March 11, 2014 by Mrs. W

Elizabeth of Kikel Gables

“Anne came running in presently, her face sparkling with the delight of her orchard rovings; but, abashed at finding herself in the unexpected presence of a stranger, she halted confusedly inside the door….
‘Well, they certainly didn’t pick you for your looks, that’s sure and certain,’ was Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s emphatic comment. Mrs. Rachel was one of those delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their mind without fear or favour. ‘She’s terrible skinny and homely, Marilla. Come here, child, and let me have a look at you. Lawful heart, did anyone ever see such freckles? And hair as red as carrots! Come here, child, I say.’
Anne ‘came there,’ but not exactly as Mrs. Rachel expected. With one bound she crossed the kitchen floor and stood before Mrs. Rachel, her face scarlet with anger, her lips quivering, and her whole slender form trembling from head to foot.
‘I hate you,’ she cried in a choked voice, stamping her foot on the floor. ‘I hate you–I hate you–I hate you–‘ a louder stamp with each assertion of hatred. ‘How dare you call me skinny and ugly? How dare you say I’m freckled and redheaded? You are a rude, impolite, unfeeling woman!”
‘Anne!’ exclaimed Marilla in consternation.
But Anne continued to face Mrs. Rachel undauntedly, head up, eyes blazing, hands clenched, passionate indignation exhaling from her like an atmosphere.”

-Anne of Green Gables
by L.M. Montgomery

We are reading aloud after dinner and before bed most nights at this point. We just finished the Hobbit (for the second time), and I decided I wanted to introduce E to Anne Shirley, even though I wasn’t sure she could stack up against the beloved Bilbo and dwarves and dragons. We read the above last night, and as usual chatted for a few minutes after the chapter concluded about what happened. In Educationese they call this “building reading comprehension”. Doesn’t that sound fancy?

K: Wow! There were some people being really rude to each other just then!
E: Yeah, I guess so.
K: What do you think of Anne?
E: I don’t know.
K: Do you find her relatable? I have been that mad before. That lady was being so mean! But she definitely screamed in her face. Oh, dear.
E: I guess so.
K: Ok, well, I like her.
E: ……*Raises eyebrows*

Later on, as I was checking on her in her dark bedroom, she spoke up cautiously, with her eyes sounding wide.
“Mama? I think I like Anne. I think I like her because she’s…well….she’s, um, kind of like me! ”
I smiled. “Yes! I could see that.”
“You know, because she talks a lot, and I talk a lot, and she has a great scope for imagination and I do too. And, well, you know……” She trailed off. I recognize that trail-off. This is who I am. Is it ok?
“I think that’s true. That must be why I like her so much.”

❤

March 10, 2014 by Mrs. W

Homemade Mondays: Chocolate Syrup Hack

Whether you’re mid-party and someone wants a chocolate drink, or just by yourself and don’t feel like going to the grocery, it’s convenient sometimes to be able to whip up something quickly to add a little extra fun. Some of my favorite homemade staples started to be homemade because one day it seemed like too much work to get to the store. This particular chocolate syrup recipe took me only a few minutes of stirring.

Chocolate Syrup

Ingredients:

Hot Cocoa Mix

Water

optional add-ins: vanilla or almond extract, sea salt to taste, other flavors you might like. But the point is to keep this simple, right? Chocolate syrup is painfully simple to make and customize to your own taste.

Method:

Pour desired amount of hot cocoa mix into a small saucepan. Add only a little bit of water (enough that you can mix it into a medium-thick paste) and cook over low to medium heat. Stir with a wisk and make sure it doesn’t burn to the sides. It doesn’t take long but you do have to watch it pretty closely. Once all the sugar has dissolved, the syrup is very smooth, slightly thinner than you would like, and has the flavor you prefer (add more sugar if it’s too bitter, or sift in a bit more cocoa powder if it’s not chocolatey enough) remove from the heat. Allow to cool, and use immediately or store tightly covered in the fridge.

serving idea: mix in some peanut butter and serve as a fondue with bananas, graham crackers, marshmallows, etc.

March 5, 2014 by Mrs. W

Float or Sink? Water Density Experiment

We used this activity in our homeschooling and I’ll be saving it for portfolio purposes (it being so obviously science-ey and all), but it’s also just a fun activity. And good writing practice!

