I am passionately opposed to the use of eminent domain except in very limited circumstances. Eminent domain is when the government can seize private property for the good of the public. It is meant to be used for big projects like dams or highways.

Recent court rulings have expanded government’s powers to the local level for reasons as simple as the government desiring a greater tax base which they obtain by selling this seized property to private developers who build nicer buildings and then sell them or lease them for profit. The new owners pay more property tax than the previous owners, so we all win in the end, right?

Everybody except the original property owner who has no home, no property, and received such paltry amount for their property that they cannot buy another home. The current targets of these eminent domain policies are poor people with rundown homes.

Like the people of New Orleans.

But please don’t believe for a moment that it would stop there.

I am thinking of my modest, 1100 sq ft Cape Cod home in a neighborhood of modest Cape Cod homes in an area where the McMansion dominates. My small lot is just about big enough for a 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 2 car garage mini-mansion with a tiny yard. I pay about $4000 a year in property taxes (did I just hear audible gasps from 90% of the country that doesn’t pay ridiculous property taxes?) but a mini-Mc would fetch double that, easy. Multiply that times the 500 houses in that small pocket of town and you can see why local governments salivate at the idea of suddenly increasing their tax revenue by $2 million. Do I feel that my property ownership right are threatened?

You bet I do. And you should too.

Thanks to Kathryn over at Suitable for Mixed Company for the link.

I needed to print out a 14 page document to read before tomorrow’s showdown at the local library with the local homeschool group, and I decided to do a blog stroll. One thing led to another, and I found myself at Chesterton and Friends reading about how I can Gilbert up my existence:

Make vows, and keep them; but always forgive those who can not. Challenge your foes, and defeat them; but offer always the hand of friendship once the foe is at your feet. Live, in short, with honour.

I haven’t had the opportunity to read much Chesterton, but what I have read is fantastic. Since most of you who visit my blog are moms with young kids and little time, I can’t seriously suggest you pick up a copy of Orthodoxy and dive in. But the Father Brown series is good for lighter summer reading, and Brave New Family (copyright 1990 by Ignatius Press) is a great collection of shorter essays that amaze me with their pertinance to today’s issues despite being written nearly a century ago.

And I simply must laugh…as I write this, the ink of my 14 page document long dry, I receive an email from the president of the homeschool group reminding us of our meeting tomorrow and telling us that we “may” bring our children, “but please bring something quiet for them to do (we’ll be in the same room). “

Oh, heaven help me make a friend of this foe.

In the meantime, I need to go load my six-shooters…

To: all family members

From: The Lady of the House and the Laundry Mistress

re: laundry

1. Please allow a minimum of 24 hours for all special laundry requests.

2. Please reduce the need for special laundry requests by taking dirty laundry to any of the appropriate “dirty laundry” receptacles located in the house.

a. The main laundry receptacle is located in the laundry room. Even the floor is acceptable, if the proper receptacle is full, or if you are too lazy or ignorant to sort your laundry.

b. The master laundry receptacle is located in the master bathroom.

c. The kids’ laundry receptacle is located in the upstairs hall bathroom.

d. Please ask for further assistance if you are unable to locate the appropriate receptacles or if you desire knowledge about proper laundry sorting.

3. If special laundry requests are necessary, gifts and favors for the Laundry Mistress are acceptable and prevent the need to extend the special laundry request time frame to 48 hours notice.

a. Appropriate gifts and favors include, but are not limited to: appreciative remarks, hugs and kisses, flowers, cash and diamonds.

b. Rude or obnoxious behavior or additional special requests of the Lady of the House will result in a termination of your special laundry request and bar you for a period of at least one week, but not to exceed one month, from any special requests.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And for goodness sake, if you give the Laundry Mistress a special request, please at least pretend to need those clothes after all.

Yesterday afternoon I sat on the steps of the pool with Pete in my lap and the hot sun on my back. Jenny scampered nearby – up and down the steps, but never too deep.

The pool wasn’t very crowded and wasn’t very noisy. It was rather peaceful.

Fritz and Billy were playing on a round float that looked like a tree stump. Katie wanted on, so Fritz boosted her up. There was barely room for the three of them, and Katie was on the outside edge. Fritz was rocking the float, and Katie was a bit scared of falling off. Without my prompting, the kids did their own problem solving and put Katie in the middle. Now, with both boys on the sides, they had the float rocking up and down with Katie gleefully clinging for dear life!

I sat and watched them play. The float was bobbing and spinning on the water. There they turned toward me: my three older children lying on their stomachs in a tight row with grins lighting their faces. A perfect picture of the happiness of childhood. A perfect picture of the joy of motherhood.

This image, this memory, this moment: please, God, help me perserve it in my mind and in my children’s minds. Let us all remember this slice of heaven on earth, this half-breath of peace and harmony, this time of joy and contentment.

My mom never had the time or the need to get involved in volunteer activities. She doesn’t know how lucky she was.

