infancy altogether and goes right to the meat of the message: the proclamation of the kingdom. He goes into great, agonizing detail about the Passion, death and resurrection of Christ.

This does not make one of them more true than another. But if you try to read the Bible word-for-word--even assuming that you could somehow surmount the translation of a translation of a translation problem--you find literal contradictions. Did Mary Magdalene, alone, see the stone rolled back and run back to tell Peter that someone had stolen the body? (John 20) Or was it Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and did they have a conversation with the angels first, so that they went back and told Peter that “He is risen!” (Luke 24)

Does it matter? No. Either way, the essential story remains the same. But this illustrates that context is important, as is an understanding of the literary forms used in the Bible.

Tiger Terror

2008-04-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, Alex, fearless explorer, discovered tigers in his bedroom. And although tigers are funny, fascinating creatures during the day, at night they are terrifying—or at least, an excuse to stay up later. Consequently, we have added a new dimension to the bedtime routine. I have taken to opening drawers and doors, lassoing tigers and shooing them out the door and back to Africa, where they belong.

My children put their heads together sometime about 10 days ago and concocted an evil plan to shred Mommy’s nerves. The conversation went something like this:

Alex: “OK, Juweenanna, I’ll get scared of tigers and make Mommy sleep with me. Then you wake up 4 times a night for no reason at all, okay?”

Julianna: “Eehheeeeeheee! AAAAAAAAA!”

Alex: “Great. Then I’ll wet the bed every night, so Mommy and Daddy go crazy wondering why I’m not toilet trained anymore. And when it’s Daddy’s night to get up with us, you sleep straight through. You only get up on MOMMY’S nights. Understand?”

Julianna: “EEAAAAAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaa!” (I know she bounced while she said it.)

Thus are the most insidious conspiracies born.

I can laugh about this today because last night, they actually both slept through the night—and so did I. For the first time in two weeks.

Submissions and baby development (not related)

2008-03-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

The last week has been a real zoo…stomach virus, Triduum, no sleep for three nights out of four…so I haven’t done much writing in the last week. Today, however, I managed to put together two short story submissions.

It never ceases to amaze me how long it takes to get a submission ready—music, fiction or nonfiction. Even a query letter, for Heavens sake. First, get it written. (Weeks. Months.) Second: market research. (At least two full mornings. If you count the internet research, call it two full days.) Third: rewrite based on what you decide on market. (One day, usually.) Fourth: format submission (two days in and of itself, so far. Maybe that will shorten up as I get more experienced.)

Tomorrow’s task: the Post Office.

But tonight, I intended to write about Julianna’s development. In my kids’ scrapbooks, I do a series of 6 pages on their development through the first twelve months. There are 2-4 pictures per page and a lot of cramped writing, in which I detail ad nauseum every new skill.

However, Julianna’s first year ended before she did an awful lot of things that I am desperate to chronicle. So I think I’ll torture you all (however many or few of you there are) with them instead.

For instance, in the last couple of weeks, Julianna has become much harder to keep entertained. For a child with Down’s, she has always been interested in the world, but lately she demands to be entertained, her perspective changed; she demands interaction much more often and for longer periods of time. This afternoon, I had her on my hip as I was trying to do household tasks. I had forgotten doing that with Alex. He found it all incredibly interesting, when he was 8 months to…well, he still does; it’s just that now he can go pull a chair over and see what I’m doing for himself.

Today, Julianna lunged forward, wrapping both hands around the lip of the washing machine and resting her chin on them, as I added detergent to the washer and started the diapers. (Imagine having your head in *that* smell. Whew!) Tonight I sat down to read her one or two books—she sits with me all the time while I read to Alex, but those books are way over her head. So tonight I wanted to do it just for her. She shrieked when I set her down—she thought I was getting ready to leave her again. But when she saw the book, she settled down immediately. She lunged right and reached with her left hand to turn the pages of “I Am A Bunny” by Ole Risom/Richard Scarry. And then she was so mesmerized by “Brown Bear” that I had to keep reading. We went through 7 books before we quit.

I keep getting complacent, and forgetting that Julianna is moving beyond what Christian calls the “blob” stage. She’s so slow to move that I just forget, even though I know better.

And now it’s 9:08 p.m., and Christian and I have a date to practice flute and piano together, so I must quit without revising, or waxing eloquent anymore. Your loss. ;)

Stirring up the pot for Holy Week

2008-03-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

Last week, there was a big story (quickly shoved to second place by yet another sex scandal) about the Vatican “updating the seven deadly sins” for the modern age. I read the article from the first link I was sent, and then made the mistake of reading some of the comments. They were sarcastic, withering, and dismissive, and they came from atheists, Bible Christians and everyone in between.

I had to remind myself that the Catholic Church is a big target—the single biggest religious target out there. Still, it baffled me then, and it baffles me now, how anyone can object to what was published in L’Osservatore Romano. Bishop Gianfranco Girotti emphasized that sin is not just an offense between you and God; it has social and global ramifications. Who can argue with that?

The Church’s trouble is that its teachings, its structure, are very complex, and today’s world is all about oversimplification—about sound bytes. Facts are only significant in total context. They cannot be understood in a 7-second sound byte.

That’s not to say that the Church is perfect. It is a human institution, divinely inspired, but as long as people are involved, there will always be problems. But the nature of contemporary society is that you’re always making value judgments without knowing all the context. Even all the facts.

But what I love about my Church is the way that it is so radical in telling off both sides of the political spectrum. For instance:

--Genetic research. Abortion. Belittling the sexual act (by contraception, extra-marital sex, divorce)—the favorite targets of the right.

--Pollution. Greed. War.—the favorite targets of the left.

To the Church’s anti-religious detractors, I ask: Are not all human political and social issues based on a fundamental respect for the human person? Are not all those issues connected? Are they not, in fact, all the same issue? What in this list of sins do you see that is contrary to a fundamental respect for the human person?

To the Church’s fundamentalist Christian detractors, I ask: Which came first—the Church or the Bible? The stories in the Pentateuch were told around fires generation after generation before they were ever written down. Haven’t you ever played “telephone”? How can you espouse a word-for-word literal understanding of a book that has been translated from Hebrew to Greek, to Latin, to German, to English, to newer English, to newer English, and always by people with their own agendas and biases….need I go on? Tradition created the Bible. Inspired by God? Yes. True? Yes. But written word for word by a cosmic hand? No.

One last point to make. The article I read never listed the new seven deadly sins—my guess is because they knew the list hit too close to the mark. Instead, they finished up with a list of the original seven deadly sins “and their punishments,” drawn from “The Picture Book of Devils, Demons, and Witchcraft.” In some ways that offended me most of all. How was that even relevant? It only served to make the Church look ridiculous. It is as if there is a rule among journalists that no respect can be shown for an institution that does great good in the world.

And there I will stop for tonight.

Snapshot

2008-03-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

When Julianna was born, it didn’t take long for us to understand that her development was going to lag, and that there was no way to predict by how much. Thirteen and a half months later, we still don’t have a very clear idea. However, I’d like to share with my family and friends what “developmental delays” mean for us.

I’ll start with Alex, because his development is like that of most other children. From the day he was born, he began changing. Changing the way he looked, the way he acted, the skills he was able to perform. I spent his babyhood expecting to see changes from week to week, and sometimes from day to day. He learned to sit up, and three days later he was pushing up into sitting. Crawling took a lot longer, but the minor steps on the way to crawling happened at regular intervals.

Today, that pattern continues. Every day he does something new, even if it’s as simple as picking up on one of Christian’s or my mannerisms. (“Awk!”, which I have come to realize is a supremely Midwestern corruption of the supremely German "Ach," is killingly funny, as is “That’s cool!”) Alex’s level of development, therefore, was and is a constantly shifting paradigm.

By contrast, Julianna has to be guided/manipulated/forced into every new thing—well, the major ones, at least. Once in a while she surprises me with some new skill or some new evidence of understanding—the most recent being the “honk the nose” game, which my dad invented when Alex was a baby. But basically, we have to take her to the next developmental level. We took her hand and guided it to the toys. Then we took her hand and guided it to the food—which she wasn’t looking at. Then we pounded on the tray to get her to look down. And even with those baby steps, it took months. If we don’t take the lead, she doesn’t particularly change at all. Until she does. There have been two times in her life when she suddenly did a whole bunch of developing all at once. Those are good times.