Any child who has ever taken a bath has probably done this experiment on their own, so I wanted to use the familiar concept to introduce the process of testing a hypothesis and interpreting data.

*To make your own worksheet, click on the picture down there, copy and paste it into a word document. But you probably knew that.

March 3, 2014 by Mrs. W

Homemade Mondays: Grenadine!

**If you just want the recipe then scroll down a bit. This is a blog, after all, and so it includes my musings.**

So, I have this group of mamas that has started getting together semi-regularly. We call it “the Mama Speakeasy”. The first time we had it, I put a sign on my front door that looked like this:

Which was funny and made us feel like we were doing something sneaky and fun. And we were. Ironically, the day of the party this sign did not deter the AT&T guy from accosting J (again! Dear AT&T: PLEASE LEAVE US ALONE. WE DO NOT WANT U-VERSE. Coming to our house several times a week in the summer and sending us things in the mail is not convincing. Furthermore, trying to engage us in long and fruitless conversation with the door open when it’s well below freezing doesn’t help your case.)

But for this month’s Mama Speakeasy, and moving forward, I wanted to find something that reflected what I was trying to accomplish a little more accurately, while still preserving my nerd cred. So we landed here:

I want people to be able to speak freely and in safety about their lives in an environment that is nonjudgmental and encouraging. And sometimes involves martinis. (In case you are nerdy too and wondering, I did not actually make people say “mellon” before they could come into my house. I’m not THAT bad.)

Anyhow, in the quest for crunchy or “real food” drink options, a friend and I were looking for grenadine because pink drinks are fun. And the first one I found had these types of ingredients:

Ingredients: HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WATER, CITRIC ACID, SODIUM CITRATE, SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVE), RED 40, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, BLUE 1

Um, no thank you.

We did manage to find one that seemed to contain food, but when I looked at the ingredients I realized it was basically pomegranate simple syrup. Since we were planning for a fancy party, I already had pomegranate juice at home, so I decided to try to figure it out myself. It has to boil down for a while, but there’s very little (read: about 30 seconds) actual work involved in this and it makes an impressive party addition because it’s one of those things not everyone might think to make from scratch.

Homemade Grenadine

Ingredients:

2 cups of pomegranate juice

1/4-1/2 cup of real maple syrup

a little splash of lemon juice

Method:

Combine pomegranate juice and maple syrup in a wide sauce pan. Bring to a simmer and allow to reduce, stirring periodically, until it reaches your preferred intensity of flavor. If it’s too sweet, add a little juice (pomegranate juice is tart!). If it’s too tart, add some more maple syrup. When you are happy with it (mine reduced over low heat for about an hour), remove from heat, pour into a cute bottle if you have one (or whatever container you have), cover, and use or refrigerate.

You could also make this with regular sugar, or honey, or another natural sweetener. But my maple syrup version was really good. Just saying.

This weekend my kids and I talked about Shirley Temple Black and drank homemade shirley temples. Good times.

February 26, 2014 by Mrs. W

The Difference between Zero and Not Zero

When I was a new mom, I went around amazed quite a bit. I don’t mean ‘dazed and confused’, although there was quite a bit of that, too (tired as I was). I was one of those moms who was floored by the most mundane accomplishments of my baby. To be fair to my former self, it wasn’t just my kid I was fascinated by. All babies were able to learn new skills, and I was in a near continual state of wonder about the whole thing whenever I thought about it. Conversations with other parents sometimes went like this:

K: Holy cow! I can’t believe it! E got her fingers in her mouth! Yesterday she didn’t even seem to know she had hands! She’s so amazing!

Other Parent: Yeah, my kid’s been doing that for a while.

K: Oh my gosh! I thought I saw that last week. Your kid’s so amazing!

Other Parent: ………………..

I have to admit that after 6 years and 2 babies, some of the shine has worn off.

I recently read in Some Internet Article (if you know which one, please speak up and I’ll quote it directly…I like to give credit where it’s due) that one of the things that’s hard for me is that I spend a lot of time getting things “back to zero”. This is kind of true. According to the article, my work includes things like making zero dishes in the sink, zero toys on the floor, zero loads of laundry left to put away (hah!), etc. This is often true.

