Quick Takes

Thanks, Jen, for hosting!

**1**

50 cent

= crude rapper

or the price of a fun book off the book sale rack at the library.

**2**

I have a new deskmate: my son’s pet Parakeet Percy (named because my son saw a Walker Percy book sitting on the shelf; the bird is not named after Percy Jackson the Lightening Thief, or Percy Weasley, Ron’s snivelly big brother.) Although I regret the space of my desk that the bird’s cage consumes, I don’t mind having the company. In fact, it was me probably more than anyone who wanted the bird, even though now we’ll have to find someone to watch him when we travel. We went to the pet shop to look at fish, and what do you know – parakeets on sale! Percy was the last blue one left.

Percy is the second budgie we have had. Lady lived only a few short months a year or so ago. Lady was yellow, which was not my oldest’s first choice, but she seemed the tamest bird in the cage at Animal Jungle, our favorite pet shop in Virginia Beach: where else can you get alligators, feed the stingrays, admire tortoises, monkeys, and ocelots (not for sale), as well as all the usual suspects, plus an extremely large fish section. Pets were big business in Va Bch. There were two doggie daycares near our house, a handful of groomers, and a dog stuff boutique.

We did get fish, too.

**3**

I promised new pets after we moved. But here it has been 7 months, and I hadn’t delivered. Easy to make a promise, harder to keep. But I enjoy the animals as much or more than the kids. I'll buy into the argument for pets as an aid to contemplation. They make you stop and stare.  I can see why owning a pet can lower your blood pressure, although when your dog wants to be fed at 5:30 on a snow day, your blood pressure may rise.

**4**

We did get a few flakes of snow today, justifying the day off of school. I think our administrators didn't want to be left out of the blizzard the rest of the country is experiencing.

**5**

 

Made granola the other day after a trip to the health food store to get things like flax seed, pepitoes, and wheat bran (and Dr. Bronner's soap, which I was introduced to by Dr. Bronner's grandson, who lived across the street from us years ago with his cheerful and pretty blond wife. I wonder what Dr. Bronner, with his aphorisms like "Smile, help teach the whole Human race, the Moral ABC of All-One-God-Faith, Lightning-like strong & we're All-One! All-One!" and reworkings of Chaucer, Longfellow, and Kipling all over the bottles of his soap, thought about his grandon being a fighter pilot in the Navy). I like to fancy myself a little bit crunchy. But just around the edges. For example, after Miss C and I made granola, we rolled out homemade sugar cookies for the kids’ Valentine’s parties.  But I frosted them with the stuff from a can because I can’t stand to waste all that butter on some cookies that will be crumbled on a classroom floor. (The parties were cancelled along with school today, so I have 4 dozen cookies to get rid of before Wednesday. I will be really, really disappointed if our parochial school pushes back the Valentines'/Mardi Gras party they were supposed to have today to Ash Wednesday. Surely they won't, but my son said his teacher said they might).

**6**

There is a thin line between crunchy and cheap. How many “green” things have I done – cloth diapers for the first 3, hanging laundry on the line, keeping the thermostat low – because I want to conserve energy and matter, and how much have I done because I want to conserve money? Has my frugality cheated my kids out of some pleasures (for instance, new bikes instead of thrift store junkers)? Does it matter if thriftiness and guilt motivate me to reuse plastic bags and send reusable water bottles instead of juice boxes in the lunch boxes, more than a sense of stewardship?

**7**

A list for Lent:

Giving up:

Sugar

I'd say alcoholic drinks, but since my husband is gone, I don't drink them anyway.

Looking at blogs after 10 pm (when I'm more liable to get lulled into excessive clicking and commenting...)

 

Adding in:

Mass at least 3x a week

Going to bed by 11

Reading Peter Kreeft's Prayer for Beginners, Kathleen Norris' Amazing Grace, and I want to order something by Caryll Houselander.