A break from break

Goodbye! For three weeks, at least. Maybe four. Back to campus to work in the Fin Aid office, followed by a week long stay in Oregon with friends. It'll all be pretty awesome and fun. I'll be back with pictures and stories no doubt :D

Fine line

It's all too easy to lose charity amidst orthodoxy. Take a look?

Reading the above blog post, I found too many things rang a bell with my own self. It's so easy as a TAC student to look down on others who don't perform as many "acts of piety" as we do. We are so blessed in our liturgies and atmosphere of Catholicism, that we can lose our perspective. Jesus is in everyone... and He resides most of all with those who do the will of His Father. And I'm pretty sure that being judgmental is not in His Almighty plan for us.

Time for this little girl to take a tablespoon of gentleness and humility so I can share a bucketful of love.

Continued Conversation

Tuesday
8 year old: "Bridget, why aren't you married? Aren't you old? Shouldn't you be having babies by now? Shouldn't you find a boyfriend?"
me, laughing, "No, I'm in no hurry."

Tonight
8 year old: "Did you find a boyfriend yet?"
me, slightly surprised, but bemused, "Nope, not yet."
8 year old: "Why not?"
me, "Well, none of the boys are mature enough yet to get married."
8 year old, wrinkling her nose, cocking her head to the side, and placing her hands on her hips: "But you don't need to marry them, you just need a boyfriend so you can have fun. I mean, you can't have fun unless you have a boyfriend."

Then I laughed. And laughed. And laughed. I think she was pretty confused by my laughter, but I couldn't help it. I guess I'm doomed to a boring existence for a bit... :)

Remedial Elementary School

I've come to discover that I need to go to elementary school again. I can do advanced calc, physics, philosophy, theology, biology, chem, etc. For some reason, however, I can't do basic mathematics. Like addition. I had to sit and think about 5 + 2 = ? I knew it was 7, but for some reason I second guessed myself for a long time. Oh, and then yesterday, at 5:53 pm, I could not, for the life of me, figure out how many minutes there were until 6 pm. 6? 7? 8? gak!

Oh, and I finally figured out why I'm "dyslexic." I'm not really dyslexic, but I have this tendency to get the order of the letters in words backwards. I don't read words from beginning to end, but I look at the whole thing, get the general size, shape, and a few of the letters, and make a guess. Of course this is completely subconscious (and contributes to the obscene speeds at which I can read), but it wreaks havoc on my spelling. I know approximately what letters belong in a word, but the order is rather... uh... hazy.

An example of this occurred yesterday when I was reading aloud to the kids. I read the word "honary" and automatically supplemented the extra "or." I didn't notice that the word was, in fact, misspelled until another character in the story corrected it. Oops.

Insubordination

I had to put the 8 year old in time out tonight... and the 3 year old in time out twice. I don't know if these children are just more of a handful than I'm used to or if I'm losing my touch as a babysitter.

They just throw me the dirtiest looks and keep on doing whatever it is they shouldn't be. Y'know that, "are you talking to me?" look with the wrinkled nose and a noise that corresponds to the dismissive face? yeah, that one. I don't allow cheeky and they have cheeky down like professionals. There are corresponding consequences for the misdemeanors... these, of course, make me the bad guy. Ah, well. Maybe they'll learn to stop screaming/painting on each other/screaming/stealing each others things/screaming/standing in the refrigerator/screaming. (Can you tell that they scream? All the time???)

When it rains, it pours

My summer has been relatively relaxing. Not going anywhere, not doing many urgent things. Just sleeping and letting my mind, body, and soul get back into sync after the craziness of junior year. Things are going well on that end and I'm just about ready to lead a normal life again. Life, however, has other plans.

I seem to have skipped the "normal gear" in the car I'm driving through my earthly pilgrimage, and gone straight from "neutral" to "highest speed possible." There are so many little things to organize, people to talk to, stuff to arrange... and if I forget to do any of it, I'm in trouble. I have nannying, duties to fulfill, sewing to get done, packing, and then leave on Sunday to go back to campus to work for a few weeks. I finally got the roommate situation straightened out (it took about three times as long as it should have), got a ride from the train arranged (thank you, Mr. B!), etc., etc., etc.

One foot in front of the other. Keep swimming. :)

10, 8, 3

Three small girls with bucket loads of energy were in my charge this evening. It's so hard not to laugh at the things they say sometimes, especially the two younger ones. For example:

8 year old "Bridget, why aren't you married? Aren't you old? Shouldn't you be married and having babies by now?"

3 year old "You are a bad drawer." I'm pretty sure she meant "draw-er", as in someone who draws, but she said it just like the part of a dresser... I suppose I'm a bad drawer as well

8 year old "I am feeling trivialized... I don't know what that means, but I like the sound of it."