Psychedelic Angels, Pie, and Rain

 

1.) Michaelmas 

I feel slightly Catholic hipster admitting it, but the Feast of the Archangels is one we celebrate as a family. 

Of course, we're not one of those super-cool homeschooling families. So any family festivities that involve all the kids have to happen when Little Boy and Chris are home from school. 

I settled on doing a nice meal (roast chicken, roast veggies, blackberry pie) and I pulled out a canvas from my stash and Little Girl and I started an art project on something from my canvas stash that involved collage, paint, feathers, and glitter that Little Boy helped finish when he got home. 

Have I told y'all about my canvas stash? Something I like to do is to scan thrift stores for those "tipsy canvas" projects that people do at their cousin's bachelorette party, bring home, realize they have no place to put, then dump at the thrift store. I buy them for $1 or so apiece, paint over the "art", and then use them for projects. 

They're technically "used", but it usually works for what I want to do. 

So, anyway, that's how we ended up with this EXTREMELY psychedelic angel Gabriel. I figure he looks as close to how an angel looks as any other artistic depiction. He's hanging up in the kid's room. 

And the pie had little pastry angels on it made with a small gingerbread man and a large snowflake cookie cutter. The snowflake made pretty decent wings. 

2.) Finished Frills (So very Frilly) 

I finally finished this pinafore/apron thing for Little Girl's birthday. 

I'm actually quite proud of it. I'm a lousy seamstress; I'm not used to having something this complex actually turn out well. 

3.) A Conundrum 

So. I've started shopping for Christmas/St. Nick's day presents already (Christmas is always an ordeal that involves planning months in advance. Some of my friends think I'm crazy, but hey...keeps me busy).

I'd really like to get the kids another book of saints. We have this one, which I love (some of the art is a little strange, but the stories are so beautifully written), but the kids have never really shown an interest in. I'd like to get another one that maybe they'll actually like to look at on their own. 

Here's the problem though; I'm not sure which one to get. I've narrowed it down to two that have pretty art and seem to have good writing (both are pretty important to me; I've seen way too many saccharine, pasty white, wan saints doing the pious eye roll in my lifetime, and I attribute at least some of the stifling scruples I started experiencing as a child to a poorly written story about St Therese), but they're very different books. 

The first one is Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints written by Ethel Pochocki and illustrated by Ben Hatke. 

The story excerpts on Amazon look wonderful, and Ben Hatke is one of my top ten favorite artists. It's centered on the liturgical year, which is something I've been trying to implement at home without making it weird, and includes St. Joseph (which, guys, do you have any idea how hard it is to find decent stuff on St. Joseph for kids?!) who's a patron of our family and I want our kids to get to know, especially my son. 

The second one is Saints Around the World by Meg Hunter Kilmer, illustrated by Lindsey Sanders.  This is one I've seen proclaimed from the rooftops around Catholic social media as absolutely wonderful and worthy of exultation. 

Looking at it on Amazon...yeah, it looks pretty flipping good. Meg Hunter-Kilmer is someone I've read and I like her work, and I really like that she's found good little-known and not stereotypically European saints to talk about. I also LOVE the fact that St. Mary Mackillop is included-- she's one of my all time heroes (excommunicated briefly as retribution for whistleblowing on a priest who was sexually abusing kids: we need this woman's intercession desperately right now). 

So those are the two I'm stuck between. Maybe I'll bite the bullet and get both, but that's a pretty hefty chunk of the gift budget (we save up a budget item all year for Christmas and birthdays). 

We'll see. 

4.) To Chickens We have Wasted 

So you remember that chicken we cooked for Michaelmas? 

We ate half of it, then noticed parts of it looked undercooked, so we popped the rest of the meat in the microwave to make sure it was cooked before we put it away. 

I found it nearly 24 hours later, still in the microwave. 

This is causing my frugal self nearly undescribable pain and mortification. I ask for your support during this difficult time. 

The dog got a heck of a dinner last night though. 

5.) Old School Surgery 

I found this channel on YouTube that talks about life in the 18th century in the United States. The guy who runs it visited the first surgical hospital in the United States, in St. Augustine FL, made a video, and it's fascinating. 

There's a fairly high squeam factor, because surgery in the 18th century. But there's some really cool facts like...

-Spanish medicine was heavily influenced by Muslim medicine thanks to their invasion by the Moors. Because of the Muslim requirements for hygiene, the original doctors kept their instruments and facilities scrupulously clean, and their Catholic professional descendents kept it up. This killed germs, which meant good recovery rates (on par with modern surgical wards!), despite the fact that they didn't know germs existed. 

- the hospital was named for Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

-They burned lavender to disperse "miasmas", and it actually did something to keep the place clean. 

The link is here. If you've got even a passing interest in this stuff, it's worth watching. 

6.) Rain, rain, rain 

It's raining. 

A lot. And I have both big kids home today because something, something, teacher work day, something. 

The upside is that Chris got to go into work late this morning (because something, something, rainy weather, teacher work day, something) so we got to go get breakfast tacos as a family. 

Silver linings. 

7.) Womanly Suspense. 

So, you know that thing some couples do during post partum NFP where they think, "oh, these cycles last forever", they "cheat" on the the protocol and then the wife ovulates the next day?

Yeah. 

My period started today, and I've never been more relieved to be crampy. 

SUDDEN MUTUAL ATTRACTION IS A FERTILE SIGN. One of these days, maybe I'll actually remember that. 🤦🤦

See the rest of this week's takes here.