But in between, long months go by in which I am waiting for the next milestone… and she stays basically the same. It’s easy to take a snapshot and say that my 13-month-old is functioning at about an 8-month level. It’s much harder to communicate the experience of what those 13 months were like. At some point, my expectations shut down. Not entirely, of course. Gerti, our PT, tells me that I still have high expectations for Julianna—but to me, my expectations are so miniscule as to be not worth mentioning. They involve such basic things. Like being able to crawl, feed herself, and walk, so that we can try to have another baby.

It’s exhausting to spin out the implications. What if I forget to teach her something? Is she going to have the natural curiosity that allows Alex to rocket from one level of understanding to the next? My rational brain (objective) tells me that she will do it all, it’s just going to take longer.

My experiential self, however, sees an unending babyhood. It’s not that I don’t believe she’ll develop; it’s that I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s like being on a railroad track without a map, and you have no idea where the next station is, or how long it’s going to take to get there. And meanwhile, you can’t particularly do anything. You can’t get off, you can’t make plans for sightseeing at the other end—you just have to wait. And what happens when you need to use the bathroom???? :)

Anyway, on paper (or online) it looks very depressing. And I can’t deny that it is disheartening. But I’m not blogging to create a big pity party. Rather, I want to share the experience with my loved ones and anyone else who happens upon this, to give you some sort of idea, in the name of empathy.

Because she really is the sweetest part of my life.

Publicity, Round 2

2008-03-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

This was posted this morning on the Columbia Daily Tribune website:

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Mar/20080308Feat001.asp

Baby/toddler moments du jour

2008-03-03T16:42:00.000-08:00

Scene: Basi home. Alex comes up the stairs, burdened down by a drum (IOW, a Tinker Toy cannister.) He looks straight at me and says, "Mommy, are you gone?"

I look up from the computer. Eye contact. "No, honey, I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere tonight."

"Okay, I just wanted to make sure you weren't gone."

HAHAHA!

Scene: Morning, about 8:15 a.m. We are looking at the wedding album. "Who is that?"

"That's great-grandma Papadopoli," I say.

"Great-grandma Papawy Dapawy?"

Julianna is very giggly today. Have I ever mentioned that I am completely, hopelessly, helplessly addicted to her laugh? Especially since she guards her giggles. Alex has always been a laughy-taffy kid. Giggles at the drop of a... well, a pin head, much less a hat. So today, she giggles because I look funny when I'm feeding her. She giggles when I laugh. She giggles when I tickle or chew (and she is very chewy). She is reaching out and grabbing life by the bongos/Mardi Gras beads/ drums/scrap paper/brother. (She's very into noses at the moment.)

And she's stubborn as anything. She'll stand (knees locked), but she WILL NOT go on all fours. Steadfastly refuses.

Ah well, just a little slice of Basi life. I was reading over an NFP recertification course when Alex came to ask me if I was gone, and I had to stop and share.

Don Music

2008-02-27T11:58:00.001-08:00

There’s a clip on an old Sesame Street video that we’ve been watching with Alex. In it, Don Music is sitting at the piano, trying to write “Mary had a little lamb.”

“Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to…to…to…”

With a deafening cluster chord, Don Music flings his head down on the keyboard and wails, “Oh, I’ll NEVER get it!”

Every time he sees this, Christian roars with laughter. Then he turns to me and says, “Look! It’s Kate!”

Fine. I have a melodramatic side. So sue me.

I got my second short story rejection in two weeks yesterday. And although I’m considerably more mature about it than Don Music, I am fighting the same voice of gloom and doom. It’s ridiculous, but it’s true. The process of breaking into the fiction market seems so overwhelming. Even more so because “The Beggar’s Queen” was so easy a process. I spend hours doing market research, but what I end up doing is ruling out every single magazine, because none of them have already published a story about a farm wife who chases a rooster in the middle of the night. And of course, if they had published it, it would still be pointless to send it, because why would they want two?

In a day or two I’ll set aside my self-loathing and I’ll send it out again.

Unless I decide to do a major rewrite, of course.

Composing the seasons/publicity

2008-02-25T12:26:00.000-08:00

It's an oddity of writing that in the gray, purple heart of Lent I am hard at work on Christmas pieces.

During Advent I got the idea to write a collection of Christmas carol arrangements. However, being overburdened with time (HA!), I managed to complete exactly one, and that one not until after we had taken down the Christmas tree--mind you, we leave our tree up all the way through Epiphany.

Now I'm setting a goal of writing one every other month for a year. That way I'll have my collection ready by next Christmas. Ready to play, anyway.

Incidentally, we now have copies in hand of "Times and Seasons" for flute/piano (GIA)and "Go In Peace" for assembly use (WLP). I have to admit, when I saw my name on the covers of those two publications, it actually took my breath away for a moment--cliche as that sounds. It was akin to holding your baby for the first time. You know a lot about the baby before it gets here--but there's nothing quite like that first sight, that first touch.

Christian is a superb publicist. He has gotten me in the newspaper. Technically, that will be next weekend, but we've done the interview already.

I'm doing a lot more publicity for my music than I did for "The Beggar's Queen." I'm in my element here--I sound intelligent when I talk about music. And I know a whole lot more people, so I've been able to send emails around the country. Whether that makes a difference in sales remains to be seen.

Spring?

2008-02-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

It is the 23rd of February and I don't think it's gotten above freezing for over a week. The "normal" high for this time of the year is about 45 degrees in mid-Missouri. I'm getting seriously stir-crazy. Especially since I've been confined to home with two very small children for most of the last 3 days because of ice, sleet, and oh, a dusting of snow, not enough to go sledding.

And yet yesterday when I went to get the mail, I heard spring birds. Lots of them. I stopped in the driveway and listened for a few seconds as my whole body seemed to take a breath and relax.

Any day now, God. Any day.

And as long as I'm posting...

2008-02-21T12:45:00.000-08:00

I have been entirely too gloom and doom lately about my daughter's development or lack thereof.

Julianna is doing great. Over the weekend she learned to play peekaboo and scoot herself backward on the Pergo, and last night at dinner she nonchalantly popped a piece of chicken into her mouth while we weren't paying attention. Stinker, she knows exactly what to do, she just doesn't want to do it yet!

Yes, dear heart, you are a stinker. But I love you madly anyway.

P.S. In "Dear Annie" two nights ago, Christian found a letter from somebody who was uncomfortable around a customer with a "mental disability." "Annie" told them that his touchy-feely flirting was part of his "illness." Christian just about went through the roof. I told him it wasn't worth writing to them about, anyway. But now I'm wondering.

For liberals and conservatives, in an election year

2008-02-21T12:37:00.000-08:00

This is a really thoughtful column on the strengths and weaknesses of liberalism and conservatism--particularly within the Catholic Church, but I think that the lessons apply much more broadly. It is long, but if you can take the time I think you'll find it worthwhile.

I'd post the entire text, but I'm not sure that's legal, so I shall err on the side of caution and simply give you the web page, which I think you'll have to cut and paste, unfortunately:

http://uscatholic.claretians.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12107&news_iv_ctrl=0&abbr=usc_

Of Julianna, and planning for the third

2008-02-17T18:23:00.000-08:00

Lately we've been discussing how long to wait before we try to conceive again. I'm 33--no great age, but my mother had her last at 33, so it's on my mind. Because I'll be having a C-section, Julianna has to be able to walk before the next baby comes. At 6 months, when she was sitting up, we were sure that she was going to be close to walking by a year.

And of course, she's not even crawling. In fact, she's not even transitioning into and out of sitting. (Actually, she started this weekend. She had a good developmental weekend.)

So now I wonder if our plans for a baby a year or so from now are too optimistic. And in my fears, I also realize that I'm harboring deep fear, insecurity and guilt. I am the primary "therapist" in the family, and I feel like I don't do enough work with her. So I think it's my fault that she's not developing more quickly.

This entry is not coming together well, so I think I'll err on the short side. A wonderful man at church this morning told me that God would provide. And he can say that, because he has a child with DS who is 1 year and 2 weeks older than her younger sister.

Easy to view from the outside--now that both of his kids are grown.

Harder to imagine trying to live through.

Cute almost-three-year-old moments of the week

2008-02-17T18:17:00.000-08:00

--"Mommy, did God gave you an Alex to chew on?"
(These kids do pick up on the littlest things we ever say! ;) )

--"Our Fadder, who art in Heaven, hawowed our, be, howowed be our name. Mommy, why do we say daily bread?"
(Because that's how we ask God for all the things we need. Like our food...)
"Like 'teak and peas and peaches and ah-keem and aca-oni keez?"
(Yes, like those. And a place to sleep, and clothes to wear, and...)
"And someone to wuv us!"
(I love being this kid's mommy. Sniff sniff.)

