Lioness' Fandom

It's our 24th wedding anniversary.  Yay us.  :)

All other work is pretty much suspended as we race to finish the den.  The deadline for having the walls finished, the floor laid down, and the TV installed (not to mention the futon carried down) is August 27, the start of the Republican National Convention, thus providing (hopefully) conclusive evidence on the raging debate in our house, "Is the Republican campaign strategy more motivated by cynical manipulation or by blind arrogance?"

We lost three days due to paint already.  Lowe's house brand, Valspar, has worked for us so far, but when we tried to paint the trim a dark color ("La Fonda Earth" aka melted chocolate) the paint came out thinner than milk, ran everywhere, and stained everything.  What should have been a one-day job turned into a four-day job, and ruined any chance of us buying more Valspar paint.  The trim that hasn't been installed yet will be painted beforehand, and we're reconsidering painting some of the installed trim.

Instead of building walls for the pantry and then adding shelves to the walls, we built extra-sturdy floor to ceiling shelves whose extra-thick backs form the "walls".  After much searching, we finally found someone who would sell us a skinny door for the pantry; for a while we thought we'd have to make one.

We finished the cabinet facings at 2 am.  Next up is the pantry door frame, then the pantry walls, the cabinet drawers and doors, the upper shelves, the book and DVD shelves, the trim, the paint, and deciding what to build for the TV: table, shelf, or frame?  Then the flooring, the TV installation, and we're done.  Knock on wood.

My 11yo middle child is in the throws of puberty, and the changes occurring in her body have turned her into a complete hypochondriac.  Since New Year's Day she's had a complaint about some ache or pain every few minutes from when she wakes up until she goes to sleep.  She's been known to wake us up in the middle of the night, or at dawn.  No amount of reassurance or scientific information has made a dent yet, although more books on puberty from a child's perspective are on the way.  Giving her a daily 10 minutes of uninterrupted "complaint time" when she has my undivided attention hasn't worked.  Debunk one complaint and show how that can't possibly happen, and she'll use the same complaint again in 10 minutes.  Exercise hasn't worked.  Sending her out to play with other children hasn't worked.  Mockery hasn't worked.  Nothing has worked. Her ability to drive us all bonkers has gone through the roof.

And suddenly I understood poltergeists, because this almost-pubescent child is so annoying as to make even dead people want to throw things at her.  Gah!

We celebrated the one-year anniversary of our first trip to Tuscaloosa with another trip to Tuscaloosa, this time sans tornadoes.  Technically it was a year and a day, as we didn't want to get caught in the A-day traffic again.  We went to a Target for the first time, which was underwhelming; and to Los Tarascos restaurant for the first time, which was overwhelming (great food but none of us are ever ordering a full-size lunch there again).

But the main event was the UA Arboretum Spring Plant Sale.  I wanted a golden lemon thyme, a perennial celery (lovage), a Madalane Hill mint, and a ginger mint. I found a golden lemon thyme, a wild celery (smallage), a curly mint, and a berries and cream mint, so no complaints.  I also scored a couple of asters and a yarrow for the flower bed.

We wanted to check out a local park, but the 3yo wasn't feeling well.  Still, we saw where there was a playground we could visit on future trips.

The good news is that my knee joint is fine.  It's the ligaments that are damaged, apparently from picking up a screaming toddler and carrying him away from something he shouldn't have been on.  Since the ligaments heal slowly, I simply have to avoid picking up toddlers or walking up long staircases for about six months and I'll be fine.

Right.  Like I can avoid picking up Owl for as long as sixty minutes.  I heard James Levine speak about the importance of non-exercise activities the other day.  If he's right I already have the greatest exercise machine known to man -- a three year old.  I don't know if I've lost any weight pulling him out of trouble, but I can do a full pushup for the first time in my life.
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We've been concentrating on getting the kitchen cabinets completed, and the shelves are finally done.  The stovepipe's in place, and the vent hood is almost ready to install.  We still need to make the cabinet facings, drawers, and doors, but the hardwood's been ordered to start that.  But we can use the shelves to spread our stuff out.  My Christmas present, a Kitchen Aid, in unpacked and in use.  Estimated completion date -- early spring.

