Hot tomato soup for lunch.

Bill got back last night from Japan.

The piano teacher finally emailed me back confirming that I had, in fact, left my day planner there. I have found my mind.

My dad is out of the hospital and mobile. Broken hips aren’t like broken legs, and they get you up and moving around fairly soon. He has to use a walker, but we aren’t going to call it that, because old people use walkers. I’m going to call it a “four-point crutch.”

My mother is a Registered Nurse. She does home visiting and happened to be telling me several weeks ago that people don’t like to use the term “nursing home,” because nursing homes, like walkers, are for old people. Instead, when she has a patient who needs some “assisted living”, she tells them that they need to go to Rehab. It’s still a nursing home.

Yesterday she called with an update about Dad and said he’d be leaving the hospital probably that day. She said he’d be going to rehab. I said, “Oh. You mean he’s going to a nursing home.” She laughed, remembering how she had clued me in on that euphemism just recently.

So, my not-so-old Dad is going to practice ambulating with his four-point crutch at a rehab facility. He should be home before Christmas.

Lastly, Billy informed me that, for France, he is to take chocolate for the party. Doesn’t get much easier than that. I have a bag of M&Ms in the cupboard…

The baby falls asleep in my arms while I read old posts via Bloglines. (I am very behind.)

Through the sun room, into the kitchen, then the dining room, living room and hallway to her bed. Along the way, I have to step over the sleeping bodies of three other children.

If I turned their bedrooms into something useful, like a sewing room for me, they would be upset.

Bill complains that our weight allowance is dangerously close to the upper limits (hello, family of eight, I remind him). I bet if we got rid of the beds, we’d gain at least 500 pounds. More books!

Now I need to haul them all into their rooms. Last night I left the girls on the hardwood floor, and they woke up in the middle of the night and complained to me about being achy. My fault, of course.

I met an angel today at Mass.

I was pretty sure it was going to be one of those Masses. Peter was refusing to wear shoes. The girls felt that the 40 degree temps did not warrant tights or coats. Billy wanted to wear a suit jacket with a very casual polo shirt. It was the baby’s nap time.

But we went. Billy with a casual jacket. Katie with socks and her Marys Janes (shoes, not candy). Jenny with sandals and no coat (whatever). Peter with his shoes on the floor.

At church, I went in with all the kids except the unshod one. Bill stayed to coax him into cooperation. By the time Mass began, they had slipped in at the end of the row, and Peter remained quietly over there pretending to nap on the pew. Mary fell asleep during the homily.

After Mass, I turned to see a very old woman talking to Bill. I sidled down to hear the praises of my well-behaved children, for I knew that’s what it was. Having spent most of every Mass for the last month or two in the back with a squirmy toddler, and after last week’s debacle with Peter slicing his head open during Communion, I knew that to get through Mass without some “issue” was remarkable.

The woman gave me the glowing words that I needed to hear about my children being so good. Then she gave me even more: she told me how impressed she was with my husband. “What a good father,” she said, “So tender, so involved. How well he handled the little one (Peter).” She was nearly in tears, and she had my eyes welling. What a sweetheart.

Out in the car, I joked: “You can fool some of the people, all of the time…”

Bill laughed and said he had told her she was lucky to catch him at a good moment (the parking lot just prior to Mass not being a very good moment).

*****

I’ve been pondering over the last few weeks how readily we accept new friends for who they are, even despite pasts flaws or sins, while we linger over the past with those we have known a long time. You can never forgive your brother the time he totaled your car, even though he bought you a new one and it happened twenty years ago and he was 17…but you can admire your hard-working boss who is a recovered alcoholic and spent 3 years in jail on DUI charges. Or that girl from high school might forever be a floozy…but that woman you respect from church with a sordid past awes you with her conversion story.

And I’ve been thinking about how God sees us in (at least) four dimensions (time being the 4th). I think C. S. Lewis used the two-dimensional example in Mere Christianity: we see a pencil in three-dimensions. If we were only two-dimensional creatures, we wouldn’t see the pencil, we would see only cross-sections of the pencil. We could never really be able to imagine that the circle of lead surrounded by some wood and a thin coating of paint was a pencil.

Similarly, God sees us…not just who we are today, or who we were a decade ago or who we will be the day we die. He sees us in our entirety. When we brood over past injuries or freeze in our minds the way someone used to be, we are clinging to a cross-section of that person and refusing to accept that that isn’t who they really are, any more than a pencil is a circle of lead surrounded by wood. And when we accept the imperfections of someone’s past, or present, or future, we get a teensy bit closer to seeing the whole person as God intended that person to be seen.

