Lenten is Come

I've never been one for moderation.

In almost every area of my life, I tend to go for the extreme measure.  I try extreme diets, extreme makeovers.  My first flight was to Russia.  Not somewhere close to home, but Russia, half way across the world (a country also given to extremes, come to think).  I never dated casually--I was always all in from the start.  I make big plans, and then crash spectacularly when they fail. I am often at odds with myself.

I joined the Orthodox Church, which was extreme at the time, given my upbringing.  And the Orthodox Church, it must be said, has many extreme elements--big liturgy, hard core fasting, and big time feasting.  We have big vestments, high hats for clergy, big soaring choirs, and intensely long services.  We also have small intimate services with a group of chanters and candlelight.

Great Lent is one of those times of extremis.  Much is expected of us during Lent.  We are to fast more strictly and for longer than any other time of the year.  We attend many extra services, and try to limit our social engagements during this season.  Lent requires a pretty extreme effort in order to truly enter into it and thus be prepared for the Resurrection of Christ on Pascha morning.  As a person who loves extremes, Lent is always an interesting time for me.  I tend to swing around wildly--first committing to extreme fasting (or not), and then failing, then trying to recommit (and usually failing that too).  I try to cut out the white noise, and don't usually succeed there either.  When I was single, it was easier.  Even when I was married without children, it was easier.  With three small children underfoot, one of whom has chronic health issues, it is hard to tone down the noise in my head (and in my house).  I don't feel very well myself these days, and as I sit on the eve of Great Lent, having stayed home from church for illness for the umpteenth time since E was born, I am thinking more about moderation.

I want this Lent to be something for me, mostly because I feel so utterly deflated inside.  I am all done in, as the British say.  I don't remember what normal feels like, and desperately want to recover it.  My first thoughts about what this Lent should be for me were, as usual, extreme.  I've read a few articles about total fasting in the last few days, and to not eat for several weeks seems appealing and appalling at the same time.  What if I could really kick the demon of gluttony once and for all?  What if I could make my pain go away?  I know that one day of fasting for a medical procedure was incredibly difficult; how on earth can I contemplate a week or more of such lunacy?  I still need to parent my children, and to be strong enough to carry them around.  I need to have calcium so that the stress fracture in my foot will heal properly and in good time.  How can I think of this?  I know it is extreme, and I know I can't think of this.  I need to put it out of my head and remember: moderation.  It is also tempting to throw my hands in the air and to just forget the whole thing.  I'm unwell, my food allergies are still in a fairly extreme state, I'm still fighting for a full postpartum recovery, and maybe this isn't the year to attempt anything this season.  But again, I have to remind myself: moderation.  Instead of contemplating extreme measures, which are sure to fail, given my mental and physical state right now, small measures would be a better step in the right direction.

So my resolution for this Lent?  Small measures.  Instead of making big plans, and then flaming out in a big way, I am going to take baby steps.  Maybe I'll fail, but at least with small steps, I don't have far to fall, but I  don't have far to get back up again either.  Perhaps by the time Pascha arrives this year, I can look back on these 46 days and say, I have fought the good fight, and I am winning the race, one small step at a time.  And if not, I can take small steps to pick myself back up and keep on walking.

7 Quick Takes: Cheesefare Edition

--1--

For my Western Catholic readers, happy Lent!  For the rest of us Orthodox on the Old Calendar, happy Cheesefare week!  This is the week of bidding farewell to dairy products.  (We bid adieu to meat last week).  Russians call this week maslenitsa, or literally, Butter Week.  They eat loads of blini (crepes) this week, and try to use up all the dairy in the larder before Monday.  We now have a few traditional Cheesefare Week meals, including cheese pancakes with sour cream and jam.  I'm having a little trouble running down the farmer's cheese necessary for the dish (darn Soviet style grocery shopping!), but I'm determined to persevere, even if it means driving to New Jersey for it!!

--2--

The Great Fast starts on Monday, and with it, a new cooking adventure.  This year, I can eat soy again, so my vegan recipe index is bigger than in the past few years, but I still have to eat legumes on a rotation basis, so we'll see how things shake out.  I'm doing a fish food challenge on March 9, so perhaps we'll be able to rotate in some tuna and salmon for Aunnciation.  

--3--

One other food related item, which is, we recently discovered that my boys LOVE Caesar salad.  I mean, love it to distraction.  I've been buying these family-size salad kits (from Dole) and the boys between them can put away most of two bags.  TWO!!  Crazy.  I'm sort of dreading the teenage years, given how they eat now.

--4--

I definitely have a stress fracture, and I definitely need to wear the boot for 6-8 weeks, which officially makes me feel like Job.  Let's pile on a little more, shall we?  I guess it is appropriate for the season.  

--5--

On that note, my husband pestered me into going to the doctor yesterday since I've been coughing up my lungs for several weeks now, and it turns out I was only a day or two away from pneumonia.  Lovely.  The doctor took one look at me in my boot, with Birdie strapped to me and asked me if I wanted happy pills in addition to the antibiotic.  

