Shakespearean Feasts and Glowing Dolphins

Although we don't seem to be doing much, time is flying by. I tend to spend a lot of time fiddling - I have cleaned out a couple of drawers in my dresser and desk, and although I didn't pick out much to get rid of, everything is nicely folded. Same thing in the garage - tidied the stacks, but the give away pile only grew slightly.  I went through all of our DVDs and organized them into categories - animated, religious, action, drama, live action kid movies, documentaries. We don't watch DVDs very much anymore, and we have some that we haven't ever watched (notably The Bible documentary made by PBS and a collection of The Wonder Years and Seventh Heaven  that a friend dropped off. The kids did watch a season or two of Seventh Heaven, which was show I never watched. It starts off promising but is dated and the mediocre acting/sit-com cheesiness make it easy to put in the give away pile.)  I have a whole stack of DVDs I got for 10 cents each at a sale at the NEX, but most of them are mediocre, too. With the advent of streaming movies, watching DVDs is becoming outdated. In addition to the give away pile, I have a pile of "If we don't watch these by the time the shutdown ends, I'm getting rid of them."

What has been worth watching? I still have the Divine Mercy movie and The Two Popes on my list to watch, although I wonder if the free streaming has ended on the Divine Mercy movie.  I think I mentioned that I've tried to motivate the kids to balance meaningful movies with series like The Office, which the teens just finished, and Parks and Rec, which they just started, and the old TV series Criminal Minds, which has caused the thirteen year old to come into our room a couple of nights after nightmares woke her up. It was made for TV, but the criminals are pretty heinous. I can't remember if I mentioned the movies that were worth watching: Just Mercy, Peanut Butter Falcon, and Freedom Writers. There are some language issues in these, but the themes were powerful, and the films well made.  I made the mistake of putting on Shakespeare in Love the night after Shakespeare's birthday, which won a lot of awards and remember thinking I loved, but it starts off with a lot of adult content. . . oops. Had to fast forward a bit, and then the kids all got frustrated and went to bed, but I stayed up and loved the second half, when the players begin to work on performing Romeo and Juliet. It is a fun film, but much too graphic for family viewing. Star studded cast.

I tried to get festive for Shakespeare's birthday - although I was off by a day. For some reason, I had the 24th in mind, but realized on the 23rd my error - in part because my arts and leisure college student reminded me and crowed with delight via text when he was right and I was wrong.  We had a driveway socially distant social planned for Thursday with the neighbors, so I stuck with my initial plan to celebrate on Friday. We had scones and cream for breakfast, but though I looked up the recipe, I didn't make Yorkshire puddings for dinner because I made meat pies using frozen puff pastry and beef chunks stewed in beer.  The meat never softened up enough to be a good tender, shredded texture, so I was disappointed, but the boys liked them.  Roasted squash, potatoes, and beets accompanied them, along with rotisserie chicken because I went to the store that day, and the idea of chicken legs was appealing. I was supposed to save a bone for the bone -in-vinegar experiment because the girls were wanting to try it, but I forgot.  We don't eat a lot of meat with bones anymore.  Angel food cake with whipped cream and fruit was for dessert - It was going to be trifle, a nod to the sherry soaked pound cake trifle that I read about on a Renaissance cooking website, but went for the labor saving option.  An article on National Geographic's website had an inspiring description of making shaped foods, like deer shaped buns filled with red wine or currant jelly, so that when they were torn apart it looked like blood spilling forth.  Maybe next year! (this site was fun, too.)

I have not cooked much the past month - that has been the other favorite pastime for the girls. Particular successes: two different varieties of lemon tart - one filled with lemon curd, the other with lemon mixed with sweetened condensed milk kind of like Key Lime pie, naan, scones, different varieties of dinner rolls and biscuits, Nutella cookies (although Nutella is too precious to bake with...), homemade granola, and some nutritious cookies - one variety of ginger snaps and another almond flour/almond butter/chocolate chip delicious nugget. I still like the no-bake nutritious cookies made with peanut butter, honey, powdered milk, oats, and various nuts and seeds, all rolled in coconut, better, but these didn't last long.  A few recipes didn't turn out as well: The chocolate mousse needed more whipping, the covid cupcakes were dry, as were the hipcakes made with homemade cake rather than cake mix for the crust, and some of the bread experiments were less successful.  Have I gained a thousand pounds? I have only avoided excessive weight gain by being obsessive about averaging five miles on the step counter... (We've also polished off probably something like 10 gallons of ice cream since Easter.)

Other news: Today the beaches reopen in our area for exercising. No stopping, gathering, or sunbathing allowed. Of course, today is overcast after a sunny and warm weekend, so crowds probably won't descend. Opening on a Monday was as a wise strategy, I think. Meanwhile, the base beaches, which had remained open, closed during the weekend - perhaps because too many people were gathering.

Last night we drove down to the oceanfront to catch the bioluminescence.  The kids all complained when I made them load up in the car at 8:30, but I hadn't ever really seen it, other than little dots in the water in Guam during our one night snorkel that resulted in me almost being drowned by my younger children who clung to me in fear while the older ones swam off with Dad.  It was beautiful. You may have seen this video that was filmed off the coast of Newport Beach about an hour north of the dolphins swimming in it. They glow in the dark as they play in the surf. The effect is caused by certain algae in the water. During the day, the tide looks like it is dirtied by reddish mud, but at night the crashing waves glow electric blue. My iphone camera didn't capture it very well, but you can get the idea below.  Now I need to catch a grunion run...

Better quality photos are available elsewhere online, but this captures the effect

The kindergartner creates her own checklists for school

In an attempt to enlarge our home gym we bought a basketball goal.  It nearly caused a trip to the ER when one of the boys tore open a half inch gase on the bottom of his foot near a toe. He sliced it on the base of the goal after dunking a ball. We heatedly debated the merits and drawbacks of going to get stitches, but I won out with my appeal to field medicine. And we had some Nuskin on hand. So far it's holding together just fine.

Covid cupcakes

One of many tea parties. They are on the schedule.

Everyone loves angel food cake with whipped cream and fruit.

Not everyone loves reading a sonnet after dinner.

The pool is open!

My roses are thriving - but no flower show home judging this year.

fancy tea party

Memorial Day Weekend

We keep meaning to travel to the northern part of California to see the giant trees and the beautiful mountains, but our plans keep being rearranged. We thought we could take advantage of the three day weekend to do so, even though Memorial Day weekend is typically a busy weekend for everyone: a holiday, high school graduations, end of the school year. We have the additional event of my birthday, so in celebration I thought could plan a family outing.

But our plans for the weekend were rearranged after my son's 4x400 team qualified for the next level of high school track competition.  We cancelled our plans to camp in Sequoia National Park and to see some friends in Fresno in order to head to LA again.

Run! Catch them!

Since we had the extra day, at the last minute I decided to pursue a shorter, closer camping trip, but most of the reservable spots across America were reserved. We had some local friends who had mentioned wanting to camp, so I invited them along, thinking we might find a first come, first served site. They didn't want to wing it, so they decided to reserve a couple spots at the beach campground on a nearby Navy base.

My first reaction was not positive. I don't like beach camping. I wanted mountains and trees. I wanted to force my kids to commune with nature. I wanted my original plan, and if not that, my secondary plan.

But I had involved other people. Now I felt like I had to make other people happy, including my kids. They liked the idea of hanging with friends better than communing with nature with their immediate family

The quandary caused me to squint excessively. My husband sighed. He knows how I operate. I don't like shifting directions.  It takes me so long to commit to an idea that changing it is upsetting. I also don't like conflict and I don't like disappointing people.

Sometimes knowing you have a predisposition to a certain personality trait means you can control or at least temper it. Other times it means you have to ask for forgiveness.

I know I can get anxious about making decisions, especially when the decisions involve other people. I also have a hard time not feeling regret when I do make a decision. Usually, the reasons to feel regret are unimportant in comparison to the reasons to be grateful.

In the end we split the decision. We went for hike in the Los Padres National Forest and even checked out the first come, first serve campsites. One was available, but by the time we drove by it, all but one of my kids were threatening to mutiny if we didn't camp with friends, even though these friends' kids are much younger than mine. My husband wanted to camp with just our family because we have so little family camp time available, but we were both willing to compromise to keep the happiness quotient at a midrange rather than letting it fall into the lower end.

