Bono on the US financial bailout plan:

“It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $7 $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.”

And another meditation:

The [Congolese] diggers feared - and their evil, sinister bosses had worked hard on that fear - that if people like me publicised their filthy way of life, then the mine might be closed and the $3 a day might be taken away.

I’m not an economist by any means.  I don’t know what’s needed to save the US financial system but sometimes, I wonder if it’s even worth saving.  They say it will hurt Main street if they don’t fix Wall street.

I don’t know.  But maybe, it’s not Main street or Wall St. that needs the fixing most.  Maybe, it’s those places where the dirt tracks passing for streets have no name.

Even though I pray and bow and try to devoutly practice an ancient and mystical faith, I am so uncomfortable with real holiness and miracle that my blogging is resorting to nervous laughter.  Please forgive me as I try and record this morning’s experiences.  I hope they’ll make for a more cohesive essay later, but this seems like the place to get my initial thoughts down.

I saw a miracle today.  Not a Christmastime parking space miracle or a Jesus in the grilled cheese miracle, but an honest, non-rational, non-scientifically explainable, holy miracle.

At 7am this morning, we  wrestled Audrey away from the noisy Elmo book, crowded into a room a little larger than a two-car garage and bowed before a weeping icon.

Myrrh was streaming from an image of Mary, the Theotokos and Mother of God, holding the Christ child.  There were no pumps, no reserves, no Hollywood special effects.  The icon was weeping a golden oil that smelled of spice and rose.

I’m thankful that not many people speak Audrey’s language.  At the beginning of the service, she was alternately asking for “Welmo” (Elmo)  or “Neigh” (the horse in the icon of St. George in the icon behind Jake’s head.)

As the choir sang beautifully in English and Slavonic, that’s the Russian version of Shakespearean English, Audrey’s pleas changed.

She wanted Mary.   We had venerated the weeping icon when we entered the church, but Audrey wanted to go back.  To kiss the mama and the baby.  To show them her love.

There are tons of disclaimers and explanations I could write here.  How icons are not idols and we don’t worship them or Mary.  How we love the Mother of God as the ultimate role model of submission to God’s plan for each of our lives.   How every once in a while, the sacred makes a little more of an impact in our world.

But instead, I’ll cry the little tears of motherly joy I held back in the church.

Our daughter, little and willfull and stubborn as she can be, longs for holy things.

She still won’t say “love you” to me or Jake.  But the other night–she repeated “love baby” over and over while I sang a lullabye. I know which baby she was talking about.

In the Roomba v. Dyson court case, I don’t know which one I would root for.  I love them both so much.

Roomba- It’s a robot!  Do you realize my daughter won’t remember a time in her life before robots did chores?  I can’t get over how much cooler that is than her not remembering a time before the Internet or DVD players or the Wii.

Dyson-  This yellow giant cleans everything. So well.  Roomba isn’t perfect.  Dyson will always be my first love.

Both of these lovely vacuums were birthday presents (different years) from either my mom or my grandmother-in-law.  Roomba makes it possible for us to not totally lose it when Hurricane Audrey has struck once again and there are Cheerio crumbs, bits of cheese and crayon shavings blocking the nearest exit route.  Dyson and I get to spend less time together, but it’s the kind of quality time that leaves me knowing I could walk upstairs and see neat little vacuum rows.

I know I COULD live without this beautiful pair, but I wouldn’t want to.

This post was made possible by my mom taking Audrey to the ranch for a WHOLE day and was sponsored by Yoplait and PBN.

Emma, over at Charming the Birds from the Trees, has posted another call for her Commitment to Loveliness feature.

Here are my 5 goals for this week:

Deep clean the house while Nana is watching Audrey.  (After I finish my freelance project of course)
Wear earrings every day
Make a peach cobbler
Finish our new home altar area
Only wake up the Mac if the dishes are done–still meditating on this

Every day is a balancing act. Wow, I’m original.

Most of the time, I’m doing good to not want to put Audrey to bed at 3:30 pm.  I love her deeply, but she wears me out.  Seriously, my mom lost 3 pounds when she watched her for 36 hours.   At even half that rate, I should have disappeared months ago.  By the grace of God, I’m still around to chase her through the fountain and carry her down the stairs when she’s scared to walk down by herself.  I’m looking for ways to be a better mom, a better wife, a better person.  Got any?

I mentioned the other day that the blog was running a bit heavy on the profane side of things.  Sure, Audrey is learning her letters (Y! W! B! B! B!) and I’ve been harvesting yellow Italian squash, but I’ll be the first one to admit that my thoughts have rarely touched on the things that might elevate my being.  Since I’ve now survived a big 18 months of motherhood, I thought I’d bring you some of my new found buckets of wisdom.

Ha!

I am one most not wise, but in the daily begging for bear vitamins and fruit snacks and time in the wagon, I’ve had a few moments to reflect on what others have written and what I aspire to in this thing called motherhood.