What is NOT true, and I have to keep reminding myself of this, is that the ‘back to zero’ thing does not apply to my children. If I slip into thinking that it does which is very, very easy (because zero diapers to change, zero naps to conquer, zero snacks to give, zero boogers to wipe), then I will miss the incremental progress that they are making. You know, the stuff that used to allow me to hold on through another screaming fit about having the wrong diaper on (even though the right diaper is dirty).

If I stand in my back yard in April and look, I’ll notice the beautiful fence we put in last year, the swingset, and the beginnings of E’s fruit garden. A little closer and I’ll see mud puddles, toys strewn about the yard, and the weeds around the strawberry patch. But a little closer still, and it gets fun again. I can look close enough to see a ladybug walking on a stick. Or the new growth in my herb garden.

I think, parenting-wise, I’m kind of looking at the mud puddles right now. It’s time to focus a little more on the prodigiously ordinary things.

Today E easily sounded out a word that she couldn’t read at all last week.

Today S only had to be told to climb down off the couch 5 times instead of 50 like yesterday.

Today we went on a bear hunt. We were going to catch a Big Bear. Who us? We’re not scared.

Today E got her own snack out of the fridge and I didn’t have to do it.

Today S was SUPER ANGRY that I didn’t give him an apple. He was so upset that he composed a song about it. We sat at the piano and played with our fingers and sang a Very Sad Song (well, as sad as you can be in C Major–I’m not good at improvising).

All that’s to say, these are not the sorts of things that will get them into college someday. But they are things that happened, that would not have happened yesterday. While they may seem small by some estimations, to me they are the difference between Zero and Not Zero.

February 25, 2014 by Mrs. W

Some Thoughts on Christianese

Once upon a time I had this friend at work who identified as Christian. That was cool, because I did too. We would talk about Christian things and had a lot of common ground, and could share a lot about Christian culture, God and people, and other things of that nature. It was nice to have short hand for discussing some of those things. We spoke a lot of Christianese.

I think Christianese is great. It is good and important to have a shared language to talk about things that are important to you. For crying out loud, Klingon can be studied at the Klingon Language Institute in Flourtown, Pennsylvania (I swear I’m not making that up) and as of 2008, about 25,000 Elvish words have been published (okay, Quenya, not Elvish, but I nerdgress). My point is, people come up with shared language to talk about things that they care about with groups of people who care about those things too. And that’s a good thing.

BUT. It’s only useful to a point. Please allow me to illustrate something quite on the other side of that point.

Once upon a time, later, my boss was asking me about one of the ways we live the life of Jesus in the world. It had recently come to her attention that I am Quite Religious (it is worth mentioning that this was only after I’d worked there for 2 years and had been asked repeatedly to talk about my beliefs in ways I preferred not to and so had declined), and so she was asking me what we do. At that time, we had a big family-style dinner at our house every Friday, and people would come. Most of them would be Christians, though not all. It was a chance for us to connect and share and be encouraged by each other because living the life of Jesus in the world can be HARD.

Anyhow, I was explaining all of this to my boss (who is Jewish) in front of my friend. I said most of that and then at some point she rolled her eyes, leaned in front of me, and said “That’s when she has her fellowship time.”

And I realized: oh…she feels like she is explaining something clearly that I am not. Though from the confused look our boss gave her, I would say that was not true.

The point at which Christianese becomes unhelpful is when we are talking to someone who is not part of American Christian Subculture (though arguably, there are many Christianese words that need a thorough redefining for a lot of us if Christians are actually going to do things that Jesus says to do; but that’s another post altogether). If you are discussing atonement, sinfulness, fellowship, sanctification…or any of a number of very important issues, it is important to have a way to talk about those things that will reflect their importance (it is also important to make sure that when you are speaking Christianese you agree or at least are clear about someone else’s definition of a word). But you wouldn’t go into your average local restaurant and try to order in Klingon or Elvish (although if you find a place where you can order in Elvish please let me know because I want to go to there). Or if you did, you probably wouldn’t expect everyone there to know what you were saying. Why? Because that would be nonsensical. Context matters.

