The Secret of the Christian

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. 

Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live. 

Joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. 

And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation...

The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears.
[Jesus] never concealed His tears;
He showed them plainly on his open face at any daily sight,
such as the far sight of His native city.
Yet He concealed something. 

Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger.
He never restrained His anger.
He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple,
and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell.
Yet He restrained something. 

I say it with reverence;
there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness.
There was something that He hid from all men
when He went up a mountain to pray.
There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation.
There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us
when He walked upon our earth;
and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

How to Bake a Cake at (my) Home

Hi, everyone. It's time for another episode of "Creative Living." Today we are going to bake cupcakes.

On my birthday, my mom and dad always send me a box of cake mix in the mail. It's sweet, really. 

Buuut, it also creates a lot of challenges which did not previously exist and which I must first overcome to enjoy said cake. Let me illustrate.

FIRST CHALLENGE: 

Determine which items I am lacking and correctly purchase the missing items
 
   1) sticks of butter

   2) eggs

Check.

    3) muffin cups!

Oh, crap. I accidentally got the mini muffin cups because I ordered online and failed to read.😞

SECOND CHALLENGE: 

Decision-making. Do I use my mini cupcake tray and bake 2+ batches, thereby using double+ the amount of time, OR do I pour the batter into some other over-safe baking tray? 

Definitely using a bread pan. This is now a chocolate cake bread recipe.

THIRD CHALLENGE:

I bring your attention now to the mixing directions. 

WHAT? Who are these ingredient writers and why do they make so many assumptions about me?!

I don't have these items in my home! 

*breathe*

It's fine, I can use the deepest tupperware container that I have. My hand is pretty low-speed.

Done and done. The cake is in the oven. 

   Yes, it did say not to eat the raw batter.

Yes, I did disregard that direction.

FOURTH CHALLENGE: 

Make Buttercream frosting. If I have learned anything so far, it's get a head start, because this probably won't be as easy as the comic books would have you believe. Let's see what's required: 

Ugh, I thought we already went over all this. 

And now that I have already used my makeshift tupperware mixer bowl, it is dirty, and I have placed it in the dishwasher.

I guess drastic times call for drastic measures. *SCANDAL ALERT*

*All who were scandalized by my prior post on artistic genius can now avert your eyes*

The all-purpose pot. 

Yep. 

I repeat my assertion that a pot is just a large bowl with a handle.

Dilemma solved. Frosting mixed. Cake made.

The first slice.

Well, I'm not trying out for Top Chef, ok?
My motto is: It all looks the same in my stomach anyway.

Er, I guess. 

I love you, mom and dad.😏💕

All the Single Ladies

 

Y'all....

I went to a wedding last night. 

It was beautiful, it was long-awaited (darn you, COVID), and so we partied like it was 1999.

But y'all....

You know that moment when they call all the single ladies to come out on the dance floor?
Truth: this moment is experienced differently depending on your age.

The 20's-and-below singles think this moment is fun. They are excited to get out on the floor because they WANT to catch the bouquet. Sometimes they jump on top of each other to get it, and then they tell their friends about it in excitement because someone (Santa Clause? I don't know) told them that they will be married next - and SOON - if they catch it.

On the other hand, the 30's-and-above singles pretend like they do not hear the Emcee. They have to be pushed and pulled out to the dance floor. And THEN, they jump out of the way when the bouquet is tossed to them. Why? Because some of them have caught it before and they weren't the next to get married so they know it's a LIE! Or maybe, because they LIKE being single. Or it could be, they just don't want the rest of the party to see how desperate they are to NOT be single. They play it cool.

This got me thinking. We should revamp this whole bouquet toss business. Let's divide up by age. If the youngins are happy with flowers that wilt before they find their spouse, fine. We old people know that the business of catching a spouse is not as easy as the business of catching some flowers. We can buy our flowers at the store; In the meantime, when you want to get us out on the dance floor, you might want to toss us something with a more immediate payout. Here are some preliminary ideas:

Vacation Packages - Always a Winner

Lotto scratchers - Sometimes a winner

I mean, ya know...

You can never go wrong with puppies*

*Disclaimer: I don't advocate ACTUALLY throwing puppies......far*

Late Night After Party

DATE: July 5th, 2021
TIME: 11:50pm <----past my bedtime

*An illustration of how quickly sleep deprivation/desperation can cause me to escalate a simple annoyance to a cause for major exorcism.*

Based on a true story.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake.....

CRACK! 

What the heck?!

pop, pop, POP!

C'mon! It's almost midnight, it's not July 4th anymore, and it's a work day tomorrow! 

Pop............pop....pop!

[Resigning myself to the anxiety
of unpredictably timed noise]

pop, poppity, pop!

Oh good, they are getting more distant....

