Sunday Smorgasbord

Well, since I missed quick takes this week I thought I would dust off an old habit and do a Sunday Smorgasbord. It seems that things are finally beginning to settle into place around here, so my posting should return back to normal this week. I hope.

We have a prayer routine that we go through at bedtime. I give the children my family’s traditional bedtime blessing, we say a prayer to their guardian angels, an Our Father, a Hail Mary, the prayer to St. Michael, and then we ask all of our patron saints for their prayers. It’s a nice little routine and I always enjoy hearing Sienna’s voice join with the Ogre’s and mine. But on the first night we arrived in Texas, things were a bit confused at bedtime and Sienna ended up saying most of the Our Father by herself. It was only then that we realized how very similar she is to her father, because instead of saying “deliver us from evil,” Sienna has been saying, “deliver us from people.”

Thanks for all of your suggestions for names! Janet was nearly the winner of a free pair of earrings, since we initially decided to call our business “Amata.” But then we googled “Amata jewelry” and found another hand-made jewelry business already named Amata. Blast. So it came down to Metal + Moxie or Mezza Luce.

In the end, Mezza Luce won the day. (That’s pronounced metza loochay, for all you non-Italians out there) It means half-light in Italian. The phrase half-light has a special meaning to the Ogre and I. When we were dating, he used Yeats’ poem “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” to express how he felt about me. He wrote it out for me and then wrote me a note underneath, and let me tell you, I melted. It was on Easter Sunday, the first holiday we had spent together, and I was standing in his mother’s kitchen, reading this achingly lovely poem and then the tender note written underneath, and my knees went weak. That wasn’t the first time that I had thought “he’s the one,” but it was certainly one of the times I knew for sure. The Ogre later used part of the poem when he proposed to me, in the most romantic way, but I’ll save that story for another day. Perhaps when Betty Beguiles asks for engagement stories.

Anyway, we’ve both always loved a particular line in that poem, “of night and light and the half-light,” so naturally when I asked him for ideas he said, “Half-Light Creations.” I wanted to drop the “creations” and then since I’m an Italiophile (is that a word? Like the Italian answer to a Francophile?) I naturally translated it into Italian. I just love the result. I love the way it sounds, love the way it looks, love everything about it. It has the pop, the pizazz, and the hint of elegance and refinement about it that I was looking for. What do you guys think?

I got to see my little niece and her parents for the first time since we moved back today. She was sick when we first got here, and then we were sick, and it was just a big mess, but today we met them at Mass and then had breakfast at their house afterward. She is just the most precious thing in the world. She’s my only niece, so she holds a very, very special place in my heart. But aside from that, she is just the most tiny, delicate, adorable little creature ever born. Wanna see a picture?

Don’t you just want to squeeze her?

And yet, for all her petiteness, she is still so much like her father, who is as tough as tough can be. Seriously, my  brother-in-law is not someone to be messed with, and little Evie definitely got his fighting  spirit. Which just makes me love her all the more.

It’s days like  today when I realize just how truly glad I am to be back here. Evie and my nephews, William and Louie, barely know me, and they barely know their cousins. I am so looking forward to getting to spend long, uninterrupted summer days with them, without the threat of impending separation looming.

Speaking of being back and spending time with family, tomorrow night the Ogre and I are getting together with all his siblings, their wives, and some friends for a poker game. We used to play poker every Saturday night, all the three brothers and their girlfriends and the Ogre’s sister, and we continued the tradition until Sienna was born, when family life sort of killed our late nights and long poker games. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t played a poker game with everyone since I was pregnant! It’s going to be awesome.

I’m the worst poker player ever, by the way. I like to call everything, which drives my brother-in-law (the tough one) crazy, but I also usually have really good luck, which makes him even more angry, since by all the rules of logic and poker I should lose miserably and yet sometimes I win inexplicably. But I also get tired of thinking during poker and just do stupid things.

Poker is a hard game. Seriously. I have a hard time even remembering what hands win, much less adding up odds. But true to form, the Ogre will spend hours tonight looking up odds and then he’ll spend long, long minutes deliberating tomorrow night before making even the slightest decision, during which I will drink many a glass of wine to escape boredom and then forget the rules, making it necessary for him to explain them to me every time it’s my turn. True story. Happens every time we play poker.

One time I played Scrabble with him. Big mistake. It took him two hours to put together two measly words, during which time I drank an entire bottle of wine, so when it was finally my second turn (after my stellar first word, “word”) I couldn’t see well enough to read my letters, so I went to bed.

We never played Scrabble again.

Well, my children are running amok and dinner is calling me with it’s un-made-ness, so I’ll go now. But unless something disastrous happens, I’ll be back tomorrow. Yay for regular blogging! I’ve missed you guys.