It is worth noting that Christians are not the only subculture to come up with a shorthand that leaves other people in the dark. Tech-speak, music speak (classical, jazz, funk, pop, etc….many different ways to talk about music in there), medical jargon, foodie talk, sports-talk; I could think of countless examples. Here’s one.

Soon after J and I got married (or maybe even a little bit before), we were at a family party with a bunch of his relatives when this conversation happened:

Fun Relative: Hey! Good to see you! How are you doing?

J: Fine! You?

FR: Good! Good!……..

J: Did you hear about the decision?

FR: Yes! Oh, man, can you believe that?

J: I know, right?! Well, anyway I think whoever they get in there is going to have a really hard time this season. I mean, look at what happened last year.

FR: That’s a really good point. Hey, I’m going to go get another beer. It was great talking to you!

K: Um, what just happened?

J: What? Oh…we were talking about sports.

K: Yes. That much I got. But what sport? Baseball? Football? Basketball? Were you talking about a coach? A quarterback?

J: I don’t know. Whatever. There’s always some decision that everyone’s upset about, last year was always bad, and we’re always hoping to turn it around this year.

It is useful, then, to be able to recognize when other people are speaking a subculture’s lingo so you can choose to participate, if you know enough words. My husband is one of the best people at this that I’ve ever seen (see above). So having a shared language as a subculture is not the problem, then. Expecting everyone else to speak your lingo and then start agreeing with you about everything is.

February 17, 2014 by Mrs. W

Homemade Mondays: Cashew Milk and Cashew Cream Cheese

Since going dairy free one of the best things I’ve found (apart from my husband avoiding surgery and my toddler starting to sleep through the night sometimes), is cashew milk. It’s yummy and creamy in my coffee. So it’s become a staple in our house. Since I try not to waste, I’ve been experimenting with what to do with the pulp that’s left when I strain it. The first recipe I found online said you didn’t have to strain it and it would still be creamy and delicious, but I found that not to be true. So in the interest of wasting not and wanting not:

Cashew Milk

Ingredients and supplies:

1 cup raw cashews, soaked 4 hours on the counter or overnight in the refrigerator

3 cups filtered water, plus more for soaking and rinsing

nut milk bag or cheesecloth

large measuring pitcher or bowl

high powered blender (or maybe a normal blender and lots of patience…)

Method:

After soaking, rinse the cashews until the water runs clear. Combine the 3 cups of water and the cashews in the blender. Blend on high for 5 minutes or more (I usually set a timer). Strain through cheesecloth or nutmilk bag until pulp and milk have reached desired consistency. For a thicker milk, add a little less water. For a thinner milk, add a little more. Store in the fridge. You can also add other flavoring agents like honey, maple syrup, or other sweeteners, or vanilla. I don’t do that, because I mostly use this for my coffee and for smoothies for the kids, but if you’re drinking it straight or on cereal or something that might be helpful.

Cashew Cream Cheese

Ingredients:

cashew milk pulp, strained to cream cheesy thickness

lemon or lime juice to taste (start with only a little!)

salt to taste

Method:

Mix ingredients well with a fork, starting with a tiny bit of each and adding until it has the flavor you want. This is very easy to customize however you like…sweet or savory.

February 10, 2014 by Mrs. W

Homemade Mondays: Easy Oven Rice

Some of our Homemade Monday recipes have been a little fancy lately. This one is really simple and really basic, but this trick has saved me from scraping sad burned rice out of the bottom of my pans more times than I’d care to admit. This post could also be called “How to avoid buying yet another appliance that takes up space and only does one thing.”

Easy Oven Rice

Ingredients and supplies:

rice of your choice (also works with several other grains, like quinoa)

water or chicken, vegetable, or other stock

salt (optional)

glass or ceramic casserole dish with a well-fitting glass or ceramic lid

The Method:

Mix one part rice to two parts water (or stock) in the casserole dish. Add salt to taste, if you choose.

Cover and bake for an hour at 350 Degrees. If you oven has a “cook timer” on it, you can even set it to beep when it’s finished, like a rice cooker!

This will work passably well for most rice. I cook both white and brown rice for the same amount of time, although white rice would probably be done a little quicker than an hour.

