7 Quick Takes: Aprons, Sharks, Sex,Tomatoes, Etc.

1.  Good news, everybody!  The  internet is really just a bunch of tubes. Each time you Google something, a little bell rings, and one of a team of alert, uniformed attendants runs over, finds what you need in a large, olive green file cabinet, and, quick as a wink, stuffs it into one of these  pneumatic tubes and sends it over to your computer with a puff of air.

Comforting.   Shut up shut up shut up with the further explanations!  I spend most of my day trying to encourage vegetable consumption in children who put forks in their pants and underwear on their heads.  I want to understand something, anything, and if that means believing that the internet is tubes, then can’t you let me have that?

2.  One of the minor mortification of living the culture of life:  taking your stupid bright red and blue and yellow NaPro Technology chart,

which is clearly all about dorky, dorky Catholic sex, to Staples to photocopy it so you can mail it to your practitioner, because your scanner is always broken and your husband has your digital camera to the office with him, where he is working two jobs because damn, the culture of life is expensive.  Extra time off purgatory if you have to bring your kids to Staples with you, and one of gets a bloody lip by tipping a cart over on herself.

3.  Although it could always be worse:  I once discovered, halfway through Mass, that one of the kids had found some paperwork from WIC, including a sticker promoting the consumption of fresh fruits and veggies.  This sticker depicted a bright red tomato with huge, avid eyes and grinning teeth, and it said, “RIPE AND READY!”

This sticker, thank to the efforts of my child, was stuck to my ass.

4.  Oh, but that Creighton app that’s been almost ready to go for, like, twenty-three years?  My sources tell me it’s actually being field tested now! Exciting news, I say with slightly forced optimism.   Of course, by the time it’s ready to go, NFP technology will have advanced so far that our  granddaughters will be able to just wave a special digital swab through the air between them and their husbands.  If they’re fertile, a baby hologram will appear between them winking and saying, “Eh?  Eh?  Know what I mean?  Know what I mean?  Eh?”  But the Creighton app will be ready.

5.  I bought the Schoolhouse Rock multiplication songs* to listen to in the car, where we spend at least two hours every day.  I, for one, have been enjoying them — as have the preschoolers.  The older kids, who should and don’t know their multiplication facts, are much too coolhouserock for Schoolhouse Rock.  Too bad for them.  This one is my favorite:

Isn’t that lovely?  Not to be a killjoy, but isn’t it amazing how much has changed in a few decades?  This ran on PBS, but it’s so Eurocentric and heteronormative and it uses “faith, hope, and charity” and the Trinity as examples of three!  Can you imagine?  Anyway, Irene’s favorite is “My Hero, Zero,” and I’ve seen Lucy silently mouthing along with the tiger in the “Four-Legged Zoo” one. I also like six, seven, and eleven, and my thirteen-year-old confesses a partiality to nine.

*This link is actually to a DVD.  I bought a used copy of the audio cassette, because that’s what our life is like.  As with all Amazon links, I get a small portion of the sale price; so if you’re going to shop through Amazon, I’d love you to pieces if you did it through my links!  On my list for this weekend:  installing an Amazon button on the sidebar.  Thanks to everyone who’s used my links in the past!

6.  Speaking of ideas that offend 21st-century ears, I’ve added a link to the audio for my talk on forgiveness to my speaking page.

7.  Any time someone tries to tell you that, despite our superficial differences of race and culture and traditions, we are all really the same under our skin, you call tell them, “Oh yeah?  Then what about THIS?”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

8.  Oops, eight.  So sue me.  Have you entered the apron raffle yet?  Just $3 for a chance to win one of these lovely, handmade aprons

and you can enter as many times as you want.  The contest closes at NOON TODAY Eastern Time!  I’ll announce the winner sometime later today.

Happy weekend!  Don’t forget to check out the other 7QT on Jen’s blog.