Where the Moose Go

The moose have been hungry in Alaska this winter.  This doesn't have much to do with anything that follows in this post, but it does give me a chance to post this photo of my Mom's cute window hanger (and the moose-hungry-making winter landscape behind it) and also, when else am I ever going to get a chance to write a line like that with credibility?

 I am thinking of opening a novel with the line, though, "The moose were hungry that winter...."   Now I have a head start for next November's novel writing! 

Ever since the New Year I have been trying to figure out my plans for this blog.   In November I started a new blog and though that one hasn't quite hit its natural stride yet, it overlaps so much with this one that I don't really need to keep this one going.   In the past I have managed to keep two or more blogs alive at the same time, but recently I just haven't been keeping up that pace.   I used to think I was addicted, and maybe I was, but nowadays I almost have to make "blog every day" a Lenten resolution! (not quite a penance, because it IS after all something I enjoy and am by no means obligated to do).   Anyway, most of the posts I write on here can just as easily go on the other one. 

So I am thinking that  default posting will be on Take Up and Read.    We have lots of plans for that blog.  It is Catholic in emphasis as a quick look will show, but it is also about literary homeschooling and large family logistics and that sort of thing, and non-Catholics are very welcome.    Chari and I are both converts with many non-Catholic friends and family members.

As for the moose, I feel sort of sorry for them.   I see them lope past outside quite often.   I heard from Mom's neighbor that the deep snow really tires them out and also makes it hard for them to find food, so they have been gravitating towards roads and railroad tracks because it is easier to walk there.  But of course, that isn't a great survival strategy.    Come to think of it, that is a good Lenten parable.... I too often gravitate towards the wide easy road where engines of destruction can easily sweep me into their path and toss me aside.   

I am not planning to close down this blog -- I like to leave my old posts up so I can link to them in future -- and I may still post randomly when I want to draw attention to something -- but I just wanted you all to know where I had gone and what is going on.

A MOST BLESSED LENT AND EASTER TO YOU ALL!

getting better

Apparently there is an Art of Getting Well!    I am not one of the chronically ill who are described in this book, but I do feel like I have been sick for a long time.  I got ill with a severe cold or possibly flu in the earlier part of October, and now it is late November, and two mornings ago was the first time during that time that I woke up feeling some energy.

I think it had to have been some kind of walking pneumonia.  It wasn't really that bad because I could still sit and write, and if I REALLY had to do something, I could get it done.  But I cut way back on everything during that time.     Perhaps I should have gone to the doctor, but we were traveling so much that it seemed difficult to schedule it in, and I was feeling very resistant to taking antibiotics. 

When I was a child I used to love the day or two after being quite ill, like with a stomach flu or a fever or in adolescence, with severe monthly cramps and nausea.   Everything seemed brand new, like the outdoors when the sun is shining right after a rainstorm.  There seemed to be so many possibilities.  Just feeling no pain was a blessing.   And then added to that, you could actually enjoy the things around you again -- like the difference between surfing and barely keeping your head above water.  Or like Dorothy in the movie when she steps out of her house into Oz.

The same sort of thing happens after you have a baby, I noticed during my childbearing years!    They say it takes six weeks to recover fully, but I usually think I feel better after about two weeks.  I always pretty much tried to do everything as I normally would, and get somewhat irritated at myself when I flake out.  Then a day comes when I actually DO feel better and realize that I was just managing before.   There is no mistaking the difference, but it simply takes time, and though you can will yourself into functioning, you can't will yourself into being better.  

Being sick for over a month, though not much of an ordeal compared to what many suffer chronically or acutely, did give me a preview of what it might be like to have an ongoing health condition.    It was hard not to be able to count on normal resources.   You adjust, but it sometimes feels like you are living in a different body.  

This Sunday, though I still didn't move around much, I actually spent planning and putting things together, and I've started a notebook for listing household and holiday things to get done.   Even though I do a lot of planning on the computer I still seem to need paper to actually write down the tasks as I go along through the day.  And not only that, but I could focus on my husband and kids' conversations, which I was not doing very well before.  SUCH a difference.

Then on Monday I actually cleaned the house!  And got the kids helping too! 

While I was on a roll on Sunday, I listed a bunch of Advent resources over at Top Meadow Study Center,  and wrote a pre-planning post over at Take Up and Read.     I'm going to actually try to work some of them.    I am finally starting to understand Pinterest a little and it is actually not so overwhelming as it was at first.    It seems you have to kind of adjust your brain and eyes a certain way in order to get something out of it besides confusion, but if you can make the switch, it's rewarding.


My daughter is coming home for Thanksgiving, but my older sons aren't going to be able to make it.  That is a first, and sad!  But it is so close to Christmas that I can live with it.


I have a few prayer intentions I could use prayers for, though they concern other people and will have to stay private for that reason.  

Also, Matt Wise who is in the ICU still could really use prayers to turn a corner.   Some things are improving, but other things are not looking good.     If you have anything difficult going on during this season maybe you will feel called to offer some of it up for him and his family as well as this little premie whose mom I last saw as a teen (she's a little older than that now but not much).

Time and Temperature

A childhood friend of my husband's gave us this clock for a wedding present, and it quietly measured the time, the temperature, and the barometric pressure of our environment for just about a quarter of a century. All it required in return was the energy derived from a single AA battery, replaced about once a year. It was one of our handsomest, most discreet, and most faithful household servants, as well as being simple and useful. It was limited, of course, but served in an exemplary fashion within its limits.

I am typing this out on the IPhone I got during one of our several travels this summer. This is a very different kind of household servant! It is a sort of factotum. It can do almost everything but mix a post-hangover elixir as Jeeves did upon first meeting with Wooster. Who knows, maybe it can do that too -- I haven't actually searched, since I'm not generally afflicted with hangovers.

From here, this post could go in all sorts of directions, and some of them I have been thinking through as I woke up this morning, but none of them were very closely connected to what I started off to say, which was something more like "tempus fugit.". It really does, doesn't it? New things replace the old; but replace isn't quite the word, because the new things fill new spaces. My iPhone can tell time and even tell me barometric pressure, though it operates from second-hand information and is thus not as accurate. And it doesn't fill the blank on the wall, but it's more portable.

In my home, I have three children now, which reminds me of 20 years ago. But they are not the same 3 children, and I have 4 children grown and in various situations out in the world, which is different. Indeed, time flies; Heraclitus says that when you step back into a river, it is no longer the same river. Yet it is, in a way, or you couldn't call it by the same name.

I suppose I will stop there. If this sounds a little bit rambling, you can put it down to experimenting in micro-blogging (it's hard to type on a tiny virtual platform) and to my feelings that this has been a very unusual summer. After all, six months ago seven children were basically at home and now only three are! This is time- lapse life, like the river suddenly doubled in speed, and it didn't help that we had such a strange, abbreviated summer here in the Sierras. (I am hoping for a long, warm, glorious, friendly fall).