If you’re interested in doing more research, Alton Brown was the first person I ever saw cook rice in the oven. His recipe is pretty similar but mine is easier and doesn’t use butter. 😉

February 5, 2014 by Mrs. W

God, Creation, Evolution, Nuance, and Hubris

I have a confession to make. Going to the Natural History Museum totally stresses me out.

When I was growing up, I considered going to a museum or a science class a test of my faith. When my biology teacher told us in the 9th grade that we were descended from apes, I looked at her and said, “Well, maybe YOU were.” You know. For Jesus. (Mrs. Butts, I doubt you’ll read this. But if you do, I’m really, really sorry.)*

The thing I remember most about the natural history museum was walking past all the signs that said things like “5 million years ago” and thinking yeah frikkin’ right. Morons. Everyone knows that the Bible is Very Clear about how long we’ve been here.

But then, at some point, it occurred to me that a lot of people say things like “5 million years ago”. And that some of them are probably actually really smart. So things started to feel a little less clear.

And then I started to meet other Christians who believed things like “5 million years ago”. What the what?! Don’t you know that if you don’t take the first three chapters of Genesis absolutely literally, your faith has no basis? Poetry? Prose? No, no, the New American Standard Bible doesn’t bother with that nuance. Nuance is how the devil gets you.

Still, it kept getting harder and harder to disregard All of the People as morons. Especially as people I consider to be heroes of my faith were “outed” as not-necessarily-seven-day-creationists. Very notably C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien; these two men, between them, constructed the backdrop of most of my childhood imagination. It is very hard to pin down what they actually believed about evolution, and maybe there is a lesson to be learned from that in and of itself in this day and age when we are all reduced to either “Tea-baggers” or “libtards”.

Watching Ken Hamm and Bill Nye debate each other last night made my stomach hurt. On one hand, I had all this nostalgic defensiveness about the dogmatic positions of my youth. Well, yeah, sea fossils on mountain tops. What’s that about? It was also painful to watch the audience clap and cheer for Ken Hamm and stare in stony silence at Bill Nye. Don’t you guys know? He’s the Science Guy! He’s saying something charming and being funny! You’re allowed to laugh at the fact that the big bang would have been silent. It doesn’t mean you’re becoming an atheist.

Sometimes I miss the comfort of being Very Sure of All the Things. But mostly I am very glad for the loss of my hubris.* I am able to have conversations with people now and actually learn from them. I remember in college once I spewed the four spiritual laws all over a poor fellow undergrad just because she had offered up that she thought she understood something about who God is because of her relationship with her husband. What she offered me was real and experience-based. What I offered her was memorized out of a pamphlet. I was presuming to claim status as an eye-witness about something that I hadn’t even taken the time to internalize yet. I wish I could say this is the only cringe-worthy moment I had in college (wouldn’t it be nice if we could all reduce that pile to one?). But if you know me at all, you know it wasn’t.

All I can say about that now is that I am very glad for the relative anonymity of not being famous so that I can work this out without being skewered publicly by thousands of commenters every step of the way like some of my famous Christian brothers and sisters who say stupid things and then come under fire for them. Anyone who knows anything about the science of education will tell you that is a very, very unproductive way to learn anything. As I thought about writing this out I could hear in my head derision from my right for compromising and allowing the World instead of God to direct my footsteps. And from my left, I could hear derision for not being progressive enough. The pressure is further intensified by the fact that I am now responsible for the cognitive development of two people who, if the internet is to be believed, will either turn out to be amoral heathens or bigotted bumpkins if I make the wrong choice about which museum to go to over Thanksgiving (The Creation Museum is close to my hometown, as is the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History). Why do I have to be either Godless Bill Nye, or Anti-scientist Ken Hamm? Why can’t I be something in between? Oh, wait, I can. Just maybe not on Facebook.

I suppose this post will end the way this conversation usually ends for me these days. That is to say, I don’t know. It’s a cop-out, I get that. But it’s the best I’ve got right now. At the end of the day, whatever happened at the beginning of the world thous…wait…mill…wait…bill…well, a very long time ago, anyway…has very little bearing on whether I should be kind, generous, and loving. I’ll take comfort and direction from the words of George McDonald (another hero of my faith, someone who was alive when Darwin was, and who was thoughtfully and intentionally silent about this entire debate). “I have enough to do in trying to faithfully practice what is beyond dispute.”

*Please don’t take my explanations of my experiences growing up as descriptive of Creationist Doctrine as a whole. I can not and would not claim to represent that. My experiences, thoughts, and pride are my own and no one else’s. Christian teaching, including Creationist Christian teaching, says that we should be humble (which by extension means to not assume that people are morons) and the hubris of which I spoke, while certainly not rare, is certainly not an inherent trait of Evangelicalism, Creationism, or Christianity any more than angry atheism is a necessary part of accepting evolutionary theory.

Additional reading:

A middle ground? Some wouldn’t think so. Thanks, JE, for sharing this.

Bill Nye’s motivation for debating

Ken Ham’s motivation for debating

January 25, 2014 by Mrs. W

On Modesty, Shaming, and Blaming

So a few months ago, this unfortunate open letter to teenage girls happened. Some people shared it far and wide it to proudly proclaim that their children would never be allowed to whore themselves out in such a way. And then as the backlash hit, the internet was up in a rumpus about it for a while…Jezebel.com and other feminist websites buzzed with snarky, satirical, or rage-filled open letters to Mrs. Hall. Other, kinder voices like Nate Pyle and Kristen Howerton had more helpful things to say. The whole thing upset me more than made sense to me at the time, and after some reflection I realized why.

When I came across another repost of the original Mrs. Hall letter yesterday, I realized it was time to share this part of my story.

I was in college at OSU. I was walking down High Street with my friend eating some Flying Pizza. I maintain that it’s the best pizza around OSU and even though my husband J prefers Adriatico’s, we’ve made it work. But I digress. Sorry. I’m nervous.

Anyway, it was a normal afternoon and I was walking normally when a normal-looking man came walking the other way. This was normal because it’s High Street and thousands of people walk on it everyday. I made brief eye contact and gave a tiny ‘smile-and-nod’ that I’d smiled and nodded at thousands of strangers before, then turned my eyes back forward. As we went to pass each other he stepped in front of me, reached around my pizza, and cupped my left breast. I was so shocked that I froze and we just stood there like that for a few seconds. He stared at me hard. Then he took his hand away and walked a few steps down the street then turned to look at me. I walked quickly away with my friend. We called the police to make a report, but I couldn’t give them many details other than “dark hair, dark eyes.” So that was that.

I don’t talk about this much. I only just told J about it before I went to write this post.

Here’s the thing. I don’t remember much about the man himself. But even now I remember very clearly what I was wearing when it happened: my pink t-shirt with a glow-in-the-dark turtle on it that says Speed Kills. Crew neck and fitted but not too tight. Never too tight. Jeans. Sneakers. Cross necklace.

Why do I remember so exactly what I was wearing that day? Because I worried about it for a long time afterward.

See, I grew up thinking that if I wore the right clothing (read: Modest. Several definitions of this. More about that in a minute), then I wouldn’t be a temptation to the men around me. It was my job to keep their hearts safe from wrongs they might commit when faced with my thighs or side-boob. I felt betrayed by the rules. I had worn what I understood to be appropriately non-sexy clothing. Why didn’t he leave me alone? Maybe my shirt was too tight, and I just didn’t realize it. I don’t remember what he looked like, I just remember thinking each time the modesty issue came up in church for a long while afterward, “Oh, God….was that my fault?”

Let me share that again, in case you missed it. A TOTAL STRANGER WALKED UP TO ME ON THE STREET AND GRABBED MY BREAST AND I COULDN’T IDENTIFY HIM BECAUSE I WAS TOO BUSY WORRYING THAT IT WAS MY FAULT.

Sorry for shouting at you, but this is important. How we express ourselves physically in the world (through dress, hairstyle, makeup, etc.) communicates what we think of ourselves in a significant way, and therefore is a sort of shared language. It is vitally important to kindly and continually have the conversation about what relational responsibilities lay with men and women with respect to each other. But telling girls that they are responsible for what men think about them is more than just false. It’s harmful. I got lucky, relatively speaking. Some perv grabbed my boob. I’ll live. But there are far too many girls who have far worse done to them, and sometimes all that Christian culture seems to have for them is “wear a turtleneck next time”. It’s not good enough.