Yesterday’s meeting at my house was…interesting. One of Bill’s favorite phrases to describe somebody in a snit is that “he’s got his panties all in a bunch.” Well, I seemed to have a few wedgies here. I’m just thankful that I could sit back and watch. Unfortunately, though, I have to be very careful. This group is related to my husband’s job, and I can’t do anything that would reflect poorly on him. It would seriously affect his job progression.

Perhaps this is good, for it gives me the chance to practice deference. And keeping my mouth shut. And controlling my passions.

I told Bill that he worked at echelon’s so high, that the thin air and reduced oxygen seemed to be affecting everybody’s ability to think. Perhaps that’s just the way it is everywhere. You would think that the higher up in the pecking order you go, the more useful you could be. But it feels like the higher up you go, the more bogged down in legalities and political correctness and diplomacy and other crap you get. I have to remember, though, that a point on the outside of a really big wheel moves only a little bit, but all the points inside that wheel move much more in comparison. Perhaps what we do won’t seem to matter, but perhaps changes are really taking place without seeming to do so.

Today I have another meeting, at my husband’s office. ding ding Round Two.

And then this is the week of meetings for I have another meeting on Friday. The homeschool group here on post needed a Director of Membership, and I volunteered. I don’t know exactly why I did this. Bill was pretty upset about it.

I really don’t like the homeschool group and do very little with them. I was feeling pretty stupid about volunteering to work with a group that I didn’t like. I was worried that I was going to be a big thorn in everybody’s side. They’ve decided that members of the group aren’t involved enough, so they want to assign points for various jobs and make everybody earn a certain amount or else.

Or else…30 lashes with a wet noodle?
Or else…we won’t like you? (Oh, wait, we already don’t like you and that’s why you don’t participate…)
Or else…you can’t be a member of the group? (But since you never participate, will we really notice your absense?)

Anyway, just as I was really thinking that I was foolish to take on this entrenched group that, also, seems to have it’s panties in bunches, and straighten them out, give them an attitude adjustment…just as I was wondering if I could really make a difference, I met Piper on the playground yesterday afternoon.

I actually met Piper about 7 months ago. She followed me to Manassas on the one field trip I took with this homeschool group, but I didn’t interact with her much on the trip and hadn’t seen her since then. She lives in my neighborhood now. Her boys are the same ages as my boys. She homeschools. And guess what?

She can’t stand the homeschool group either.

She had similar complaints about the attitude among the leaders.

“Don’t be late on a field trip – it makes ALL homeschoolers look bad.” I agree that tardiness is annoying, but are non-homeschoolers always on time?

“Don’t bring little children on this field trip if they can’t behave – it makes ALL homeschoolers look bad.” I agree that a tantruming toddler is a bad thing, but how well behaved are they expected to be? And if I’m concerned that a 15 second outburst will exceed the tolerance level of the homeschool gestapo, please excuse me if I decide to not go on field trips, since, you know, I homeschool my kids and don’t put my toddler in day care full time and won’t be able to find a babysitter since the teenage girls in the neighborhood are, you know, in school.

“Absolutely no toddlers or babies may go to the Theatreworks programs – they might make ALL homeschoolers look bad.” Oh, really, and none of the public school kids attending the one hour performance will be out of line, ever? They will all sit quietly and politely the whole time? And none of their moms chaperoning the trip will bring a younger sibling?

Piper also asked me, “Is their ‘friends card’ full or something?” She got the same cold shoulder at meetings that I did. Nobody felt the need to even try to include her in conversation. I thought I just smelled bad.

When I told her that I was to be the Director of Membership, she told me that she had volunteered to do one of the activities that fell under that job. So, I have an ally. Somebody who is crazy enough to volunteer to work with an organization that she loathes in an effort to improve the organization. So, I’m glad I volunteered.

Yeah.

I used to think that my mom was obsessive-compulsive. I have distinct memories of having to clean the legs of the dining room table and chairs. We were a family of seven, and the dining room table was used daily; often the table was used for every single meal. The dining room set was intricately carved and this cleaning chore was so tedious that to this day I absolutely despise dusting.

And it’s all my mother’s fault.

I am hosting a meeting this morning. I can’t help but want to present a neat, clean, well-organized home to this handful of women. Vanity? Pride? Possibly…but mostly denial of my vocation. I used to have a neat, clean, well-organized home all the time. And then I had children. And then I began homeschooling. Now my house is neat, clean and well-organized if one compares it to the many clutterbugs I know. But it’s not up to my pre-children standards, and this bothers me greatly. I’ve learned to live with it, but for a few hours, I want to hide evidence of toys, schoolbooks, crayons, scrap paper, and sticky fingerprints and pretend that I live in tranquil simplicity most of the time.

I decided that the best place to have the meeting was the dining room. There are enough chairs for everyone (4 to 6 of us altogether) and a table for writing and for holding a nice hot cup of tea. So I looked at my dining room with a critical eye and discovered why my mom made me clean the legs of the chairs and table so often. They were disgusting.