I can peruse preschool methodologies and nutrition facts all day long, but when it comes to thinking about motherhood, I have to start with the essence of our selves–what do I hope will be the end result of my parenting?  When my daughter is done with crayons and on to car keys and colleges and careers–what do I hope she will look like?

A hieromonk (a monk who is also a priest) of the Orthodox Church of America has said, “As a mother your great hope for your children should be that they will become saints. ”

Let that sink in for a moment.  Above desiring that my daughter be well read or creative or successful or even happy, I should hope she become a saint.  Sure, there have been wealthy women like Saint Emma who lived mostly happy lives and gave generously to the poor, but most of the time…a saintly life is not one we’d usually wish for our children.  Hagiography is filled with stories of suffering, sacrifice, and the sorts of things people generally avoid.

This realization was beyond frightening.  Why can’t I wish my daughter be a generally good person?  Can’t she just go to church, love God, and live a life that doesn’t include being thrown to the lions?

The article continues:

“When you look at the saints you see what holy people are, the saints are proper human beings, true and authentic, spontaneous and genuine human beings: it is we who tend to be false.”

Well, shoot.  Of course I hope she becomes a proper human being.

I still have very little clue how to actually raise a saint.  But, after wrestling with this thought for the last month, it is what I hope for my daughter.  I’m thankful that there are actual people we can look to for examples of  what it means to be human.  We named our baby after Saint Audrey, a real English princess and queen who was independent and intelligent, devoted to prayer and committed to her faith.  My greatest hope is that my little girl takes after her namesake.

Clean cupboard

Originally uploaded by Calee Audrey & Jake

I’m sorry if my blogging has veered more to the profane side of things as of late.
Our pantry is now ant-free and organized, summer seems to be finally on it’s way out, and I’m getting some real work done today.

I have lots of interesting things a-brewing to write about. Hopefully I can get them to line up as nicely as my soup cans and nutella!

It’s all on our counter.

The ants are back again.  About a month ago, I was tired of little black sweet ants invading my kitchen sink everytime I forgot to do the dishes.  Since that meant that every morning I woke up to a sea of ant bodies rolling all over the kitchen, my husband was kind enough to call out an exterminator.

The guy was great but not quite great enough.  You see, we live in a townhome and share a wall with our neighbors.  That wall happens to be the one with the cabinets that store all of our dried goods.

A week or two ago, we had our first ant invastion.  They bypassed all of our carefully sprayed outlets, walls, and general ant throughougfares and made their way in through the shared wall.  The pantry got a necessary clean out and I thought we were safe.

Wrong.  Right in the middle of the great garage reoraganize of ‘08, the ants decided to come back in full force.  The last of the peanutbutter crackers? Swarmed. The vanilla granola?  Moving on its own. My honey roasted peanuts? Oh so icky.

I was able to  salvage almost anything individually packaged or unopened.  Basically that meant the fruit snacks, canned soup and anything unopened is left sitting on our counter.

Tomorrow, I’m doing the weekly grocery shop.  On the list–lots of ziploc baggies and individually packaged snackies.  I know it’s not the most environmentally friendly option, but I’m tired of wasting food to fill ant stomachs.

Any suggestions for ant-proofing my cupboards would be greatly appriciated.  I am so done with summer!

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as an entry for a contest sponsored by Brothers-All-Natural.

I have this love/hate relationship with caffeine.  Love it–morning cup of coffee.  Need it–afternoon iced coffee while the toddler plays in the fountain because I’m so done with summer.  Hate it–1 am this morning when I can’t sleep because I had that 3pm coffee.

Really HATE it– 4:30 am when Audrey woke up screaming and would not go back to sleep.  Was it teeth?  A bad dream?  Just beeing stubborn? I have absolutely no idea.

Every time I think I have things mildly under control I realize how poorly I operate in a sleep deprived state.

I should be brilliant for class tonight.  We’re discussing Samuel Beckett’s short plays that don’t make any sense on a good day.  Yay for absurdism.

Remember how I was all worried that I’d committed some ethical sin by signing up for that free trial to Amazon Prime?  I played right into their marketing hands.  While I did not renew my free trial, I bought almost all of my school books (did I mention I started grad school last week? No? I did.) through Amazon and a few extra goodies.  I even let my Barnes and Noble membership lapse while I enjoyed free 2 day shipping a la Amazon and got great discounts on not quite textbooks from all of their used affiliates.

I liked my Amazon Prime so much, I’ve put my first commerical button on the sidebar.  I’m not so quick with the web editing stuff — I’ve meant to add more links, fancy up the site, make sure there are links to my portfolio, but it’s slow, slow work.  Click the link in the sidebar and get a free Amazon Prime trial.  If you’re afraid of getting suckered, it’s really, really easy to make sure that your credit carn never gets charged if you don’t want to autorenew.  Just go to your account, click on “Prime” and turn off renew.

But you know, I might just get the service.  When you count the gas I wasted driving to a Borders that was supposed to have an additional book I needed for Thursday and then the time it will waste to go all the way to Fullerton early so I can read one measly play before class–I think it might be worth that annual fee for free, fast shipping.