--6--

I'm still plugging away at paper flower projects for Spring Fling, but alas, I have nothing new to show you (or at least, I've not had time to photograph any projects), so I'll show you this little guy instead.  I love the gnome set in the current Mini catalog, and I especially love the sentiments that go with it.  Does it get any better than "hangin' with my gnomies?"  I think not.

--7--

On Sunday, we were driving to church, and about 4 miles down the road, there was a CLUNK, followed by an ominous scraping noise.  My husband pulled over to inspect, and sure enough, the bracket holding the muffler had dropped off, and the muffler was dragging on the ground.  He got out a bungee cord, tied up the muffler, and off we went.  We got to our exit, and another CLUNK followed by scraping noises followed us.  My husband pulled over again (right on the exit ramp, lovely), and the bungee cord had melted.  He found some rope, jury-rigged the muffler up, but since it was so hot, couldn't get it very tight, so we scraped over every speed bump to church (and there are a lot in that part of New Jersey, let me tell you).  After we got going again, Harry piped in from the back seat:

Twinkle, twinkle, 

Chocolate bar,

My dad drives a rusty car.

Pull the starter, push the choke,

Off we go in a cloud of smoke.

Twinkle, twinkle

Chocolate bar,

My dad drives a rusty car.

We about died.

Go see Jen for more Quick Takes!

7 Quick Takes: Snarky Edition

--1--

I'm almost at the end of a VERY long week of solo parenting, and I'm feeling pretty snarky, so consider yourself warned.  

--2--

I knew my husband had a trip planned starting Wednesday, so I was mentally girding my loins for a three day solo parenting gig starting Wednesday.  At breakfast on Tuesday morning (Valentine's Day), my husband mentioned something in passing about his co-author from New York coming in for a book symposium.  I said, "What book symposium?" My husband suddenly looked both sheepish and guilty at the same time and said, "Oh, um, did I forget to tell you about that?  I have my book symposium tonight with a dinner."  No, you didn't tell me.  So I had a sad sack dinner of hot dogs with the boys.  At least there was candy from Piglet's school celebrations at the end of it.  (Because my husband doesn't believe in giving me chocolate for Valentine's Day.  Oh well.  He does other nice things throughout the year).  

--3--

My copy of Breaking Dawn arrived on Monday, and that just made everything better on Tuesday night.  Yay for amazon.com preorder!!

--4--

I finally went to see a podiatrist yesterday about my foot, and she said that it was a strange place for a stress fracture, as most stress fractures tend to occur closer to the toes, and ordered and MRI.  Oh, and she put me in a boot.  Did I mention that I have three children under age five and about fifty thousand stairs in my house?  After nearly killing myself on the stairs last night, I decided I won't be wearing the boot in the house, just when I go out.  My foot hurts almost as much or more in it anyway. I had the MRI this morning, and the tech couldn't see anything amiss, but I'm hoping the doctors will be able to figure something out. 

--5--

Birdie got pink eye this week, just as Boo was getting over his. It doesn't seem to bother her as much as Boo, who required regular Tylenol on top of the eye drops.  But she did have a scare scare last Friday night requiring oral steroids, nebulized steroids and a narrowly avoided hospital stay, although now she seems to be back to baseline.  Which is to say, she sounds terrible, but at least she isn't coughing/crying constantly and projectile vomiting.  Now she just coughs every couple of hours and has normal amounts of spit up.  We have appointments with GI and pulmonary next week, so I'm hoping someone can figure something out.  

--6--

I've been plugging away at the flower projects for Spring Fling and made this hydrangea card one afternoon earlier this week.  I used a tutorial from Valita's Fresh Folds for the flowers, but I made up my own card design for the rest.  I'm pretty pleased with how it came out!  (Apologies for the less than stellar photo--I just didn't have it in me to set up my whole light box thingie today).

--7--

I'm sure everyone who is on Facebook has seem some version of the meme with six pictures that say "What my friends think, what my mom thinks, what I think," and so on.  The best one I've seen so far is this one, posted by a friend who lives near Fargo.  As my dad's family is from Fargo, and I used to live in Minneapolis, I personally found it hilarious.  But maybe my sense of humor is warped.  But you knew that already.

Go see Hallie for more quick takes!

7 Quick Takes: Paper Roses

--1--

My post today is rather late because I had to get up extremely early this morning to catch a 6 a.m. Bolt Bus to New York City for a food challenge at my allergist's office.  Today we challenged soy, and I'm happy to report that I passed!  So I can have soy in all forms now, no restrictions.  Hello Chinese food!!  (And just in time for Great Lent...)

--2--

Piglet had surgery on Tuesday to have his adenoids out and ear tubes placed and everything went very well.  He was a real trooper, and the surgi-center was incredibly efficient and kind.  I was totally impressed.  Piglet was a little out of it the rest of the day, but woke up Wednesday morning and declared, "I feel very well and I want to go to school," so we decided he could go.  

