Rosie is finishing up her third grade lessons. She is looking forward to a few weeks off in the summer. We homeschool year round, but she’s made such progress this year, I promised her all of July as a holiday if she’ll only be good through June. She is most looking forward to being free of the math book, which is sad because she’s quite good at math. But she finds this particular curriculum extremely tiresome and not very easy... Read more
It’s finally after Mother’s Day– in Ohio that means the chance of frost is gone. The lettuce and kale that survived last winter’s snow is bolting. It’s time to get out there and garden. I love gardening so much; it’s great for my mental health and it’s good exercise. I feel so proud and helpful when I can bring a bag of bush beans or lettuce to the Friendship Room to share. My idea of a perfect home would have... Read more
I used to mentor a child, through a program in the town I grew up in. This all happened well over a decade ago. I’m fudging identifying details to avoid betraying anything said in confidence, but the story is true. I mentored a little boy whose name wasn’t Isaiah, but let’s say it was. Isaiah was supposed to have been assigned a male mentor, but there were hardly any young men in the mentoring program, so he got me.... Read more
There was a stone in my pocket. I kept forgetting it was there. Several weeks ago now, when Rosie and I went grocery shopping, I found one of those hand-painted rocks that some people scatter around for an art project as if that isn’t littering. This one was stuffed in the fencing around the old DiGregory’s Nursery; I found it because it was right next to my usual parking spot at the end of the grocery store lot. The... Read more
Today I was in a mood. Nothing was going right. I have been a bit fatigued and tending toward a fibromyalgia flare since my Moderna shot last Thursday, and that made me nervous– for some mysterious reason I haven’t had a bad fibromyalgia flare since about last February, and I want to keep that streak going. I was also nervous about the situation with the neighbor and the restraining order. The neighbor has gone from hiding quietly for a few... Read more
I think it all started when Mr. J. D. Flynn of The Pillar expressed the desire to get together with friends for breakfast and talk about Christ once a month. He tweeted this, worded rather unfortunately, and was pounced on by Traditionalist accounts with fancy crosses instead of profile pictures. They teased him. Someone called Brother Martin Navarro said “Women do breakfast. Men do cigars,” with that perpetual Trad implication that every activity has a gender, and the female activities are... Read more
Rosie came with me to run errands. We run errands in a car now. For the first nine and a half years of her life, she was bundled onto the bus, but we’ve had a car for six weeks. I am getting used to driving. “Can we try to go through the bank drive thru?” Rosie asked. I’d been nervous about driving through because maneuverability was the reason I failed the driving test the first time. I still tend... Read more
It hasn’t been a very good twenty-four hours. Our menacing neighbor has been harassing us again– letting her enormous barking German Shepherd out to urinate on our lawn when Rosie comes out to play in her sandbox, then screaming curses and imprecations at us when we look up at the dog. She’s been calling Rosie and me four-letter euphemisms for a prostitute and luridly speculating aloud about what kind of services we provide. She’s pasted obscene messages to... Read more
I must admit I had about two weeks feeling exceptionally shaky since the Father Morrier indictment last month. I am very far from the epicenter of most of the abuse that went on at that school– I was only spiritually and emotionally abused by the Charismatic Renewal and Franciscan University. I didn’t suffer half of what many have suffered. Still, being stuck out here, so close to where so many dreadful things happened, estranged from most of my family because... Read more
I don’t know exactly how the kerfuffle started on Catholic Twitter. I think someone had an innocent question about vocations. And then multiple priests were informing people that the best and highest vocation is objectively the Roman Catholic priesthood. Nothing else held a candle to that. The rest of us were all right, but they were best of all. Other Catholics objected to this. The debate went on for some time. I sometimes wonder how nasty God would have to be,... Read more
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