*****

Today, that old woman saw my husband at his best. I’m sure she’s not foolish enough to think he never raises his voice or gets annoyed by the antics of his three-year-old-I-don’t-want-to-wear-my-shoes-kid. But she saw his capacity to love and his ability to get a disgruntled tot to behave for one hour (without using duct tape).

And her message to both of us, from where she sits and through her eyes: what a good father.

Sunday to-do list

• Mass
• Take Peter to ER for two staples to the back of the head
• Nap
• Drink wine cooler
• Sit next to Bill and do nothing much for 10 minutes
• Shop online for some Christmas presents
• Drink another wine cooler
• Finish dishes (sorry, Flylady, maybe tomorrow)
• Set up bread maker for tomorrow morning
• Prep stew for tomorrow’s dinner
• Go to bed early

I think I’ll take care of that last one right now.

I think Hell Month is just about ended. It was a doozy.

Bill drove himself to work today, and managed just fine. I will no longer need to take him to and from physical therapy three mornings a week.

The boys’ last fencing class was today, and the academy is not continuing their weekday, morning lessons. They begin their next session on Saturday at noon (and thank goodness, they will let Billy take the next level even though he is not yet 9). So, Saturdays are a bit crammed, but Thursdays are not. And Bill can drive (Praise the Lord, all you lands).

Tomorrow, Fritz should be mostly finished with Week 8, and the other kids will complete Week 7. We are 2 weeks off from where I planned to be, but I have to be happy with this. My van is really not a good classroom, and the kids have worked hard under bad conditions.

Right now, the house is mostly clean and tidy, and the classroom no longer looks like the enemy has targeted it with a propaganda leaflet drop. The dishes are almost done. Two out of three dirty clothes hampers are empty, and what is clean and dry is folded. The washer and the dryer are busy with more.

Even a big stressor of the month – filling the heating oil tank (or rather paying for the filling of the heating oil tank) miraculously resolved itself this morning when I reconciled my checking account and realized I hadn’t entered one of Bill’s travel reimbursements. The travel voucher covered the cost of the oil with some to spare.

Which is why I called Bill and suggested we finally “pay” the kids for their earned kids’ meals at whatever fast food joint is between here and his work. We haven’t eaten out in months, I think, (and I count take out as eating out), and the kids had been earning points to get their own meal with their own soda and their own toy for some time. I’m not sure what Bill and I will have, but as long as it’s not cooked by me, I’ll be happy.

Right now, life looks good.

My children have a lot of games they like to play in the car.

First, there is the “punch buggy” game. I had never heard of this until I met my husband, and by then I was too old to find it amusing. My husband thinks it’s a fine game, and he taught it to the kids.

Next, they added the license plate game. Shout out the state of any non-Virginia license plate you see. Today they had to hash out the rules over the D.C. plates they see. “It’s not a state,” argued one boy. “And we live in the D.C. area,” argued the other. So, I guess D.C. plates are out.

The newest game is vehicle identification. Not normal cars, of course, but who can be the first to spot the other things on the roads?

My favorite game is the one using Obama campaign signs for target practice with their imaginary guns and other weapons. I don’t know where they come up with this stuff.

They play ALL these games at the same time. I don’t know if they keep score or not. So, on the way home this morning from Bill’s office, this is what I heard:

“Truck!”
“Bus!”
“Maryland!”
“Truck! Taxi! Truck!”
“Maryland”
“Truck!”
“Punch buggy green!”
“Truck!”
“Truck!”
“Ambulance!”
“Fire fighters!” {Hail Mary, full of grace…}
“Pennsylvania!”
“Bus!”
“Taxi!”
“Taxi!”
“I already called that one.
“The yellow one?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Bus!”

Then as we approach the median whose grass is obscured by the two dozen blue signs planted in it…

“Everybody! Get ready to fire!” (That was Katie.)

And when we were close enough, the van erupted in a cacaphony of noises which my scant skills in onomatopoeia cannot do justice.

The homeschool group did it’s All Saint’s Day party last night. In attendance:

St. Martin, preparing to cut his cape in half (store bought several years ago – see Bill)

St. Boniface Pius X Ignatius of Antioch, whose feast was yesterday (also store bought and reworked – see Medusa) Billy had trouble deciding.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary (yes, I made it, no, I’m not proud. It is, quite honestly, poorly done.)

Mary, Mother of God (Bill bought me that scarf in Afghanistan, the dress is Princess Leia with a trim added)

St. George (Bill made this suit of armor SEVEN years ago out of poster board. He is a clever man. Fritz wore it, but all the other children have shunned it, until now. I have saved it, dutifully protected with crumpled newspaper. Our grandchildren might wear it. Or perhaps I’ll have it framed in a shadowbox.)

I wanted Mary to be a dragon for George, but she would have none of it.

My sewing machine has been going non-stop for weeks, it seems. I’m not done yet.