7 quick takes

-1-
After a week and a half of 80+ temps, it finally feels like winter here: we have rain! My older two kids are out on the patio, dancing around with their umbrellas, and the twins are banging on the security door and vicariously enjoying the fun.

I am trying to tell myself that I have to start wearing long-sleeved shirts again. I don't believe myself yet.

-2-
I picked up our diocese's newsletter/magazine at our library - they have a used magazines for 25 cents stand, and there it was. Excepting the bishop's opening letter, there was maybe (maybe) one article that didn't mention gay and lesbian rights. I have to say, that even if I approved of gay marriage, I wouldn't want this to be my church. Shouldn't even liberals want a church that worships God, and not sex? Where's the desire for the transcendent?

-3-
I have learned to make my own underwear. No kidding. I was looking at my favorite pair, and realized that it was all of three pieces of fabric, joined with simple seams and hemmed. And I realized that for what it cost me to buy that favorite pair, I could probably make four or five on my own. So I tried. And it worked!

I might make a tutorial at some point (with drawings, I think, not pics, as I have no desire to have pictures of my undies on the internets!), but if you're comfortable with sewing knits, you can probably figure it out on your own, and I encourage you to do it. It's this wonderful part frugal, part-fashionista, part-artistic thrill to make something gorgeous that you've always had to purchase before.

(btw, to get your pattern, just take your favorite pair and trace it on some newsprint. If the resultant pattern folds in half correctly, you've probably made an accurate tracing. Make sure to leave seam allowances!)

-4-
I still carry my twins up the stairs to their naps together. That's about twenty pounds of baby in each arm. I can pick them up, sleeping, carry them up, and put them down together. I don't think I could carry and manipulate 40+ lbs. of baby weight it if I hadn't started when they were about five pounds each. But the weight gain has been so gradual . . . it's just weird to think about how that works. There are so many things you could never do unless you had worked up to it slowly. I think God grows us like that sometimes. He gradually increases the room in our heart by giving us more people to love, more work to do, more of Himself to worship and adore . . . sorry, I don't have any further profound thought there - but it's 7 quick takes after all!

-5-
I am reading two related but very different books right now: Home Comforts: the Art and Science of Keeping House and Behind the Scenes: Domestic Arrangements in Historic Houses. They are both utterly scholarly and utterly fascinating.

-6-
Is anyone else beginning to think about Lent yet? Every time I plan our menus, I think, "hmm, look at that veg. recipe. Must remember about it during Lent." The funny thing is, it was during one of our first Lents as liturgical Christians that I discovered that we like vegetarian food, and now we have veg. meals at least a couple of times a week. Not as a fast, but it always does feel a bit like a fast hangover. Strange how some disciplines stick, but not a disciplines anymore.

-7-
I really want to go to the mall. Not to buy anything, but just to wonder around it with all four kids. RSV season quarantine is doing strange things to my brain. I simultaneously really want it to be over and to get out of the house, and am scared of it ended, because them I have to stop being an introverted hermit, and I kind of like being an introverted hermit.


Thanks, as always, to Jen for hosting 7 Quick Takes. Go to her site for more great posts! (not just Friday, but every day.)

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell