Friday, November 1, 2013

7 Quick Takes: Happy Bday Gram and Andy!!


Today is one of the awesomest days of the year. It's my brother's birthday AND my gramma's birthday AND All Saints Day. Happy Birthday to Gramminator and IndiAndy Jones!! :o) Perhaps someone in the family could show gramma my Quick Takes? Thank you in advance. (Is this a Quick Take rather than an intro? Am I cheating?)


My brother's girlfriend made him a totally amazing cake! Last I heard, she was the only one brave enough (er... "hungry" enough) to eat any of it. But I still think it's a HUGE success.



Dear Andy, let me send a much belated response to a letter you wrote (quoted below) and say that I would, in fact, like to do something fun while I'm home for the holidays.

I want fun! :o)
No fun! :(
Dear Sarah,
Sorry to keep
Bugging you
But there's
Nothing to do.



Dear gramma, I remember you always helping us out of jams. I particularly remember gramma reading Andy the literary classics that were required for school because he just hated reading. I would hear her voice start to tremble and she would pause and say "This is really sad!" at the tragic death of yet another faithful canine companion. But gramma persevered through Where the Red Fern Grows and Sounder and a host of other traumatizing youth fiction novels.



One year my class at school had an International Food Day. We were divided into groups and instructed to choose a country. Someone in my group decided to make Swedish meatballs, forcing the rest of us to identify and produce some other Swedish dish. (Seriously??? Name another food with the word Swedish in the title.) In a small Vermont town of about 3000 people, we did not have a Scandinavian store within a reasonable driving distance. So I did the only thing I could think of in that situation: whined to gramma! She found the one Swedish recipe in her old cookbook, for cookies that we had never heard of and certainly couldn't pronounce. But wouldn't you know, those sandbakelsers were amazing!


In my senior year of high school I took a French class which included a French Food Day. I remember one guy basically made grilled cheese sandwiches out of French toast, which is apparently something that French people do. Again gramma came to the rescue making a Strawberry Glace Pie. To this day we do not know if the word glace has two syllables or one. UPDATE: the word glace does have two syllables, like the McDonald's Frappe. THANK YOU GRAMMA FOR COMING TO OUR RESCUE!



I found this picture of me and Andy looking very serious outside of our indoor play tent. Bed Bath and Beyond sells play tents but they look way too high in quality. Simply scaling a grown up product down to a child's size takes some of the fun out of it. How about stretching the imagination?
I have to admit that All Saints Day overwhelms me. How am I to celebrate ALL of the Saints in one single day??? This year I went with friends to a beautiful vigil service (All Hallows Eve!) at the Dominican House of Studies. I did not see Fr. Justin this time but I did see a Brother who happens to be the godfather of my landlords' baby. But, speaking of Saints, the Bishop of Northampton has begun the fact-finding necessary to open the cause for canonization of Gilbert Keith Chesterton!! This gigantically wonderful and brilliant man is not your typical image of a Saint. But I'm rooting for him, along with Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Dorothy Day, Blessed Mother Teresa and some others (like Mother Angelica and His Holiness Benedict XVI, whenever the Lord decides to take them).

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around."
--Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton, 1908--


For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

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