Small triumphs

2008-02-16T07:04:00.000-08:00

This morning, Julianna grabbed a cloth napkin from the table beside her and proceeded to play peekaboo for 15 minutes.

A small triumph, to be sure, but a triumph nonetheless!

Trees and Trash

2008-02-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

I just joined the Arbor Day Foundation.

Did you know you can get 10 trees for a max of $15? OK, so they're twigs. So what? Join them already! www.arborday.org Then you get other trees (not twigs) for next to nothing compared to going to the store--any store. I'm going to buy nine trees for less than the cost of two at Lowe's.

Did you know that the aspen tree actually grows in central Missouri? (According to Arbor Day, anyway.) I'm so pumped. It'll be like a little bit of Colorado in my back yard. Assuming I can keep them alive, of course. :)

I'm very excited about planting trees.

And this weekend Christian and I went down to the creek--which is nothing more glorious than a stormwater drain--and cleaned up trash behind our property. It was awful how much there was, really. Most of it washed downstream from the streets, but even so. And the other day, I was sitting in line at the traffic light when I actually *saw* someone open their door and drop a styrofoam cup on the ground.

Who are you people? And how can you go through your life without ever once thinking, "Duh, maybe this is not a good idea!"??????

Didn't your parents teach you better than that?

Alex and Mommy Basi

2008-02-08T15:14:00.000-08:00

Alex and Mommy during flute (or voice) lessons!

Nuff said.

Pink Cake

2008-02-02T05:27:00.000-08:00

My mother-in-law and I spent last evening decorating a "1-2-3-4" cake filled with chocolate and cream cheese and frosted with pink cream cheese frosting.

Today is the big day. Feb. 2. Groundhog day, or, for the Catholic nerds among us, The Feast of the Presentation. Julianna's first birthday.

She celebrated her birthday by waking at midnight (I kid you not) and whining. Since we got to bed at 11:30, I was not happy about it. Fortunately, by the time I used the bathroom and got ready to go over, she'd whined herself back to sleep. But she woke up again at 3:30, which is both worse and better than the time she's been waking up to nurse lately (4:30)--worse b/c I had only been asleep for 2 hours; better b/c it was early enough that I could still go back to sleep, which is not the case at 4:30.

We nursed, and I went back to bed. And a while later I heard Alex whining, and thank God, then I heard Christian already over there dealing with him. I was exhausted--since I've been getting up at 4:30 every morning for a week--so I just let him deal with it.

And now, at 7:30, Julianna is sitting on my lap, little cranky birthday girl with a cold.

And Tom over at narrowridge.blogspot.com wrote about his 5 month-old son's likes and dislikes. So I shall do the same.

(There's a whole community of people talking about Down syndrome over there, BTW. Very interesting. You should check it out.)

OK. Miss Julianna Margaret Basi LIKES...

Chewing on her toes
Blowing rasberries

Miss Julianna ADORES...

* Her Mardi gras beads
* Her big brother Alex
* Mommy and Daddy--especially Daddy! (You should see her go crazy when he walks in)
* Baths (though that was long in coming--I used to have to get in and bathe with her so she didn't freak out)
* Pears, peaches, and bananas
* Lasagna--which she goes berzerk about, and won't stop shrieking till I give her another bite
* Oh, and don't forget ICE CREAM!!!!

Miss Julianna HATES...

* being cold
* being put to bed
* oh yes, sleeping during the day. She hates that.
* having her face cleaned and her gooky eye wiped
* babysitters

At the moment she's griping b/c she's lying on the floor bored, and wants Mommy to feed her her birthday breakfast. In the last two weeks we've seen marked differences in her development. She's started reaching for things--taking initiative in interfacing with her world. She wants to touch faces, grab noses, lunge and grab toys. Things I had come to believe were going to have to be taught and just barely grasped before we went on to the next developmental task, which would also have to be taught, and which she would barely grasp. Yet here they are, and again, I just have to learn to be patient.

There have been times in the last year when I have been overwhelmed by all that is to come. And not that long ago I was quite sad, deep in the midst of grieving. No doubt I'll be there again, and sooner than I would like to think about. But for now, I'm just an ordinary mom who's in a bad mood b/c I haven't had a full night's sleep in over a week.

To those just starting the DS journey, or those struggling with frustration, fear or a sense of being overwhelmed...hang in there. It'll come.

In the Eye of the Beholder

2008-01-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

In the Eye of the Beholder: a celebration of a year

“…no eye has ever seen any God but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him…”
Isaiah 64: 3

She’s so beautiful.

I have to be honest and admit that I have always, always been uncomfortable around people with disabilities. Afraid of their differences. For certain, I have never, ever thought of a person with a disability as beautiful. Clearly, this is one of the reasons God gave her to me.

And yet, as hard as I try—when I look at the folded ears, the wide, round eyes, the cute little tongue tip protruding—all the telltale signs that made the doctors suspect Down Syndrome at the moment of her birth… Well, I can’t see it. I have never really been able to see it.

But everybody else can see it. She and I stopped at a garage sale on Saturday (yes, in January), and the man came hurrying over to us and pressed an angel votive holder into her hands, telling me a story about a young man with DS that he helped to shave.

This is what I find really odd. I always thought I was pretty objective about things. I was and am, after all, able to admit that Julianna was not a pretty newborn AT ALL. And I really try hard to see the Down syndrome in her face—identify it, I mean, the way other people seem to be able to identify it in a glance.

But I can’t. She’s just…so…beautiful.

One of the benefits, and crosses, of having a child who’s significantly delayed is that we get an extended babyhood. She’s five days shy of a year old, and she’s more like a seven- to nine-month-old. At night when I nurse her to sleep, with her little fingers grasping my shirt, or my skin, and her feet pressing against my arm or my torso, I’m frequently overcome. That wild, fine hair, so impossible to control. The long, long eyelashes. The adorable, chewable cheeks. That little nose, that goofy grin! The length of her! Oh, my gosh, she’s so beautiful! And I thought Alex was the most beautiful baby in the world.

I mean, seriously. I know you all think you have the most beautiful children, but…I’m sorry, it’s just impossible. The world’s two most beautiful children both live under my roof. And how did I rate such a blessing?

She’s so beautiful. And she’s been with us almost a year. It’s been rough, and I wouldn’t have chosen it, and I wouldn’t choose it now, given the choice, but I also wouldn’t trade it. Not for anything.

Those moments

2008-01-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

And then there are those moments when you shake your head in awe at the miniature people who fill your days with diapers, feedings and playtime.

The thing I love best about children is the way they laugh just because they're happy. Just because we're going to the park, or they like the food placed in front of them, or (in Julianna's case) because Mommy looked at her and smiled.

And I love the way that Alex claps his hands and says, "yay yay yay yay yay!" wiggling his bottom and his legs with excitement because I told him the phone call was from Daddy, who said he's landed in Chicago, which means he's halfway home.

"Did *we* ride two yearpanes" (that would be "airplanes") "in the 'ky, to New York?" Yes, we did, little man. Just a couple of months ago. Another giggle-wiggle: "I LOOOVE New York!"

But at the end of three days without Christian, I am filled with great sympathy and respect for single parents. I really don't know how they do it.

What do you know. Two blogs in one day.

Blogger Blather

2008-01-18T11:24:00.001-08:00

They say that if you’re going to have a successful blog—one that has a devoted following—you need to post at least twice a week, and every day is better.

But I’d like to know who has time to read that much blogging? Let’s take a poll. Raise your hand if you delete every single forward you find in your inbox. Be honest now. And I’m sure you all check out every single link you get, too. And all the related links.

What I’d really like to know is how do you get people to read your blog faithfully in the first place?

If I blogged twice a week (much less every day), I’d never get any other writing done.

But then again, if that’s the case, what the heck am I doing writing a blog entry today?

It’s time to get to work, Kate!

Random musings

2008-01-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

You wouldn't know I have "so much to say" based on the frequency of my blog posts, would you?

The trouble with a blog is that many of the things on my mind I can't talk about in public. Or, at least, it would be a bad idea to talk about in public. People I'd like to rake over the coals for things they've done...the details of other people's private lives, which I have no business spreading...you know, things like that.

That's the kind of stuff on my mind lately. But since I'm bored at the moment, why not wander a bit?

My weight is up. I had returned to my prepregnancy weight on the 20th of December, when we had Shakespeare's pizza with friends from Ohio, and after that night I've never recovered.

I say that because I'm hungry right now, at 3:30 p.m.

I've been having intermittent trouble sleeping again lately. I finally decided that there is no shame in taking something to help you sleep, as long as you don't get dependent on it. So I'll allow myself a sleep aid a maximum of every other day.

That's on my mind because we rearranged our bedroom last night and I had trouble sleeping, facing a different direction. Oddly enough I don't feel too tired today, though.

We spent the entire month of December painting our living room red. Then we ran out of money, and we still don't have curtains.

I say that because from my chair at the computer, I'm staring at a very bare window. I hate Venetian blinds. Who the heck came up with those things, anyway? They're cheap, they break, they're impossible to clean, they don't block the light... I just don't get it. Christian said to me once, "Well, I grew up with wood blinds. How do you feel about wood?"

"You still have to clean them!" I told him.

I tried cleaning them a while back. I got all ambitious. It lasted through two windows. (Our house has 9.)

Then there's writing stuff on my mind. My flute collection is already available at www.giamusic.com, and they told me it's going to be featured (I think that's what they said, anyway) in the catalog which should be arriving very soon. "Go In Peace," which is a song for congregation and contemporary ensemble, is at the printer's. WLP will be sending that out in some mailing soon, too. And also with WLP I'm in the editing process with my second song, "I Rejoice."

All three of these, by the way, were accepted for publication before Alex was six months old. Now he's nearly three, and I have another child, almost a year old. It boggled my mind to think the publishing process was so long--but now I know what to expect!

I think I'm headed for music writing for a while. It goes in spurts. I do prose for a while, then I get excited about music for a while, sometimes I juggle both...but I don't have that much time. And as much as I want to be writing, it has to take third place in my priorities--#s 1 and 2 are permanently occupied by husband and kids. (Well, for the next 20 years, anyway. After that writing may move up a notch.)

I'm going through this discontent with my new novel, which seems suddenly unimportant and boring to me. I had a great idea for a new novel, which occupied all my spare waking thought and then some for about a week. But once I got it hashed out on computer file, and I discovered what researching I have to do to figure out the gaps...well, let's just say that hours of research are hard to come by. I can write in 1-hour pockets. Research is more a whole day at the library, which I don't have anymore. So until the docket clears a little bit--till I get a few other projects out of the way--I think it's going to have to sit and simmer. The novel is still quite undeveloped, anyway. I think it could benefit from several months' stewing.

And oh yes, there's the Cardinal coming to celebrate school Mass with us at Columbia Catholic. I've done Masses with the Bishop before, but a Cardinal...well, that's a new one. I won't pretend that I'm not a little uncomfortable. You can imagine the kind of chaos we're undergoing at work, trying to have ourselves ready for that. :)

And it wouldn't be right not to mention Christian's Uncle Bob, who passed away last night. Uncle Bob went by "Rock." Take a moment and construct an image of a man who geos by "Rock." Now, throw your assumptions out the window. His demeanor was as opposite that as it could be. Well, almost as opposite. He was a little man, really, thin and quiet and gentle, very emotional, at least, that was my limited experience of him. He sent turkey joints to the Basi family every Christmas. Turkey Joints are a staple of Christmas tradition in my husband's family--so much so that they forget how weird it is to say, "Here, have a turkey joint!" Then people recoil and say, "WHAT????"

I do it now, too, despite having had the normal "What the...." reaction my first time. It took me 2 or 3 years to try one, but now I enjoy them. To those who don't know turkey joints, just Google it.

Uncle Bob, Christian's godfather, sent wonderfully sentimental cards in which he underlined every single word, and the important ones two or three times. What a good guy. He will be missed.

The end and the beginning

2008-01-01T15:19:00.000-08:00

In the last month, I have had to come to terms with the reality of Julianna’s Down Syndrome.

There is an initial grieving when you learn that your child has a disability. For some people it goes on forever. We were blessed—it was over in a few days. Then for a while, life goes on as normally as it can. A baby, after all, is a baby, and a child with DS, aside from heart conditions and so forth, isn’t different from any other baby.

But eventually the delays begin to show. For a while, you don’t notice, because your baby is your baby. Then you notice, but you think, ah, it’s only a little. Then come the niggling thoughts at inconvenient moments, like the middle of the night, or while you’re making dinner: Wasn’t Alex (fill in the blank) by (fill in the blank)? Well, you think, she is going to be delayed, after all, and holy cow, look at the way she works the room! Look at her sitting up!

Until, sometime around ten months, you think, she’s not putting anything in her mouth. I mean, nothing. You say, wait a minute, she’s getting close to a year and she’s not self-feeding. We’re still nursing five times a day because she can’t eat finger food. So you ask the occupational therapist, and the OT says, hmmmmmm….well, you know, I’m kind of stumped. I think you’re just going to have to wait till she’s ready.

You begin the process of switching OTs, because waiting just isn’t an option. She’s doing too well in other areas.

But even so, she’s eleven months old tomorrow, and she’s sitting up, but not transitioning in and out of sitting; she has to be helped into all-fours; she’s not pulling up and she only stands with a great deal of support on her butt.

So now the secondary grieving begins. This grief is not so all-consuming, so stormy, as the initial spat. This one goes much deeper. It lasts for months, accompanied by uncertainty and worry and fear. This grief is the grief of having to take an ugly, objective word like “retarded” and use it when describing your child. I still can’t do it. I have to say she’s “delayed.” My entire being cringes when I even think the other.

This was 2007.

Julianna is joy, and I rise up in blazing, righteous fury when I hear of people who choose to “terminate” their babies’ lives because of DS. (“Terminate,” as if ending a child’s life is no more consequential than firing a person.) And yet I also have to be honest and say that I have never in my life been so glad to see a calendar year pass into history.

For 2008, I’ll be satisfied if we can just stay out of the hospital.

Pictures!

2007-12-17T18:28:00.000-08:00

Aha! I did it! I've been trying to figure out how to put pictures on this blog without them distorting ever since I started the blog. This is certainly not perfect, but it is a good start.

I think I'll quit while I'm ahead, tonight. :)

Christmas and the mess we live in

2007-12-09T19:13:00.001-08:00

There’s this really annoying pharmacy ad that plays at this time of year that starts, “It’s that special holiday feeling that happens every year.” Every time I hear it, I want to throttle whoever wrote it. Why do we set up these expectations? Why should we expect Christmas to be so much better than any other time of year? Life is a mess, for everyone, at almost all times, and when we set up these ridiculous standards for the Christmas season, it just makes us dissatisfied, like we’ve somehow been gypped of something we have a right to expect.

The mess is all around me these days. In my life, and in the lives of those close to me. Illnesses, hospital stays, death and loss—in some cases, the complete upheaval, the overthrow of all carefully-laid (and very reasonable, I might add) plans.

It’s the first time in quite a while that I’ve questioned God as to why. For those going through these frustrating, difficult and downright terrifying times, it helps not at all to hear platitudes like “God has his reasons.” Yet platitudes are all we have to offer. I want so desperately to be of use to those I love, and I keep butting my head against the brick wall of my own ineptitude and helplessness.

This morning, the priest talked about the contrast between the expectations we have for the season and the images presented to us in the readings for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, year A. You know the expectations: peace on earth, silent night, the angelic little baby (blond, of course) lying in a manger. And then there was today’s Gospel: “Repent, you @$!& brood of vipers!”

His take on the matter was that we often think we can’t be witnesses to the Kingdom, to love, to goodness, to the Gospel, unless our lives are in order, and we have things under control. Otherwise, who would ever listen to us? And yet, God often uses the messiest, most chaotic times in our lives to teach us and everyone else what He has in mind.

I suppose it’s just more platitudes, but it really struck a chord with me today.

Right Brain, Scatter Brain

2007-11-05T18:00:00.001-08:00

"Cleaning and scrubbing can wait for tomorrow,
For babies grow up, I've learned, to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep."

(Ruth Hulburt Hamilton)

When she’s at home, my mother-in-law is a consummate housekeepr. Her trash cans are emptied daily (at least), her dishes are washed, dried and put away after each meal, and each night she straightens whatever mess her kids, grandkids, husband and in-laws have left.

My cousin Becky managed to design and build a house and parent two elementary age boys while living in a two-car garage for a year. She’s organized, calm, and her boys are well-behaved, all-around good kids.

My friend Tricia designs a summer-long program of chores, activities and recreation, down to daily menus for a balanced diet.

And then there’s me.

My laundry grinds to a halt mid-cycle and lays in piles of madness that grow every time I throw a dirty bib up the stairs.

I stick up my nose every Thursday, thinking, Aw man, it’s been a week already since I cleaned the house?

The dishes get washed at least every third day. But not necessarily put away.

And last week I took the kids up to the farm for a daylong outing, and I left the diaper bag at home.

My friend Jim chuckled when I related that. Then he quickly curbed it. “Well,” he said graciously, “you’re one of those creative right-brained people.”

Scatterbrained is more like it. And the more I think about it, the more I think he’s right—only there’s more to it than that. I’m scatterbrained because my attention is split in too many directions. School liturgies. Weekend liturgies. Music projects for publishers. New music projects. Novels. Short stories. Articles. Reading about writing. Reading in general. The kids. NFP recertification.

Oh yeah, don’t forget the housework.

Last weekend the readings at church said, “From those given much, much will be expected.” I guess that’s me. I just wish part of the bequest had been a brain capable of keeping it all straight.

Alex's First Halloween

2007-11-01T12:33:00.001-07:00

Nov. 1, 2007
All Saints Day

Last night, Christian and I took Alex trick-or-treating for the first time. He was Bob the Builder, outfitted in blue plaid and too-big jeans that fell down around his tool belt, exposing gray big boy briefs. He wore his yellow construction hat perched at a rakish angle on his head and completed the outfit with light-up Star Wars tennis shoes (garage sale special, 50 cents).

I enjoyed Halloween in a whole new ways last night. We stood back and let him go to the doors and ring them, and every time we had to tell him to say thank you. After 45 minutes of “Ooooh, how cute!” from every woman who answered the door (yes, OK, he’s adorable, I admit it) he was ready to stop “getting more candy” and to go eat some. We went home and turned on our own lights.

Christian served the first several trick-or-treaters, and then I took over till time to put Julianna to bed. Then…“Wanna give candy to the kids!” Alex said in his slow, deliberate way. Christian let him do it up till 8:00, which is bedtime, and then began a 45-minute pitched battle between the parents and the overexcited 2-year-old.

When at last he was ready for bed, the late rush—all the big kids—started. So we let him come downstairs. By this time we just wanted to get rid of as much candy as possible, so we let him take whole handfuls and put them in kids’ bags & buckets. He was in Heaven. But the part that made me really proud was that he was taking all the pieces of candy that he thought were the best ones and giving those out. He wouldn’t let me give out the cheapie eyeballs that I bought because they were cheap. He thought they were gross, and he wasn’t going to let me give them out. No, he was going to give away all the Kit Kat, Mounds, and Milky Way.

Christian tells me I shouldn’t read into that, but it seems to me that selfishness is so innate that even a 2-year-old ought to be well-versed in it. I’m so proud of him for giving the best to others.

Communing with Calm

2007-10-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, at last, I went down to the creek behind the house. I’ve been putting it off until the weeds die back, so I can clear a path, but today, somehow, sitting on a picnic blanket in the shade of the deck just didn’t cut it. I wanted to be down in the woods, in the midst of the wild trees. So I tromped the short distance down to the creek in my dress slacks and platform slides (great gear, Kate), and there I stood on the bank above the creek, surrounded by trees swaying from tip to root in this crazy wind that blows through Missouri, trying to cool down the Earth to a proper temperature for late October. I remembered Alex yesterday, sitting on the deck eating his macaroni and cheese and pointing with his fork. “The trees are dancing,” he said. (Did I teach him that?)

My moments of communing with nature are few and far between, and all too short lived these days. I used to drive out to Rock Bridge, or the Stargazer, and take a walk to the edge of a cliff and perch there staring into open space, for an hour or more. I always knew when it was time to go—it happens without my being aware of it; suddenly I find myself on my feet saying goodbye to the view. That moment comes when the “hurry, hurry, hurry!” in my heart relaxes and goes to sleep.

I don’t get to that point very often anymore. Most of my communing times are stolen outside our house, within the noise radius of I-70 (I don’t bother going outside when the wind is in the south). And inevitably I hear, “Mommy!” from the window upstairs, or a long, A-a-a-a-a-a-aaaaaaah” over the monitor, long before I get to the point of calm.

But there are Julianna’s smiles to compensate me, and the occasional giggle, and Alex’s snapping chocolate eyes and impulsive hugs. They don’t take away the need…but they do ease it.

Field Trip

2007-09-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

There is no machine cooler than the combine.

I’ve known that since I was a very little girl, and I’m delighted that Alex is now old enough to agree with me. Ever since wheat harvest ended (in mid-July), he has been asking when Grandpa would get the combine out so he could take another ride. The combine came out last weekend; we have been counting the days all this week. And today was the day.

It was a beautiful drive from Columbia to Moberly, a drive lined with cornfields half-harvested and soybean fields spangled with gold and red. When we rounded the last corner on “the bumpy road,” there were the two grain trucks and a tractor and grain cart lined up along the edge of the “hundred acre” field. Alex could barely contain himself. It was everything a boy of two could ask for.

Autumn is my favorite of all the seasons. It’s the colors, the bracing air, the sense of fulfillment—“the crowning of the year.” Although I know this every day, every fall the wonder overtakes me again as if I’ve never felt it before. The air today was cool, filled with the smell of corn stubble—sweet, in a way that you can’t equate with food. I got Alex out of the van, and he shrieked as the big red Case 2100 came toward us, chewing up the rows with a roar and spitting out chaff behind it. He fairly danced in place, giggling without self-consciousness or self-control.

We rode (and played, while Grandpa fixed the combine) for nearly two hours, all three of us, with my dad. Alex loved it. Julianna looked around with placid disinterest at everything but me. (I got smiles.) After lunch, Alex went for a solo ride with Grandpa while I nursed Julianna. As the combine slowly sank over the hill, the incessant bellow faded to a muted roar, and then to silence—a brief, perfect stillness. Up sprang a tricksy little wind, and a funnel of long dead leaves and stubble went swirling into the air. A miniature tornado, there on a perfectly clear September day, whirling its way across the cut rows, then spinning over the tassled heads still standing.

And then came the subsonic rumble, and the outermost row of corn at the top of the hill began to thrash. A moment later the dark fork point of the header emerged, then the Big Top riding above the brown rows, and at last, the cab clearing the tall stalks.

We got back on the road about 2:30, and the first time I turned around to glance at my children, they were both fast asleep. If only naptime were this easy every day.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

2007-08-21T13:49:00.001-07:00

At the National Down Syndrome Congress convention in Kansas City at the beginning of August, we had the opportunity to hear Kim Edwards speak about and read from her book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Afterward, she signed books, and we bought a copy and had her inscribe it to Julianna.

Christian read the book the week following the convention, while he was on vacation. “This book is really depressing,” he said at least three times a day. And yet he devoured it. He read at every moment—an hour at a time, lounged across the couch, sitting at the table, bringing it with him wherever we went.

At the end of the week, Christian was a new man. Relaxed, settled, back to his old self—he hadn’t been himself in so long, I had ceased to notice it. And he knew it, too. He was the one who pointed it out to me. During that week, he began laughing at Julianna, playing with her, calling her “cute” for the first time—he’s not a baby person; it took him months to admit that Alex was cute, too. He has been a wonderful father to our daughter, but that week, he bonded with her.

Probably it is coincidental that he happened to be reading that book at the same time.

But now I’m reading it. And from the moment Phoebe was born, with her black hair and her delicate skin, in my mind she had Julianna’s face. Phoebe is Julianna. The shock of discovering that your newborn child has Down Syndrome, the terror, the revulsion you don’t want to feel at the idea that it could be true— I recognized all of it. But when the father told his wife that their daughter was dead, my psyche reared up in a white-hot blaze of grief, of outrage, even though I knew it was coming.

I ran to my daughter, swept her up, hugged her as close as I could, and I said, “Oh, my darling, beautiful baby girl, how could anyone give you up?” And then I started crying.

Forgive me if I ramble a bit today. I try to stay brief in my blog, but I haven’t reflected on our experience as parents of a child with DS in a while, and I finished my first draft of my new novel yesterday, so I think I have earned a little diversion.

Sunday on the way to the band concert, Christian told me to expect that lots of people he worked with would want to see the kids, particularly Julianna, who hasn’t been shown off around campus as much as her brother was when he was born. (For several reasons—hospital and doctor visits, plus the general unwieldiness of having two kids along, the move, etc.) People keep asking his boss, “Is Christian really doing OK?”

I found these questions confusing. Then I realized that people have been asking me, too. And I realized, too, that they’re asking because they don’t realize that we have settled into normal life. I think that for a lot of people, the idea that life could ever go on as usual seems impossible. I remember one exchange in particular, with a wonderful woman I know, who spoke of a family member with DS—a family member who is now deceased. I came away from that conversation with the knowledge that many people are deeply, deeply uncomfortable around people with disabilities, conditions. I say that completely without malice because I was (and remain, to a certain extent) one of those people. It’s a long-standing shame of mine that I lived my life unable to look past a person’s disability.

Because of that, I am supremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to love–passionately, fiercely, and in awe–a little girl named Julianna Margaret. A baby who insists upon rolling onto her tummy, even when she knows perfectly well she hates being on her tummy. A little girl with the goofiest smile I have ever seen, and a sparkle of mischief in her eye. A beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous, baby girl with a heart-shaped face, long eyelashes, a rosebud mouth, and long dark brown hair that gets into impossible rats five times a day. Who won’t go to sleep during the day, and rivals her big brother for loud vocalizations. A baby so determined not to miss a single one of life’s experiences that her little thumb migrates to her mouth even while she’s nursing, and then gives me the innocent look that says, “Hey, what’s up with this? Why isn’t it working?”

Yes, we’ve been in crisis mode this year, hopping from one hospital to the next—four hospital stays! Heart surgery! A new house! Selling an old house! Toilet training! But Christian and I toss the baby back and forth across the dinner table when one person needs both hands. We dissolve into laughter when she sticks her feet up in the air. We make complete bumbling fools of ourselves, mimicking her silly baby noises. We live for making her smile, and keep a sense of humor when she’s overtired and fights going to sleep.

In other words, we have a baby. And that, in essence, is the point that I believe Kim Edwards was trying to communicate in this book. And the writing truly is spectacular. I’m only 90 pages in, and I have a feeling that I, like my husband, will be changed by the reading.

Back to School

2007-08-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

I am so glad that I am not in school anymore…but there are times when I miss the excitement of it all.

Last night, Christian and I took the kids out to the Quad at MU for Marching Mizzou’s “concert on the quad.” These sorts of things are much more fun with kids than without. Alex wanted to run up and down between the circles of band members warming up in sections, shouting, “Tuba! Tuba! ’Nuvver tuba! Dums! Dums! Eveywheah dums! Foots! Foots!”

And the best part was that I got to go wandering in among the band members without feeling silly or out-of-place. I started feeling nostalgic for my two years in Marching Mizzou (one of which, incidentally, I detested). As we watched the concert on the Quad, I remembered, and missed, the silly cheers we used to pass the time. Not much has changed in the fourteen years I have been away from M2. The band plays the same arrangements of the same fight songs, and does almost the same dances.

As the freshmen pelted through the Columns toward the free Tiger Stripe ice cream waiting at the south end of the Quad, kicking up grasshoppers and mites, I thought for a moment or two how much fun it would be to be back in college again.

And then I regained my senses.

A review

2007-08-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

This review came to me weeks ago. But in my defense, I have had an infant who had heart surgery since then. And I am toilet-training a two-year-old.

"The story took on a life of its own and pulled me right in. This book turned out to be a wonderful surprise. It is a must read for anyone who loves historical mixed with a little romance, lots of action, and a whole lot of mystery."

Check out the full review at

http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookReviews/Thebeggarsqueen.html

In praise of a good pen

2007-08-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

These days, I do a lot of my writing longhand.

Yes, like all the rest of you, I prefer to write on the computer. But with a 2 year old and a 6 month old (who goes to the doctor a lot), computer time is at a premium. So I have broken out the 3-ring binders, the college-rule notebook paper and the pens.

And I have discovered that Anne Shirley was right: the pen makes a difference in what you are able to write. It's really hard to concentrate on a good story when the pen grates along the page, bumping and vibrating the hand.

A good pen warms the creative juices and helps the words to flow. A good pen makes the writing experience enjoyable. It keeps your hand relaxed and lets you write longer. It doesn't give you something to say, but it removes one of the barriers to getting what you have to say out of your head and into the greater world.

And it's really not any slower to write longhand than it is to type one-handed with a crying baby on your shoulder!

(Which, incidentally, is a far more formidable barrier to creativity than lack of a laptop, or a bad pen!)

Perfect moments, and not-so-perfect moments

2007-08-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

Last night, the kids went to bed by 8:30. Yes, that was a plural: KidS. For the first time in recent memory, Christian and I had the chance to sit down—together!—on the couch, turn off all the lights, and watch a movie. (Well, part of one, anyway.) I reveled in the sensation of reclining in my husband’s arms with my head resting on his shoulder, having some time just to be lovers instead of parents. It was a perfect moment. How many of those do you get?

We went to bed at 9:50. The light hadn’t even gone off when Julianna began crying. That was how it went for the next hour: three minutes of crying every 20 minutes. Just when we would almost fall asleep, off she went again. We tried everything we could think of, beginning with Infant Tylenol and ending with the carseat. At 11p.m. I gave up and went downstairs with her, bracing myself for a night of stolen seconds of sleep.

The way the night went isn’t really the point (in case you’re curious, I ended up with probably 5 hours of sleep, in bits and pieces). The point is that the awful night came right after the perfect moment. And this reminded me of something I’ve noticed before: it’s as if the universe prepares us for the hard times by giving us a single beautiful moment—to fortify us for the journey, as it were. To show us what’s waiting on the other side. To let us know that the fight is worth fighting.

When I write it, it sounds very over-dramatized, but I think that the universe displays the same lessons and tendencies over and over again—sometimes in big ways, but more often in the everyday occurrences.

There is a spiritual dimension to this reflection, but I’m going to bypass it today. I didn’t intend for this page to become a religious blog, yet every entry seems to express some way in which the divine touches the ordinary.

Today, however, I am fuzzy-brained with a building cold bug and lack of sleep. I could spend all day revising this, but that wouldn’t be the best use of the baby’s nap time, now would it?

Rainbow

2007-07-20T16:11:00.001-07:00

“O Lord, our God, how glorious is your name over all the earth!”
-Ps. 8

When the first hint of color, little more than a sun dog, faded in, way up in the clouds, I was probably the only one who saw it. But soon it slid upward over the hump and planted its opposite foot in the south, an image of God’s hands extended in blessing over the earth.

A few short miles later, the southern toe of that arch had expanded into something voluptuous and solid--as different from the average rainbow as skim milk is from cream--glowing bright enough to slice a piece to wrap around my neck like a scarf. By Warrenton, it was saturated with color, and the excess was spilling over into a halo of a second. By the time I passed the weigh station at Foristell, barreling eastward at 70 mph, it had lost weight and turned wispy.

That would have been enough, but before the rainbow had disappeared altogether, there came a magical sunset hard on the heels of the storm. A sunset of molten golds--rose, yellow, and white--tinted the air, making it a living thing, finding nooks and crannies in the clouds and coating each leaf with fairy dust. As I barrelled eastward I could only watch in my rearview. But over the Missouri River bridge, I had to act. I pulled off at the first exist and took a picture back across the bottoms, through a set of fat black power lines draped next to the road. Not a picture I will print, but one that needed to be taken nonetheless.

Night Terrors

2007-06-23T04:02:00.000-07:00

Last night, 1 a.m., and the house is quiet. The windows are open to let the evening breeze cool the 2nd floor where we sleep. I am half awake, and I hear a little electronic "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" from across the hall. I wonder if Alex is awake and playing with Fredbird or if he somehow hit the stuffed animal by accident. Then I hear footsteps in the hallway. "Alex?" I say.

He is standing next to the vacuum cleaner when somewhere outside, someone sets off a bunch of noisemakers. Pop! Pop! Pop! Popopopopopopopop!