In the den we've installed extra windows and put primer over all the walls so it looks like a room and not a dark cave.  We've started laying out both the pantry and one of the built-ins.  We still have to finish of those and put down flooring.  Estimated completion date -- late spring.

The handyman finished putting up the trim in our bedroom, the kitchen, and the hall.  He also did enough of the living and dining room that we can start moving in our furniture.  When we can afford movers, that is.  He took a bite out of the budget.

We painted a shed in the color scheme we're thinking of.  It's okay, but needs work.  It'll be a while before we can afford exterior house painting anyway.

The herb garden is going good.  The tender perennials are all down for the winter, but they look like they might return come spring.  The bee balm went down, but it's coming back.  Everything else just slowed growing but haven't stopped.

Last year's vegetable patch was too wet.  Next year we'll try it in a drier place, but I worry about how much sun it'll get.

No plants died except for a juniper that had been planted too close to its neighbors by the previous owners.  The junipers on either side are so big I doubt it'll be missed once the stump is removed.

We found some old bird feeders in the back.  I need to get them cleaned and out where my junior birdwatchers can see them.

I'm supposed to have some roses coming in the mail in a few weeks.  I hope they do well and the deer don't eat them all.  They nibbled on both the rose and the fig tree earlier, and deer have to be mighty hungry to eat fig leaves.  The deer population is exploding faster than the hunters can kill them.  At the rate it's growing not even a widespread cull may make a dent in their numbers.  Nobody wants to think about the kind of ecological damage that will cause.

Ric Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate who is not afraid to admit in front of a national audience that he doesn't understand the difference between a dog, a child, and an adult, or between a parental relationship and a marital relationship, has said some incredibly offensive things about gay married couples.  So offensive, in fact, that it's possible many people have missed his other offensive statements against straight married couples.

Ric Santorum opposes birth control even when used by married couples because it is "disrespectful" of women and families and so "hurts" women and society.  Think about it.  If a particular straight married couple honestly decide that they would make terrible parents and choose not to have babies and not to inflict their complete lack of interest in children or child-rearing on the next generation, Santorum thinks they are being "disrespectful" of children and families.  Really.

More commonly, if a married couple who want to have children choose to delay pregnancy for a few years in order to increase their own maturity and/or achieve a more stable financial base for their family, Santorum thinks they are "disrespectful" of women and families.  Honest.

Or if a married couple with children decide to limit the number they have so they can spend more time parenting the offspring they've already got, Santorum believes they are "disrespectful".

It's worth noting that the reason birth control was sought after in the first place was to prevent married women from dying in childbirth after their uterus ruptured from too many pregnancies, a horrible but common occurrence 100 years ago.  Santorum apparently thinks dying in childbirth is more "respectful" to women than living to care for the children they already have (or doing whatever else they choose to live for).

Of course without birth control more married women would die in childbirth and leave behind more orphaned children, significantly raising the number of single parent households in America.  Their surviving children would suffer all the problems associated with being brought up in a single parent family; but hey, they would belong to "respectful" single parent families!  Better be brought up in a "respectful" single parent family where the mother died trying to give birth than to be raised by two loving parents who "disrespected" the mother by not risking her health.

So to all the gay people upset about what Santorum has said about gay couples, You Are Not Alone.  Santorum doesn't just hate all gay married couples.  He hates all married couples, period.  There's only one thing you can say about a man who tries to win the Presidency of a country where over 90% of people marry with such an attitude.  Jesus, what a moron.

We went to an award ceremony today.  One of my sister-in-law's students had won an art award.  At the last minute he couldn't make it, and she as his sponsor had to accept the award in his place.  We're all members of the art association, and we all showed up for the ceremony including our (usually) beautifully-behaved homeschooled children.  (We get compliments all the time.)

Unfortunately our middle child, 10 year-old Sunshine, is a little -- absent-minded.  In the same manner that Antarctica is a tiny bit chilly.  She's sitting on one side of her aunt and I'm sitting on the other side.  She's still eating her dessert when it came time for her aunt to make the acceptance speech.  Everybody's looking at her aunt and her except for Sunshine.  She's staring down her nose at her plate as she busily finishes her dessert, paying no attention to anything around her.  I can't get her attention without distracting the speaker between us.

