I still haven’t done the ritual Halloween photo shoot, but I thought I’d share a quick couple of pictures of our little pirate:

Neither photo is particularly awesome, but that’s what you get when there’s the promise of candy lurking behind every neighbor’s door.

I’ll dress her as a Yo-Yo one more time and we’ll take real pictures some time this week.

Turbo: I’m realizing that more of my life is sacred and less and less of it is profane.

This is a remembered, hopefully almost most precise quote from our recording Generation Orthodox last night.  I love the people I get to talk with and the show should be live in a week or two so you can check my memory.

In looking forward to the next year (it is November, ack!) and the next four, my hope is that more of my profane, mundane and seemingly meaningless activities become acts of sacred worship.  This blog is serving as a way to document some of those thoughts and I’m pleased to report they’re trickling into some of my other writing.

I had planned to blog about voting (or my lack thereof for a presidential candidate) and election hopes, but the evening seems to be shaping into an Obama victory.  I can’t say I’m disappointed or thrilled.  At least ee now know who we’ll be praying for over and over in the next four years.  If you want to read an excellent post on this subject–check out orrologian.  He often explains things I’m thinking before I’ve even put the thoughts together.

“Let us pray to the Lord…For the peace of the whole world, for the good estate of the holy churches of God, and for the union of all men, let us pray to the Lord… For the President, for all civil authorities, and for the armed forces, let us pray to the Lord… For this city for every city and country, and for those who in faith dwell therein, let us pray to the Lord…”

This was my little baby last Halloween. She was a goldfish!

This year she’s going as a “Yo-Ho” —that’s a pirate.  I’m entering this post in the Parent Bloggers Network Blurb.com Halloween Photo contest.   I’m submitting the top photo to their “Best Photo” category and the bottom one to the “Best Costume Age 2 and under ”

If you’ve got little monsters running around tonight-enter their photos here!

Congratulations Briana from Pleasant Places!   I hope you enjoy the Debbie Meyer Green Bags!

Thanks everyone for sharing all your favorite fall foods.  It was 91 degrees today so hot apple cider, roasted squash and all your other goodies were far, far from my mind.  I know I keep harping on this, but I really do miss autumn.  Winter–not so much, but I think this is my least favorite time to live in California.

My name is Calee and I have a problem.  My daughter meows in church.

At first, it was cute.  She’d walk up to the icon of St. Ignatius of Antioch, stand on her tippie toes to give him a kiss and then point at the lions hanging off his martyr’s body and say “meow.”  She wasn’t loud and we were quite proud that she a) wanted to kiss an icon and b) recognized a lion was part of the feline family.

Then the was the baptism where she meowed through most of the service.  As far as I can tell, her very vocal cat sounds were because the small silver dish that held water for washing of the Chrismation oil looked like our cat’s dish.

This past Sunday, when everything got real quiet right before the end of the service, Audrey went back over to the icon of St. Ignatius and shared a very, very loud meow with all of us.

Cats are the only animals that have historically been allowed in Orthodox Churches so I guess it’s better that she bring the meow than her piggy noise (Whee, whee, whee, if you’re wondering.)

I love that she loves our cat, Spud.  She’s very gentle and he’s usually the first or second person (?) she asks after each morning.  Of course, she doesn’t call out “Spud!”  He will forever be known as “Meow.”

We were told this week by another parishioner, with all love I’m sure,  that he can no longer sit near Audrey.  Apparently, she’s too funny.

I know God has a sense of humor, but which do you think he prefers—cats or dogs?

Sigh.

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by Burger King Corp.

Keri Smith is brilliant.  Just get ready, cause I plan to send you to her site and books rather frequently in the next few months.

While I may disagree with some of her definitions of the sacred, I am all for encouraging the creation of sacred spaces, whatever your spiritual persuasion.  I think by acknowledging the possibility of the sacred, we invite interaction with the sacred.  As I look at my to do list for the week, I fear that moments spent in sacred places will be few and far between.

I’d really like to know how you invite the sacred into your daily life.  Is it with a hot bath? A cozy chair? A home altar? A blanket fort? Our home altar is almost ready to be photographed, but curling up with a good book in front of the fire–that seems pretty good to me too.

How do you bring the sacred home?

In honor of Ben Bernake’s request for a 2nd economic stimulus package, I’m giving away one of my favorite thing–the NEW Debbie Meyer Green Bags - As Seen On TV!

I am a sucker for as seen on TV products but, let’s be realistic, most of these fall short of their promises.

Not the green bags.

Since they came in to our life (cue the cheesy music), we:

Spend much less on produce
Waste much less
Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables

Basically, this set of 20 bags works by removing the ethylene gas that causes plant matter to decompose.  Don’t ask me how it works, but I have a bag of ripe pears in my fridge that have been there for 2 weeks.  I think I may eat one now, in fact.  They’re still perfect.

If you’re not interested in saving money and eating better, don’t leave a comment on this post.  If you’d like your very own set of Debbie Meyer bags, leave a comment on this post with your favorite fall food!

For a second entry, post a link on your blog or message board and leave a 2nd comment on this post.

This contest will close on Friday, October 24!

Here’s a beautiful book that I would highly recommend to:

• Anyone with children
• Anyone interested in Ireland
• Anyone wondering why Orthodox Christians hold the saints in such high regard
• Anyone

We stumbled upon The Blackbird’s Nest: Saint Kevin of Ireland at the Greek festival at St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church a couple of weekends ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it.  The story is captivating, the illustrations enchanting and I couldn’t love the subject matter more after spending 2 years on and off in Ireland and regularly visiting Glendaloch, the monastic site founded by St. Kevin.

Much has been debated about the role of a blog in a writer’s life.  Some swear that one is necessary to build and maintain platform–an audience for the writer’s material.  Others acknowledge that actively maintaining a blog takes a serious amount of time and energy–that could, perhaps, be put to better use.  Everyone I’ve read on the subject has said that a writer’s blog,  comments on other blogs and any other web presences (Facebook, MySpace, etc) must be well-written, gramatically correct, and generally professional.

I think I broke all of those rules in my last post.

I’d like to blame the painful prose of the book I reviewed for reducing my vocabulary to that of a 6th grader.  When writing about Britney Spear’s mother’s painful narritive, why didn’t I use the overwhelmingly appropriate lable of solipsistic?

To me, blogging is not work, nor school, nor my attempt at the great American novel.  It’s a quick record of thoughts, feelings and reactions.  <– see there, I’m unable to create a set of blog style guidelines when it comes to the Oxford comma.  I’m hopeless!

Since to this point, most of my writing work is done fairly annonmously–I write web content–I don’t think there are too many people who read this blog because they liked how I described a certain company’s mission statement.   BUT– I do plan to publish more frequently in the popular press and eventually in academia so I’m getting slightly worried that this little blog has showcased some of my worst writing—ever.

I’d like to post here more often, but I’m also feeling the pressure to step up the quality, which only means more time per post, therefore, less posts.  What’s a girl to do?

Here’s a plan—you forgive me for ugly sentences, verb tense disagreements, and cliches and I’ll forget about the times you considered leaving a comment on a post and starting or joining a discussion but didn’t.  Capishe?

 Two things before I start this review:

1) I am not target audience for this book.  I’ve read a handful of C-list celebrity memoirs but I have never, and hopefully will never, buy one.

2) I received this book as a free reviewers copy.

That said,  I just finished reading Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World by Lynne Spears with Lorilee Craker.  I’d like to be diplomatic, find something nice to say, but maybe I’m not as creative as I thought.  I’ve followed Brittney Spear’s career with mild interest.  We’re nearly the same age so Britney’s music was the soundtrack to my high school years.  I’ll even admit to checking babyrazzi.com when I was pregnant and watching the 5150 train wreck of her latest years.

While Lynne Spears spends a significant part of the book talking about her children, most of the time is spent either explaining her childhood and troubled marriage or making excuses for why the paparazzi is to blame for ruining her daughter’s lives. This was boring.  The poetry Spears has written for her kids over the years, more than awful.

I think my biggest problem with this book comes down to the big sales quote of the book jacket:

We all want our children to succeed.  What happens when they do?

Brittney Spears, despite (or perhaps because of) her incredible talent, has made some horrible decisions.  So has her mother.   While this is not a book of parenting advice, Spears does list a few things she wishes she had done differently and offers encouragement and tips for other mothers.  Instead of a genuine acceptance of her failure as a role model and guardian of her daughter, even in the early years, Spears blames her alcoholic husband and her desire to help her daughter pursue her dreams.

After reading this book, I want to reread  The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children, a book that beautifully answers that book jacket question and encourages parents to celebrate the “normalness” of each child.