Alex wails. It is unbelievably loud in the quiet house. Christian rises up roaring--and I mean roaring. "It's okay, it's okay!" I say, trying to keep my voice down, but they can't hear me. They're both completely freaked out, and feeding each others' terror. Christian and I both fly out of bed to comfort Alex, who apparently thinks the vacuum cleaner has come to life and is going to eat him. Christian gets there first and won't let me have Alex, because he's terrified, too, and he wants to cling to Alex for comfort. But Alex is having none of it. He wants the parent that didn't scare him! He lurches into my arms, and we lie on the bed together, his toddler heart doing a veritable drumroll against my chest.

I spend the next hour lying in Alex's bed so he's not scared to go back to sleep. But I can't get close to going to sleep myself.

Who needs sleep anyway?

Empty House, Cluttered House

2007-06-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

So tonight is our first, official, “we’re-moved-in” night here at our new house. We slept here last night, but today we spent most of the day at the old house cleaning. It was a weird experience, cleaning my way through that hollow, echo-y space that had all the right paint colors, all the right contours, but somehow seemed suddenly not home anymore.

When it was all over, we somehow managed to smoosh all four of us into the van—Alex with his legs hanging over a full-length mirror, me with a 3-foot jade plant on my lap—and crisscrossed town for the last time, to bring home the last of our Stuff (including the crib sheet that we couldn’t find last night at bedtime!).

And tonight, Alex christened our new house by spilling root beer on the floor under the table (and chicken, and cheerios, and raisins) and then crowned it all by running away from me (naked, of course) and making the most horrific chocolate handprint on the wall right inside the front door.

After cleaning THAT up, I sat down to blog. Then Alex promptly picked his sister up by the dress—a big honkin’ fistful of spring green in that little hand—and dragged her across the floor and ran her into the spindles of the staircase railing!

After sorting out THAT mess, I brought Julianna safely back beside me and the next thing I know, I hear water running. NOW he decides it’s time to wash his hands.

You can’t write stuff this good.

(Written 6/14/07, but posted 6/15 b/c we don’t have internet service yet!!!!!)

8 things you never knew about me

2007-06-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged by Michelle Chambers to tell you 8 things about me you never knew before. (Check out Michlle at miwi-carpediem.blogspot.com!)

So, here goes:

1. I teach Natural Family Planning.

2. I am the only scrapbooker I know who is caught up with her pictures.

3. I actually enjoy action movies. And superhero movies.

4. I have played my flute on Circular Quay across from the Sydney Opera House.

5. My grandparents know Madonna’s parents.

6. I have 34 first cousins, and we actually visit each other fairly regularly.

7. I can drive a tractor and back up a livestock trailer. I worked for my dad as a farmhand for two summers in college. Best summers I ever spent.

8. It’s hard to come up with 8 things you never knew about me, because I tell everyone everything about me all the time.

I'm supposed to tag 8 people, but I don't think I know 8 people with blogs, so I tag: Cecelia Sander!

The Everyday Environmentalist

2007-05-29T08:23:00.000-07:00

With gas prices at the level they are, everybody’s thinking about the environment these days. And that is a very good thing. Whether or not you believe in global warming isn’t really the issue: as Christians, we are called to be stewards of creation. Here are a bunch of everyday things that we can do to preserve our beautiful Earth.

And conveniently enough, caring for the environment *usually* saves you money, too!

In the Kitchen:
1. Take your own bags to the grocery store. Cloth is even better than paper or plastic.
2. Buy fresh, not prepackaged. Mac & cheese from scratch really doesn’t require more time, and veggies you cook yourself lose less nutritional value.
3. Buy organic.
4. Buy local.
5. Grow your own vegetables.
6. Compost.
7. Recycle.
8. Wash and reuse Ziploc bags.
9. Wait to run the dishwasher till it’s full.

Vehicles and driving:
10. Slow down! The faster you drive, the more gas you burn, and it doesn’t save any significant time anyway.
11. Make one trip to the grocery store for the week—IOW, plan and shop with a list.
12. Combine trips & walk from errand to errand when possible. Not when convenient, when possible.
13. Take advantage of public transportation.
14. Carpool.
15. Make sure the tires are at the proper pressure (you get better gas mileage).
16. Change Your Air Filter.
17. Make your next car a hybrid.

Around the house:
18. Buy refills on cleaners instead of a new squeeze bottle every time
19. Buy used, and don’t buy things you don’t need.
20. Use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs.
21. Turn the lights off.
22. Turn the computer off, or at least to standby
23. Unplug Electronics. They draw power even when not in use.
24. Use Recycled Paper.
25. Print on the back sides of used paper for rough drafts.
26. Turn the thermostat up a degree in the summer and down a degree in the winter.
27. Seal doors & windows with caulking or weather strips.
28. Get double pane windows.
29. Replace old appliances
30. Set the water heater no higher than 120.
31. Take Shorter Showers.
32. Dry clothes on a line instead of in the dryer.
33. Use a Push Mower (the kind without power.)
34. Plant a Tree

For the Family:
35. Use cloth diapers. There are diaper services that can do the cleaning for you.
36. Toilet train early.
37. Practice Natural Family Planning. No plastic, no chemicals, no waste.

2007-05-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

Today my novel, The Beggar’s Queen, was released. Check it out at www.thewildrosepress.com!

The Beggar’s Queen not your typical romance novel. For one thing, it’s longer, and there’s a whole lot more to it than the romance. For another, there’s no sex. I don’t write the formula, because I don’t think the formula reflects what true love really is. To me, sex is trivialized and cheapened when it is laid out on display. So instead, I focus on how Hero and Heroine (Phillip and Cecily, in TBQ) come to grow to love each other over the course of time. I believe that’s more realistic, and as such, a richer and more complex story.

Of course, The Beggar’s Queen is a medieval fantasy, so who am I to be talking about reality? :)

A good week

2007-04-27T11:57:00.000-07:00

It’s been a good week.

We listed the house, sold the house, found a new house we wanted, talked to the bank, and are getting ready to put in an offer. I received the galleys for “Beggar’s Queen,” an email asking to write an article for a magazine, and a letter asking to submit hymn texts. Alex had his second birthday and made good progress on the toilet. Julianna started paying attention to toys at midline. A good week.

Today I went to critique group. I’m surprised by how much I have come to value this group of women. They could not be more different from me. We could not see the world from more opposite points of view, in many cases. Yet there is respect and goodwill, and I am discovering from them that in spite of our different world views, we agree more than we disagree.

Perhaps that is a hopeful sign for the state of the world.

Kids in Church

2007-04-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

April 2, 2007

So far, my blogging has mostly been about Julianna. Which is unfortunate, really, because Alex is a riot. He’s always doing unbelievably adorable things, like falling asleep with my old First Communion prayer book clutched tightly in one chubby little hand (and I do mean chubby!) It’s enough to make me wonder if he really will be a priest someday. That, and the way he squeals with delight when he sees church—any church!

Then again, maybe that’s just the drums talking.

For months, Alex has been fixated on drums. He associates drums and church, which is really funny considering how rare it is to actually find drums in use at church. Every time we go to church, he runs for the music closet. The drums have to be the first thing we set up for contemporary group. Then he bangs happily on the trap set until we are done. When the pastor came to visit us in the ICU, Alex took one look at him, shrieked ecstatically, and then began miming every kind of drum he knows.

The former pastor of a local church used to have an announcement read every week, essentially telling people to remove their kids from church if they grew “restless.”

Now, I imagine if you asked, he would have insisted that was not his intention—his intention was to remove children who were screaming and causing a disruption. However, every single parent I know heard that announcement exactly the same way: KIDS NOT WELCOME.

Every parent has to juggle parenthood, ministry and personal spiritual development. When I worked for the Church, it used to annoy me that young families didn’t volunteer more. Then I gave birth to an angelic first child. Even now, in the terrible twos, he’s pretty good at church. And that made it *possible* for us to continue in music ministry—but not easy. We had to be very committed.

Alex was the first “choir baby,” but now there are more like five. A few months ago, a parishioner complained that it was distracting to have kids being “passed back and forth” in the music area during Mass. Lectors and Eucharistic ministers don’t get to have their kids with them when they serve. Why should musicians? If there is a better way to make families feel that their contributions are unwanted, I don’t know what it is.

Then, shortly after Christmas, Alex was banging happily on the toms and a man began complaining that he came to church to pray, and he wanted it quiet. No matter that it was 20 minutes after one service and 25 before the next began—church is supposed to be a quiet place. Fortunately, our parish priests are wonderful men who know how much we put into our service to the Church. They told us that we should celebrate the fact that our son loves to be at church, making a joyful noise to God.