It wasn't what I imagined, but the weekend was nice, nonetheless. I'm sorry we didn't fit in a patriotic activity on the actual Memorial Day, other than a prayer for servicemembers who have died before we ate our burgers, but I can usually find a reason to be sorry for something, as well as many reasons to be grateful for another year of life, another discovery of God's grandeur and sense of humor, another collection of happy memories to add to the memory bank.

Hurrah! Birthday coffee cake at a morning celebration.

Wildflowers and hikers in the Los Padres National Forest

The rock climber extraordinaire.

A view of Piedra Blanca, the white sandstone rocks that were our destination.

Rock hopping

The four boys ready to explore.

My less enthusiastic hikers.

The iphone couldn't capture the color in this shrub

A hazard of beach camping: being so close to your neighbors you can hear them snore. 

Another hazard: Breeding seals. Fascinating and funny creatures.

A hazard of letting your husband shop for camp food: SPAM. 

January Reading

On the plane ride to and from the states I got quite a bit of reading done. I spent a number of hours engrossed in the literature textbook for my class, but I also did some fun reading. Only some of the reading wasn’t fun because it made me second-guess my own choices.

First, I finished the biography of Mother Antonia, which was inspiring and made me question yet again whether I am doing enough, whether I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Am I satisfied being a status quo Christian? Shouldn’t I be working a little harder to do something radical for Christ? I could give more. And yet I fail at the very things that are closest, that need to be done most: prayer, loving my family, reaching out to neighbors. Mother Antonia was twice divorced, she raised 7 kids, and then she made private vows and went to live with Mexican prisoners in Tijuana.  Eventually her vows were recognized by her bishop.  But here is a woman who followed a call to the extreme.

We have friends here who are foster parents. There are three times as many foster children on Guam as there are homes for them. Our friends were hoping to adopt the baby they have been taking care of for six months, ever since she was a few hours old, but her grandfather has now decided he wants her.  They are crushed. It’s like having a death in a family.  I admire them for being so generous, but I have these little pinpricks of guilt that I keep using the excuse that we would be ineligible to be foster parents because we have too many children and not enough room in our house or car.  And could I love a child and then give her back to a situation that I know is not perfect?

The other book that got under my skin was Atlas Shrugged. Read it for the spouses' book club. I’m pretty sure few or none of the other ladies will stick through the whole 1026 pages, and I almost quit on it myself. I admit I skimmed quite a bit of the last half.  The book needs a good editor.  I don’t think you could argue that here is a work of great literature.  The characters are flat, the premise is preachy, the language is utilitarian.  The plot is interesting, but slow moving. It’s Ayn Rand’s philosophy that makes the book interesting and compels you to keep reading, and to question how you support your beliefs under a well-thought out attack like this one. Reading it on the tail of reading Mother Antonia’s story was a real study in contrasts.

I last read Ayn Rand back in my late teens and was intrigued by The Fountainhead, enough so that I thought it was romantic to fall in love with an architect myself.  But I didn’t get all the ramifications of her philosophy back then. I think all I took away was that you should always try to do your best, and that geniuses have to be content to walk alone or suffer persecution.  But now I see how passionately she wanted to overturn the prevailing Christian message of self-sacrifice as the highest good. And she makes a strong argument for how this message has been abused by those in political power.

Her philosophy relies on her faith that if people felt free to pursue their self-interest, they would choose what is best.  She didn’t believe in original sin. Nor did she believe in self-sacrifice. On the one hand, it should be easy to discard her philosophy because it doesn’t fit with human experience.  There might be a few men of genius who can look after their own self-interest without becoming selfish, but the rest of us have to contend with selfishness, jealousy, laziness, gluttony, etc.  Plus where do children and old people fit in her vision of society?  On the other hand, what gives her book power is the realism of the bad guys and their misuse of language. She seems prophetic in her depiction of the government using the language of Christianity - love, self-sacrifice, mercy - to justify socialism and the leveling of society.  Especially in light of the recent efforts to quash religious liberty and the implosion of the economy, Rand’s book made me wonder how it could be possible to reclaim these words.

And now I need to go reclaim an attitude of love towards my children who are berating each other while I let them sort out their conflicting self-interests because I’m busy pursuing my own.