--3--

Wednesday went fine for him, but unfortunately, he woke up at about 4:00 a.m. on Thursday morning crying in pain.  We gave him Tylenol, but he kept complaining that his knee hurt so bad, and couldn't walk on it.  I kept him home yesterday, and took him to the doctor in the late afternoon as she was concerned about a possible bacterial infection.  She decided that the pain was not emergent, but that we needed to keep an eye on it.  He is still limping a bit, but not complaining of pain any longer, and went to school today, so perhaps it is just a strange little virus in the fluid around the knee.

--4--

Boo has pink eye and has been even more miserable than usual this week.  We got the eye drops and his eyes look a ton better, but his disposition still leaves a lot to be desired.

--5--

I've been making paper roses like a mad fool this week (well, in between tending to sick little people)--I'm supposed to demonstrate how to make them at our next Philly Inker meeting on Monday.  I'm also doing a 3-D paper flower demonstration at our Spring Fling in March, so the roses will be part of my display.  I'm still working on the finished product, but these are a few of the roses I made this week.  I had fantasies of offering a paper flower line in my etsy store, sort of on the order of wedding floral arrangements, but after making so many roses this week, I may rethink that strategy.  They are not that time consuming in the abstract, but they are a little fiddly to put together in mass quantity.

--6--

I took all three kids with me to Whole Paycheck, erm, Whole Foods yesterday to pick up a few things.  I took our double Maclaren, and since Piglet couldn't walk, I put him and Birdie in the stroller and Boo on my back in the ERGO (which was lovely for the stress fracture in my foot, by the way--my foot is killing me today!).  I got my stuff and was waiting in line with the kids (who were amazingly good for the whole trip), and the woman ahead of me turned around, appraised me and my stroller and said with her eyes wide, "Are they all yours?"  No, I routinuely go to the market with three children under age five not my own.  Ahem.  "Yes, they are all mine."  I shudder to think what people will say when there are four or five of them.

--7--

I have been looking for a pair of light brown sweater-type stockings and finally found a pair of extra-long thigh highs.  (I hate regular thigh highs because they usually end up like weird knee socks on me, even though my legs are short and stumpy).  They arrived earlier this week and I wore them on Tuesday.  Piglet was watching me put them on in the morning and as I unfurled them to put them on, his eyes got very big and he stage-whispered, "Biggg socks."  Ha!  (And for other kid-funnies, Boo has been informing all and sundry today: "I'm a boy."  So there you go.)

i dig you!

--1--

Since I dedicated last week's post to health stuff, I won't talk about that this week, except to say that we've mostly survived The Siege.

--2--

Today I'm channeling my inner Joan Holloway (minus the bouffant hair and crazy hourglass figure).  So far, the retro fashion make over is going fairly well, although I must confess that it is hard to find the time to set my hair properly.  Lucky for me, my hair is pretty curly (and even more so after a recent cut) and so I can manage a somewhat retro hair-do without a set on many days.  But a roller or pin-curl set looks so nice when I can manage it!!  My look is tending a bit more toward the late 1940s/early 1950s than the WWII era, but that is more a function of needing easy access for breastfeeding right now.  The best part of the whole thing?  My husband loves the look and is so complimentary!  Never hurts the old ego to be stroked a bit.  

--3--

I have a fun new project in mind, thanks to an idea from a bloggy friend, Matushka Anna Crawford.  She challenged her readers to photograph the alphabet in creative ways this month.  I thought it would be a neat idea to make a picture book for the boys with the photos.  I haven't actually started it yet, but when I get my feet back under me, I'm going to tackle it!  I think it would be a great MDS project.

--4--

Yesterday I started making valentines for Piglet's classmates and teachers.  It took me a while to settle on a design, but I'm pretty happy with what I came up with.  Since I have to make 36 of them, I needed a simple design that wasn't very supply-intensive.  Besides, let's face it, they are four, and at that age, you are making the valentines for their moms as much as anything. I also wanted something that would be appropriate for a four-year-old to be giving to other kids his age.  That little dump truck with the "i dig you!" sentiment was just the right thing!

--5--

While I was juggling Birdie (who has started projectile vomiting in the evening, just to keep things interesting), and trying to make the valentines, I started re-watching Grey's Anatomy from the beginning, mostly because I wanted to watch something on the computer that was familiar and easily interrupt-able.  It was kind of fun to see how that show has evolved over the last eight seasons. (And if you are a Grey's hater, don't tell me about it - I know there are plenty of objectionable things about that show, but I still like it).  I nearly gave it up after season six, but have gotten sucked right back in.  Although I've got to say that since they killed off Henry, I'm less interested in keeping up.

--6--

Today is Boo's namesday, so we will have a little celebration at dinner.  I think I'm going to try and figure out a way to make vegan brownies, since that seems to be Boo's favorite dessert lately.  Although he is kind of a cookie monster. 

--7--

And last but not least?  Breaking Dawn Part One DVD hits stores on February 13.  Yippie!!!  I've already preordered mine from amazon.com.  The timing is perfect as my husband will be traveling a lot that week.  Now I can finally catch the funny scene with the Volturi after the credits that I missed in the theatre!!