Friday, February 17, 2006

The Weather Pixie...

I am having a lazy day. So far I have only rearranged the dining room so as to be able to fit in a play pen for Elsa and the rest of my time has been largely spent focussing on Emma who is really not feeling well, so her ability to cope with even small stresses is next to nil. She is most happy when sitting on my lap as I read through the various blogs up for vote on Catholic Blog Awards.

Well, on The Cafeteria is Closed blog I found the little weather Pixie. I decided to add two of them to my blog, and if allowed maybe three. One for North Carolina's weather, one for Argentina and another for Canada's weather. I chose the lady with the cat for NC because of my love for cats... when I chose her it was almost 20 Celcius here in NC and she was dressed in a knee length dress. What I did not realize was that as the temperature climbs - so does the dress... Ahem. I am hoping the dress does not climb up much further, or I will either have to drop the Pixies altogether or switch to a guy pixie and hope they keep their clothes on!

Two days ago I made another discovery - this was a kind of 'DUH' discovery! How could I have not realized this sooner but EWTN TV can be viewed LIVE through the internet. This is one of few lamments I had about giving up cable, losing access to EWTN TV. (More about that later!)
Recently my husband made the comment about how polically savy we are and wouldn't be good if we were just as savy in our faithlife. He was not referring to knowledge of the faith but to our actual spiritual well being.

Of course, the main reason we are so politicaly astute is talk radio. (Namely Rush Limbaugh, but also Tony Snow, a fellow Catholic.) This lead me to try and see if we could maybe download some of the audio files on EWTN so that we could listen to them on road trips when we make especial use of talk radio. Tada! There it was - EWTN live TV, the daily Mass, the Divine Chaplet at three and also the cute cartoons my kids used to enjoy in the afternoons at the old house.

This afternoon as I sat with Emma searching the internet I had EWTN on in the background and On the Rock was playing. I had the window shrunk and was only listening. The host of this show was interviewing a wheelchair athlete who had no hands and no feet. My 19 year old wanted to see this athlete so I opened the window. We sat watching as they closed the program with an artist whose music I had never heard before. It was Tony Melendez who is also missing two limbs. His arms. Yet he plays the guitar - beautifully. His love for God as expressed through his music left a lump in my throat. You should check him out and if you haven't checked out the live TV and Radio live stream on the internet and do not have access to EWTN through your local cable - you should check that out too!

Now back to my sick chillies. Poor babies! Read more!

Ungrateful Children....

The past month, in the name of economy, I have been baking. Many a morning, of late, my children have risen to fresh out of the oven biscuits or muffins baked the afternoon before. Homemade bread either from the oven or piping hot from the bread makers has been teasing their noses. Okay, some mornings it’s been peanut butter cookies with an apple but what’s the difference between that and toast with peanut butter, I ask?

Despite two bread machine 2 lb loaves of raison bread however, yesterday’s pickings were rather slim, as I had been once more gobbled up by the business and my baking ingredients had begun to wane drastically. Sadly - I had to face facts. A grocery trip was in order. I detest buying groceries. But sacrifices must be made in this world so I grabbed a pencil and set to work making my list. On my menu plan, I scratched out cream of carrot and potato soup and replaced it with roast beef sandwiches as I knew I would have little energy left to make dinner from scratch after my marathon grocery spree.

When I left the sun was still shining, but by the time I returned lugging a van full of groceries in with me – the birds had gone to bed and the warm air had just a tinge of chill in it. As the children hurried to help me haul in the goods I heard one child yell; “Sweet!”

My ears picked up. Had he discovered the raisons I had purchased for more yummy bread? Or maybe the maple syrup for the yams we would have this Sunday with our ham dinner? What had elicited such an excited reaction?

CEREAL guys – Mummy bought Cheerios!” To which arose resounding cheers!

Ungrateful wretches!

Read more!