That's when her glasses start to slide.

They fall slowly down her nose, catching in her curls and slowing down but not stopping.  They fall off the tip of her nose and hang in the air, suspended only by her hair.  When they reach the level of her lips and would impede her eating she finally pushes them back where they belong, barely breaking speed in her effort to finish off the banana pudding.  It was one of the most amazingly, hilariously embarrassing things I've ever seen first-hand.

If anyone remembers a word of that speech I'll be surprised.

Later we stopped by Hancock Fabrics in the faint hope of finding curtain fabric that isn't way overdone.  Any restrained color or print is only available in the most ostentatious of fabrics.  Almost everything on the market these days is gargantuan flowers or even bigger stripes, but I found an antique map print that will look awesome in the den.  Now I just need access to my sewing machine.  At the current rate of progress that will happen in about, oh, six months.

Baby Owl is 3 years 2 months old.  Yesterday he pressure fit a board across his sisters' bedroom doorway and stacked wood blocks atop it.  This afternoon he took down the screwdriver and unscrewed their window latch.

Reading lessons began tonight.  That brain needs something to do.

Last night Mississippi Public Radio aired Terry Gross' interview with New Apostolic Reformation leader C. Peter Wegner on Fresh Air. 



My daughters, who I haven't let visit local Christian churches, had never heard Dominionist rhetoric before and were incredulous, outraged, and disgusted at what Wegner said, including but not limited to:

1) the Japanese Emperor had sex with the demonic Japanese Sun Goddess in order to cause hurricanes to fall on Japan and crash the Nippon,


2) that many politicians, especially Democrats, are controlled by demons,

3) that both non-Christians and non-Apostolic Christians are "part of the kingdom of darkness",

4) that democracy is bad for Christian churches, which should instead be controlled by authorized Apostles,

5) "...our goal is to try to have as many kingdom-minded believers in positions of influence in the arts and entertainment mountain as possible."  Not to mention in business, government, the media, education, religion, and the family;

6) to have as many Apostles in all branches of government as possible,

7) casting demons out of both individuals (which sounds suspiciously like "rebellious" children of Apostolic parents) and cities (apparently the demons give a copy of their Hierarchy and Employee List to the Apostolics so they know who's in charge where),

8) why Sarah Palin needed special protection against Witches

... there would be some people who practiced witchcraft and other forms of the occult who would try to take Sarah Palin down through certain rituals or curses or other techniques that witches have, and try to destroy her through those things.  (Gee, isn't laughter the most effective ritual against Palin?),

9) how they respect all religions, but don't think anyone should belong to any religion except their religion because all other religions are controlled by demons.  And this is respectful of other religions.  Honest.

But the thing that has Brighteyes (12) up in arms was when Wegner defended fellow Apostolic John Benefiel's claim that the Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol. 


GROSS: Okay. You know, you mentioned that you're close to John Benefiel, one of the organizers of this rally. Something he said that was very controversial, he called the Statue of Liberty a demonic idol. Do you agree with that?

WAGNER: I - let me say that I don't have enough information to disagree with it. I know it was given to the nation by - as a gift from the Freemasons of France. And there might be some demonic power that he and his friends discern in that statue, but I don't want to - I really don't want to make a strong commitment one way or another to that one.

Brighteyes read all 442 comments on the Fresh Air website.  She found people upset over nearly everything else Wegner said, but not this fact.  As it was left out of the abbreviated transcript she thought some people might not have listened to the full audio or read the full transcript and missed it.  She wanted me to be sure and tell everyone what "that idiot" said about one of our greatest national symbols.

The chilling part of all this is that due to the delay in airing the Fresh Air broadcast, we heard Wegner's interview yesterday as this story was breaking:  14 Peruvians shamans were butchered by members of a Protestant sect that believed the shamans were controlled by demons.

Does anyone believe they won't be doing the same thing in this country if they ever achieve their goals?