My New Favorite Fairytale

After finishing the good books sent at Christmas from my brother's family, and Robin Hood, I've moved on to reading fairy tales to the children at bedtime. On Easter, my mom presented me with a book that belonged to my grandmother. It's a Reader's Digest collection titled "The World's Best Fairy Tales" and it's quite good. The boys are eating these stories up, "Read another one, Mommy." It even has some decent illustrations. On Thursday and Friday I read the Hans Christian Anderson story called "The Snow Queen*" for the very first time and it is now my favorite fairy tale. Here is my summary.
It begins with an evil mirror breaking, the shards of which fall and corrupt those they pierce. A boy named Kay gets a splinter of this mirror in his eye causing him to see everything that is beautiful as ugly and also one in his heart which begins to turn it to ice. He then meets up with the Snow Queen and she chills him even further with her wicked kisses. But Kay has a faithful and loving friend, Gerda, who goes looking for him and has many adventures along the way winning people to help her on her journey for she is true and loyal to her friend. Eventually she finds him and he is nearly frozen in the Queen's icy castle, where he is trying to spell the word "love" to free himself but he can't remember how. Gerda rushes to him crying, her tears melt his frozen heart and as he too, begins to cry at the sight of his dear friend, his tears wash away the splinter in his eye. He then remembers how to spell "love" freeing him from the Queen's power. After a long journey home, hand in hand, they discover they have grown up and it is summer.

Also we watched Disney's "Enchanted" last weekend, and since we are becoming well versed in fairy tales, it was even more fun. The children were identifying which parts belonged to the different stories, and since parts of the movie are in cartoon, Little Miss was also pleased with the choice.


*The version that I have linked is slightly different than the one in my book, but only in little details.

Guess who?

OK, you probably guessed who easy enough, but can you guess when?

Today I've been organizing and tidying and throwing out bunches of junk that has been cluttering up my desk and making room for the scanner. I found this old first grade (possibly kindergarden) picture in the heaps. I discovered this cool program on my computer that will organize pictures into photo album pages. I haven't actually tried it out yet, but what a neat-o concept, eh?

Last night I saw Harry Potter 5. It was super good, I had forgotten much of the plot in that one. In fact when I started reading HP7, I had to go back and skim through HP6 because I had forgotten some really important events. I read #6 while pregnant with L and pregnancy clouds my memory. So I absolutely positively LOVED Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was superb! Even fundamentalist-witch-hating-Christians who dare to read it will see how beautiful the story is.

*MK at Ganap! clued me in to a great review of HP7 from Christianity Today. Read it here.

bread and butter

I'm still not 100% better from the upper respiratory infection I came down with on Easter. My voice is still hoarse, and I sound like I smoke 3 packs a day. By days end, I summon my energies to read to my children but I haven't been able to sing to them in three weeks. We recently finished reading the Hobbit, and are now beginning the Fellowship of the Rings.

Today at Church, while retrieving the boys from musical rehearsal, a fellow mother said, "Joyella, I don't know how you do it. I've been 'single mom' for the past six Saturdays while my husband is taking classes, and it's really hard." Whenever someone tells me they don't know how I do it, my response is always, "I don't know how I do it either." I often feel like Bilbo when he said he felt like "butter scraped over too much bread." Especially these days. Work has been picking up a little, which is a blessing in a time of need, but I'm getting overwhelmed. If you think of it, pray for me.

On top of it all, something has recently been brought to my attention that I'm very disturbed about, and I'm not sure how I need to go about dealing with it, but it definitely needs to be addressed. Add to that, a semi-dead beat.... and you've got a recipe for stress with a capital S.

Boars, Books and Best Friends

I had a little shindig this weekend, an excuse to eat Chinese food, crack open fortune cookies*, talk about and exchange books, and visit with some of my most favorite women friends. Those invited were asked to bring a book or books they would be willing to exchange, there was great deal of variety representing the diversity of my friends. We had books about pregnancy and childbirth, novels, theology, sci-fi, non-fiction, cooking, crafts and how to books, among others. Everyone went home with something new to read. I'm looking forward to reading "Me talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris and a couple other books I saved out. I took the remainders to the Book Thing after visiting Baltimore Clayworks with my out of towner, Tif, who needed to collect her friend's artwork that had been displayed there. It was inspiring browsing the galleries and the gift shop. There were several pieces in the teapot exhibit that made me want to get my hands back into some clay again. Thoughts are brewing for taking a class on Raku...


*Fortune cookies, I learned, are much funnier if you add the preposition "in bed" at the end. (Yeah, it's a wee bit juvenile, but still humorous.)
Here are some of my favorites from the evening:
Luck will visit you on the next new moon.
You are a gentleman of outstanding wisdom.
Speak softly and sweetly.
To be mature is to accept imperfections.
Your kindness and generosity will be appreciated by others.
Many possibilities are open to you- work a little harder.
Emotion is energy in motion.

The Night Before Christmas, I was stirring...

I had a really lovely day, Christmas Eve. I was blessed to share a good portion of the day in the company of some close friends at my kitchen table over some brunch. Perhaps the two cups of coffee I drank with my Bavarian Cream Puff as evening approached are why I am awake right now. Or perhaps it is because my bedroom is aglow with the Christmas lights outside and so I don't have the usual degree of darkness which I prefer for sleeping. Maybe it's the little tiny Prettiness who is sleeping in the very center of my bed, perpendicular to me, feet poking my side. Or maybe I just can not quiet my mind. Too many sugar plums dancing.

So instead of lying in bed awake, I decided to get up, have a little snack and read a chapter or two from Andree Seu's, Won't Let You Go Unless You Bless Me. I just read the essay entitled, "Omega Point, What are we working for?" and thought particularly of two brothers I know. For them and the rest of you, I want to share this excerpt. I found it quite meaningful and heartening as well. The essay begins:

Sometimes, in mid-footfall, I get confused: am I rushing about my work so that I can eat, or am I eating so that I can work? All this striving, where does it tend to, where is the payoff, the "meaning"? "All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; ...All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied" (Ecclesiastes 1:7; 6:7). Thus the intellectual pursuit of fractions of seconds at traffic lights, or while removing lint from the dryer lint trap. And then I submerge again beneath the surface of thought into the vortex of quotidian events. Till next time.

***

All this was grievous to me until I considered...
A man in the Russian Gulag had had enough. He decided he'd carried his last stone from pile A to pile B for his tormentors in this Sisyphean farce. He laid himself down to await execution by shovel blade. Just then a fellow prisoner sidled up and, wordless, traced the shape of a cross in the dust; walked away. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn then gathered himself together and scooped up another rock- this time knowing why.
The rest is history.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," quoth Henry David Thoreau. But I know a better quote: Malcolm Muggeridge said the happiest person in the world is the woman who sweeps out her house to the glory of God. She is not aware of the grievousness of her days because she has transcended them with knowledge; she has "overcome" and will receive the hidden manna and also a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to her (Revelation 2:17).

... "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Scene 1: Willy Loman, working for Willy Loman, walks in, stage right, carrying two large sample cases: The Death of a Salesman.
Or imagine: Willy Loman, working for Jesus now, walks in, stage right, carrying two large sample cases: new play.

The whole collection of essays is definitely worth reading, and it's quite a small book, unfortunately, but it is meaty. While I have nothing more to add to her words, I will leave you with this seasonal message:

"Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased." (Luke 2:14)

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas.