Italian Priest Organizes Beauty Contest for Nuns

good lord, deliver us.

this topic may seem silly, but it taps into a really touchy subject for me. you see, as a person who is surrounded by a lot of really smart people -- not brainiacs, exactly, but definitely cerebral types* - it is very easy for me to feel, shall we say -- ah heck, let's face it, intellectually impotent. and because, when i'm on a roll, i happen to have a pretty darn good vocabulary - though you wouldn't know it from reading my blog entries, wouldya? - people tend to assume that i'm pretty smart, too. thing is, i always feel like an imposter. like, one of these days someone is going to figure out that i'm just a intellectual poseur and demand my mensa card be revoked.

i don't think i try to put on airs or anything** but it's the whole "birds of a feather" thing. because i occassionally sound smart and i'm often seen in the company of pretty smart people, others naturally assume i'm right up there with 'em. of course, they say that people tend to become more and more like the company they keep, so you should surround yourself with the type of people that you want to be more like. so it makes sense that i would fancy surrounding myself with smart wealthy people right? well, as soon as i find a lot of well-heeled people, i'll start hobnobbing with them, but for now I'll just be hangin' out with really clever people and keep googling on the sly.

* okay, okay, in point of fact i do know several brainiacs; but i don't hang out with them much because the feelings of inadequacy are just far too heavy to handle for longer than, say, a really delightful meal. these scenes are okay, cuz iffin i don't know the proper response or at least have some charming bon mot to share, i just shove an extra helping of sirloin into my face and chew until the subject moves on to simpler topics.
** you can bet your bottom dollar i googled that phrase.

I suppose it could have been worse. I could have said, "Let me felicitate you!"

Hmmmm.

The sweetest moment so far is just a small scene between Mma Makutsi, she of the 97% at Botswana Secretarial College and big glasses, and her fiance, Phuti Radiphuti, stutterer and owner of the Double Comfort Furniture Store. They are contemplating their wedding:

My wedding. My wedding guests. Chairs. it was a long way from those days of penury as a student at the Botswana Secretarial College, of rationing herself in what she ate; of making do with just one of anything, if that. Well, those days were over now.

And Phuti Radiphuti, for his part, thought, My days of loneliness are finished. My days of being laughed at because of the way I speak and because no woman would look at me--those are over now. Those are over.

He reached out a took Mma Makutsi's hand. She smiled at him, "I am very lucky to have found you," he said.

"No, I am the lucky one. I am the one."

He thought that unlikely, but he was moved very deeply that somebody should consider herself lucky to have him, of all people. The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.

Absolutely.

Am also finishing a book that I just found on the bottom a stack of stuff (how embarrassing!): Because God Is Real: 16 Questions, One Answer by Peter Kreeft. Here's part of what he says about families:

Families are our schools of love, our first lesson in overcoming our natural egotism. Each of us is created as an individual, with our own will. With that will, we make millions of choices throughout our lives. This makes each life a drama, and the most important theme of the drama is the choice between good and evil, between unselfish love and selfish lovelessness, between centering our lives on ourselves and centering our lives on others, between treating ourselves as God, as the center of the world, and loving others as God loves them. The family is our great weapon in the battle.

Don't know what's next up. Finishing Peggy Noonan's book about JPII, I suspect. Then maybe another Heyer (only 1 left in my stash--time to buy more!) or perhaps a history book. I have several on my shelves........

Not that I don't have several of lots of things!

www.guysread.com

Set up by Jon Scieszka, of Time Warp Trio and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs fame, it's an effort to start addressing the problems of "why boys don't read."

This is a subject dear to my heart, because it might be the bedrock reason for why we homeschooled all those years. I could not bear to raise a son who was not a reader. And I saw boy after boy lost in those middle grade years in school.

Many of the suggestions on the GuysRead site track what we did with the Zman. The foremost suggestion being: Let them read GUY stuff. I firmly believe that Tintin, Time Warp Trio, and a funny series of books called Horrible Histories made my son a reader. Later on the Hatchet series of books and the Ender trilogy kept him reading. Now I have a son who reads Moby Dick for fun.

Were they Little House on the Prairie, Jane Austen or all those other "required" texts? Nope. But they fostered a love of reading in Zman that still exists to this day. His only gripe about college is that it takes up so much time that he has no time to read for pleasure.

I'm glad to hear that he misses it.

This woman is my mom's age, and has been, for years, my image of faithful servanthood. You know how most people take on a volunteer job and give it up after a year or two? Telling you that they've "done their time" and now they can lay that aside? Not my sweet friend. She persevered in her volunteer work right up to the day of her diagnosis--when she was too exhausted to move out of her chair--and called me to apologize that she'd have to give up caring for the altar linens as she has done for years now. Oh, and I'd need to find someone to take her spot on Altar Guild. And she would miss it.

Oh, no, Miss Betty. It is I who will miss you. But I am grateful beyond belief to have spent these years as your friend.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now, and in the hour of our death.

I'm a hopeless techno-phobe.

this is the new bumper sticker that i had made. the idea to make it began with my complaint that obama-nation is spreading like a cult in my neck of the woods, and that barack is enjoying, not just celebrity cult status, but freaky jim-jones jell-o shot status. and in a reliably red state like texas, too. i am heartsick because i personally know many -- as in too many to admit -- well-intentioned people who will actually vote for the man. God help us all. tired of talking myself blue in the face, i thought, heck, i'll just make a bumper sticker and let it speak to all of these wack-job so-called catholics who think it's okay to support an abortion monger like obama.

anyway, i put it on my car yesterday -- not knowing exactly how timely its message would turn out to be -- and i ended up giving away 3 today. i only ordered 5 because the process is rather pricey, but i'm consdering making more. of course, i'll have to edit them to read: never trust a prophet who supports infanticide.

you read that correctly. barack obama supports infanticide. obama voted against the illinois state legislation that required medical providers to give normal life-supporting medical care to infants born alive during an abortion. The bill was created because the doctors at Christ Hospital and elsewhere threw live infants away with no oversight at all. read more here.

I discovered that, while the company is in the United States, they outsource some printing to Canada, so technically the orders I made were international. I had no idea there was a charge for using PayPal "internationally" and I think this just might be another case of "Sneaky Bank Fees." I would certainly appreciate a "Sorry you were so ignorant about all of our fine-print fees, Dummy" credit of the charges. And, I'll be sure to note where all of my orders are being shipped from in future.

it would have been much longer. but, they only allow us ten lines of angst. pthh...

School starts next week for the McKid, and my life will be changing again, this time back to a schedule that I can at least put on a calendar. That'll be an improvement.

Grief stinks. I'll just let you know that.

My house looks like the inside of my head--simply chaotic and a complete disaster. It's time to start fixing that.

Thanks for your understanding, folks. Next week I should put us back to our regularly scheduled stuff!

Let's hope.

He does not get us out. Not when we ask for it, at any rate, because it was He all along who brought us to this place. He has been here before--it is no wilderness to Him, and He walks with us. There are things to be seen and learned in these apparent wastelands which cannot be seen and learned in the "city"--in places of comfort, convenience, and company.

Hmmmmm. Not what I wanted to hear, but probably what I needed to hear.