Preventing Grace
Friday! Thank Heaven! How bout some Takes?
One
It has been weighing on my conscience for a whole week that I have not leapt onto the Internet to announce a critical discovery that I’ve made, that will probably change your life as it has mine. You know how it is though, I’m a busy person. So, Sorry! Please forgive me.
What it is is, you put your two eggs, in their shells mind you, into your electric tea kettle, filled, obviously, with fresh cold water and not the left over water from the last child’s foul, tepid cup of weak cocoa, and turn the kettle on, and go sweep the floor while it’s coming to a boil, and then, when it has fully and completely boiled, you pour off enough boiling water to fill your waiting teapot, but you let the two eggs just continue to sit in the kettle quietly, you know, for however long your heart tells you, maybe a minute or so, or a little longer, and then you fish them out, and essentially what you have are two perfectly soft boiled eggs. And the tea, actually. Which is kind of amazing.
Two
This discovery isn’t mine alone. Alton Brown suggests using a tea kettle to do hard boiled eggs. Indeed, I watched him boil what seemed like hundreds of eggs this way, on his old program, and then never thought of it again. But, in the spirit of beating my body to make it my enemy, I’m trying not to eat any carbs at all for a couple of weeks, which means I Have to eat something in the morning, sob, or by eleven I will give up and eat bread. And then it occurred to me, really like a thunderbolt out of the darkness–I wonder, I thought, if I could only boil two eggs in the kettle, instead of hundreds, and I wonder if I took them out after only a couple of minutes instead of leaving them in for hours, if they would be soft instead of hard boiled? It seemed too crazy to contemplate but I like to live on the edge. So I tried it. And, I mean, It Works Every Time. Unlike literally anything else in my life. I believe this is what is known as a Hack. It’s the first one I’ve ever tried and it has metaphorically Changed My Life.
Three
Incidentally, going carb free is the pits. I hate it. It’s the deep sense of loss that’s most difficult to cope with. Watching everybody lather bagels with butter and jam, walking by the gorgeous Aldi pizza on Friday, eating two eggs every morning instead of a toasted bun–it’s completely awful. Nevertheless, vanity compels me forward.
Four
Speaking of vanity, apparently I am an extremely famous and popular blogger, jumbled into the same sentence as Ann Voskamp, who I trust you have heard of, cough, Jen Hatmaker, Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, and Mama Bear Apologetics. I’m pretty sure there’s been a mistake, a slip of the finger perhaps. For those of you in the Catholic world, it’s like finding out you’re as well known as Et Tu Jen or Simcha or the Darwins. It’s the pinnacle of Internet achievement, I think.
Still, the question of authority in the blogosphere wends its wandering way along. The article is pretty interesting. And after that, you can buy my pastel colored Nailed It t-shirt here–oops, that’s not a t-shirt, that’s just the link to my book. There are no shirts. No mugs. No diaries. No paraphernalia. See, I knew I wasn’t really famous.
Five
I have been continuing to watch Facebook live videos of women opening their fab fit fun boxes, in the usual mesmerized with astonishment way (Facebook knows, now, that I will always pause and watch and so fills my feed with them). Matt walked in as I was so engaged and observed, rightly, that it is like a burlesque–the female version. Then he dug up this quote from Lewis (don’t know where it’s from),
You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?
Um, Lewis should have stuck around for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, but most especially these subscription boxes. It’s like he Saw our Soul. #crazy
Anyway, I am going to unbox the Bible in this way. I just have to find a beautiful box and some really good eyeliner.*
Six
I am itching to do an autumn update. You know, letting you know in detail about the tree outside my window, but there isn’t anything to say. It’s as green as ever. I feel bereft. So grieved, in fact, that only a thin slice of bread, with just a very minuscule amount of jam will relieve my sorrow. Gosh my life is hard and terrible.
Seven
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to a funeral. Go check out more Takes and or pray for those in serious grief and woe today. Because it’s not all sunshine and cupcakes out there. Not that I should be telling you what to do. That’s not the sort of famous blogger/theologian I am. Pip pip.
*See what I did there? I “interwove” theological truthiness with the trials of white middle class wifedome and overlaid that with a celebration of womanliness. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.
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