I sympathize with the desire for a distraction-free environment to worship in. But children are the future. And children are children. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me,” and I highly doubt that he added, “As long as they are quiet and don’t bother anybody.” If we make kids—not to mention their parents—feel unwelcome, we are sabotaging the future of the church. Yes, children need to learn how to behave in church. But the only way they learn is by being in church. And that means that they’re going to act fidgety, restless and yes, probably disruptive before they learn to sit still and “behave.”

In the meantime, we ought to be looking for ways to encourage young families to participate in ministry, not looking for reasons to be annoyed that they have their kids with them. Kids who are involved will become adults who are involved. The more people who are involved, the richer our Church will become.

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now. It’s taken me all day to write this blog, anyway, and I need to be mom now!

The eyes of God

2007-03-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

For the first four and a half weeks of her life, Julianna woke up slowly, her eyes slitting one at a time, and only after a long warmup did they open all the way. At times, I felt a little shiver when I saw those eyes on me. Such a frank gaze, so uncomplicated—and so piercing, despite its gentleness. More than once I thought they were God’s eyes staring straight through me, down to the core of my being.

It is a totally different sense than what I experienced with Alex when he was her age. For Alex and I, looking in each others’ eyes was the long gaze of lovers memorizing the contours of each other’s faces. With Julianna, it is humbling. Unsettling. I squirm as her gaze lays bare my selfishness, my pettiness, my unwillingness to suffer. I recognize my own failings when I look in the eyes of this child who has endured more in her first month of life than I endured in my entire childhood.

During her week-long stay in the ICU, she was drugged, and we barely saw her eyes at all. But since she came out from under sedation, my daughter is like a different child. A few minutes ago, Julianna woke up and started crying. I went to the blue-barred hospital crib and started patting her little bottom to try to lull her back to sleep. Instead…POP! Those little eyes snapped wide open, and she stared fixedly at me out of deep charcoal-gray orbs. It was shocking to see how round those eyes are…how alert she is at six and a half weeks old, after sleeping for a whole week. And for one fleeting moment, it was like looking in a mirror. I saw myself staring back at me from those eyes, those eyebrows.

And still, they were God’s eyes.

God’s eyes, staring out of my eyes.

After all the curses I have flung at Him in the last few days, still He gives me this beautiful gift.

Clearly, I still have a lot to learn about God.

Apropos of nothing

2007-03-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

For all you medical types out there, can you tell me why you need the words “intubate” and “extubate”? How much harder is it to say “Remove the tube”?

Julianna and I left the Pediatric ICU yesterday. In the last nine days I have learned a lot of new terms. Sats. Leads. PEEP. Pressure control. Room air. Correlating. Nobody should know as much about their child’s respiratory rates, heart rates, oxygen saturation and chest X rays as I have learned.

On the plus side, however, I now can write about hospital stays with some authority. I know that’s going to come in handy.

It really stinks in here. Stinks, I mean, like sewage. I thought it was diapers at first. But no, it’s not. I think we have a plumbing problem in the building.

I’ve spent this time doing what may be the last edits on my novel, The Beggars’ Queen. (It’s up to my editor.) My husband rolls his eyes when I tell him I’m “done,” because he knows better by now. This novel began as a pretty silly fantasy written in high school. I always called it a “story,” and I was very self-conscious about it. I still am, truth be told. But over the years it has grown into a very involved, complex plot with many subplots. And now that someone else has deemed it worthy of reading, I’m growing more confident.

I started a new book a couple of months ago, and after 5 chapters I ground unceremoniously to a halt. It took a couple of weeks before I realized why. I hit a scene involving a character I don’t like. With The Beggars’ Queen, I finally learned to understand all my characters—even the villains—and that allowed me to enjoy writing about them as well as my protagonists. With this new work, I don’t know the secondary characters yet.

Since I no longer have the luxury of spending 15 years writing a book, I have to do some character study before I get back to writing. But then, I’m a little preoccupied at present.

So...

All of the leads on all of my daughter’s monitors—heart, respiration and oxygen saturation—have ceased to function in the last hour. An hour, mind you. And the nurse hasn’t come in yet. Now I would like to know…why do we bother having the blasted cords hanging off her if the staff doesn’t care when they stop functioning?

Of RSV, VSD and UMC

2007-03-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Do you ever feel like you are crisis-hopping?

Since Julianna was born, that’s all we’ve been doing. We kept thinking things would settle down once we got home from the hospital, once we got past the specialists’ visits, once Alex got used to sharing the spotlight.

But around the first of March Alex came down with bronchitis. We groaned and hobbled our way through four horrific nights of wheezing, crying and waking every hour (plus the two night nursings), and thought OK, this is it, we’ve hit the worst, it’ll get better now. But then he woke up better one morning—well, with a horrible cold instead of a wheeze—and Christian and I promptly succumbed to the bad cold.

And then, last Wednesday, Julianna started coughing. We went to the doctor, who said it’s a virus, and it may get worse before it gets better, just keep pumping to keep your milk supply up and let her rest, yada yada.

That worked until Sunday morning, when we landed in the hospital at UMC with a positive blood test for RSV. First we thought it was just for observation overnight…she has a VSD (a hole between the lower chambers of her heart), and so they didn’t want her heart to be strained by the breathing issues.

Her oxygen was good, and she nursed well till midnight, when she was too tired to nurse. At 2:08a.m. she woke me up coughing and wailing, and the nurses descended. She had a 103 fever. Then it was IV and catheter and blood draws and arguments between Pediatrics and Family Practice about whether she needed a spinal tap, and I thought, oh Lordy, it just can’t get any worse.

But it did. At 7 a.m. they woke me up and said we were going to the ICU. “Step-down” status only, they assured me, just in case. And they sent me home to rest.

No sooner had I gotten home than the phone rang, and it was a ventilator and a feeding tube. Oh God, it just can’t get any worse.

Christian left work and took up residence in the ICU, so I stayed home with Alex. Along about 2 in the afternoon the army of medics told Christian that she was going to be in the hospital for perhaps as long as three weeks. It was the last straw. Surely, surely there was nowhere to go but up!

Then, last night, I got a sinus infection.
****************
Last Saturday afternoon I had reached the point where I was refusing to ask God for help. I was sending some pretty vitriolic thoughts Heaven-ward, let me tell you. “Every time I ask you for help, you sick bastard, you send me something ELSE to deal with! Fine! I’m not going to talk to you anymore, then!”

At urgent care on the way to the hospital, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe it’s not God who keeps sending more and more for us to deal with. Maybe it’s the Devil instead. At any rate, a person of faith can’t keep screaming at God for too long. It shakes the whole foundation of what keeps you going.

And today (Tuesday) the news is better at last. Chest X ray looks “better,” they are steadily weaning her off the oxygen and the ventilator, and she’s holding her own.

And maybe…just maybe…when this is all over, and our beautiful baby girl is back at home where her brother can love on her (and lay on her, and bounce her till I cringe, and run toy trucks up and down her body)….just maybe, things will settle down at last.

Where to begin?

2007-03-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

I’m five weeks postpartum, and I’m wearing my own jeans.

There, that’s a good crow to begin my blog. I’ve been procrastinating for weeks, simply because I couldn’t think how to begin.

So I might as well begin by introducing myself…we are, after all, the product of our many influences. I hail from a little town called Moberly, Missouri, where I grew up on one of the few family farms that survived the 1980s. There were 4 girls and one bathroom. (My poor dad.) My dad is still a farmer, and my mom has now entered the political realm.

I’m a Virgo, not that I put much stock in that sort of thing.

I am the proud mother of a 22-month old boy named Alex who is absolutely perfect (except of course when he’s not), and the mother of a 5-week old little girl named Julianna, who is perfect in a whole different way, being a child with Down Syndrome. And no, we had no idea before she was born. It makes for a different birth experience than you dreamed of.

Christian and I have been married for 7 years. We met in a music group at the Catholic Student Center at the University of Missouri, and now we lead a contemporary music group across town. I write music (check out World Library Publications and GIA Publications...eventually--they're still in process) and I write fiction and nonfiction. (Check out www.thewildrosepress.com --also in process.)

I am passionate about music, good food, reading, writing, true Christianity (as opposed to pious platitudes), children, family and friends...to name a few. And I have opinions on everything else.

But I don't have a lot of time to write them.

That's probably plenty for now, since I don't imagine anyone else finds me quite as interesting as I find myself. :) So join me next time while I pull out one of my passions--food!