[just dozing off]

pop, ssssssss

Ima go look out the window! WHO has the AUDACITY....?

[Looking out & seeing no one, I go back to bed confused]

pop, pop
pop, ssssssss

Should I open the front door and yell at them? No, that's probably exactly what they want me to do...

pop, ssssssss 

If you catch my window screen on fire...

Maybe you already did....

You know what, I don't care anymore...

pop, poppity, pop!

[blocking out the madness, entering dream land]

CRACK! 

I'm about to call a priest! Quit haunting my house!

The Cheerios Scandal

I was unloading my groceries today, when I noticed this:

Do you see what I see?

The family size box of Cheerios shrunk! 😲 

The O's inside were all the same size, so I had to conclude it was either a miraculous event OR a criminal act of fraud on the part of General Mills. (It's 2021 - there is no middle ground.)

In shock, I immediately inquired of Google as to the reason for this scandal. 

Evidently, instead of charge more for the box to accommodate rising ingredient prices, GM just decided to charge the same price and make the box smaller! 

It's no matter to them that my family does not get smaller. Now I have to let one of them go. 

😶

Hush, you people who are contesting that I live alone. Just think what will happen if I let myself go!

----

There's more to this big mess. After cutting off a side of every box, do you know what GM did with the leftover cardboard and Cheerios? They came out with this premium golden box for giants.

That's right.

Now it's my mission to find said Giant who is eating all my cheerios.

(Excuse me, all my family's Cheerios.)

Illustration by Matt Tavares

News of the World

 

Dear Mr. Hanks,

When I moved to Texas, this is what I imagined I would find: Cowboys, dirt, oppressive heat. 

(More trucks than wagons, I do admit, but there are always crew cabs and SUVs.)

Of course, it would have brightened my experience to find that you were the one who delivered the daily news, riding through town on horseback.

Err......snow-covered horseback.....

Actually, maybe the Polar Express... 

What just happened?!?

5 days of freezing temperatures, 4 inches of snow....

Preparing a cold drink

Making a new friend

Going for an icy swim

Trying not to be impaled by falling ice

Rolling blackouts, loss of electricity and heating for prolonged periods....

Sleeping in a tent under my bed for warmth

I know that fireplace I have must be good for something......🤔

I just don't know if I have what it takes....

Heating my food over an open flame

I've lived through a winter in Nebraska, but somehow no one ever explained to me the need to drip faucets to keep pipes from freezing. Yet here I am conserving even my droplets because now there are water shortages from broken pipes and loss of electricity at water treatment facilities.....

This is how we do winter

I was expecting Cowboy boots, not snow boots. 

I was prepared for dirt, not ice. For oppressive heat, not freezing cold. 

Mr. Hanks, I must say I had the wrong idea about Texas.

But perhaps you can still brighten my wintery experience by bringing me warmer and happier news of the world? 

By horse or by train, by trolley or by plane, please accept my invitation to come for a visit. 

I will be glad to hear your tales.

May the horse be with you,

Lindsay

Lord, Teach Me Patience.....and Hurry!

Last week I set out to make some art, because I really haven't painted in a month. You know the excuses: the holidays, the after-holidays, spending the holiday money, preparing for the next holidays.....something like that. 

I thought I would just do some simple acrylic pouring art. And why not use a straw and blow the paint around? There was no goal - just to create something that wasn't terribly ugly. I came up with this:

Fair, right? It looks like a marbled cheesecake. Task complete. 

I set it on my table to dry, went about my day, and came back a few hours later to check on it. It looked dry so I hung it on the wall, eager to accent a new little office set up with some bright color.

Errr......too eager.....

This is what the painting looked like after it had slowly dripped down the wood canvas, over the beveled edge, onto my shelf and I had wiped the mess clean. (So much for creating something that wasn't terribly ugly...)

I guess it wasn't dry enough. 

This, friends, is actually the image of my artistic life. I stink at patience. I want to see the result but I don't always want to invest in the process. This is why I cannot keep time when I sit down to play a piece of music: I don't want to learn it; I just want to hear what it sounds like. This is also why some of my paintings are less than the quality they could be: I grow tired of the time and effort it takes to create something truly great, and I settle for something "good enough". 

Can anyone relate?

I have a hard time letting my food cook for 2 minutes in the microwave without stopping it early.
Waiting takes so much time! 😂

Here is a little quote I have always loved, from Mother Angelica, that gives me some hope:

"They think a holy person never feels impatient. Well, there is not an Italian born who is patient, and since there are more Italian saints than any other nationality, there must be something about being impatient that makes you holy."

 

After all that, I tried again: 

It's definitely a totally different design now, but that's the call of an artist - to look at a mess and see something that can be restored, something that has great potential, something that is still beautiful. 

This time I let it dry overnight, and now it hangs where it should without making an awful mess. Lesson learned.