Up until the end of April when we moved into this house and bought a kitchen table to use for breakfast and lunch, my dining room set hosted every meal of my house. And daily schoolwork. And every craft session. Despite washable slipcovers on the chairs and the use of a tablecloth at meals, drips, globs and goo had managed to decorate every leg of every chair, the legs of the table and the underside edge of the table which doesn’t get wiped up after dinner.

So last night, there I was, suffering from PTSD as I scrubbed away at the legs of the table and chairs. Fortunately, my dining set has much simpler lines and isn’t nearly as annoying to clean. And Jenny helped too. I guess she thought it was fun.

But I’ll bet if she had to do it every week, she’d grow to believe her mother was obsessive-compulsive.

Catholic Mom has this to say about the PG rating for the film, Facing the Giants:

What if the movie had the same plot but instead of finding his Christian faith, the coach attributes his life improvements to becoming a Muslim? What if he begins to practice Wicca? Christian parents might very well object. In the same way, Muslim, Wiccan, Atheist, or even Jewish parents might be uncomfortable with their young children viewing a movie that points to Christianity as the road to true happiness.

I agree. Even within Christianity, I’m not sure I want my children to be exposed to other concepts without me there to act as a buffer. Last summer, my kids participated in the VBS program here on post. This was a joint VBS hosted by both the Catholic and Protestant Christians. I wasn’t thrilled at this idea, but I went with it anyway. It wasn’t bad…

…the kids began each day in a “homeroom” for attendance and opening comments before heading off to the different stations. The woman who ran Fritz’s homeroom was asking the kids questions and trying to drill them in the appropriate rote responses. Name a book in the Bible. Who wrote the four Gospels?

How many books are in the Bible?

Whose Bible?

I went home that night and told Fritz: there are 73 books in the Catholic Bible. Repeat after me: 73 books in the Catholic Bible…73 books in the Catholic Bible…

It’s not a really big deal, but I’m happier with knowing what my children are being taught. I have no problem with other parents being equally cautious about what their kids may be exposed to over at my house.

I once had a neighbor attribute her preschooler’s recognition of an image of the Blessed Mother he saw on tv to playing over at my house. Yes, I have multiple images of Mary in my home, but I told her I had never, ever identified those images as Mary, Jesus’ mother.

And the last time I checked, even the Baptists approve of an image of Mary every time they display a nativity scene.

But still, I understand someone’s caution about the possible bad influence of my home. I have the same qualms about them!

Last night it was nearly 8 pm and Bill hadn’t called to say he was on his way home yet. 90% of me just sighed a heavy sigh and was prepared to face another evening of putting the kids to bed by myself.

But 10% of me was convinced he was dead.

I tried to imagine the police informing me that my husband had been killed in a car accident, and thought I was in a perfect mood to receive such news. I thought I was so tired, mentally and physically, that I’d surely be able to call my sister and hold things together, on auto-pilot, until she could get to me. And then I would probably need some drugs.

Do all women plan their possible reactions to the possible news that their husband is dead? My mom once told me she does/did. My sister does. Maybe it’s a unique genetic thing?

This morning I told Bill about it.

“Michelle, I’d have had to die in the parking lot. I call you as soon as I’m backing out of my parking space.”

“It could happen. Perhaps it was the one night you were distracted or decided to run an errand before calling me.”

“Yeah, right.”

Silly, huh. He laughs. But this is the same man who was worried to death about me last month. A neighbor was hosting a hen party. She would be moving soon and needed some help finishing up some open bottles so she wouldn’t have to pack them.

It was an act of charity to attend. My parting words at 9 pm:

“Oh, I don’t want to go…I’d rather stay here with you. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Two hours later, he left our sleeping children alone in the house (shocking!) to walk over to the alleyway a half block away. From there he could see the neighbor’s house on the next block and hear us “cackling” as he called it (“clucking,” I think, being a hen party). He decided that he was being ridiculous, that there was no way I was lying dead in the road in this ultra-safe neighborhood (military post, folks) with streets and alleys lit up so brightly that the street-facing windows glow with the light of a pre-dawn morn all night long.

Another hour and a half later, I returned home and he tried to be mad at me for causing him such worry, but then he decided that a few margaritas make me quite amusing. I guess it brought back the old days when we dated in college, and I would on rare occasions have a few sips of wine and get a bit tipsy.

(That’s my child-friendly version of life in college. I’m practicing for when the kids are older. How’d I do?)

Many months ago, Bill told me he was pondering our old age and couldn’t decide who he wanted to die first: Him, so that he’d never have to suffer a day without me, or Me, so that he could spare me living without him. Yes, he’s still quite the romantic. I find these thoughts very sweet. This morning, after last night’s contemplation of his early demise, I informed him:

“I’ve decided. I want to die before you. I’ve suffered enough days and nights without you already.”

He laughed. We agreed that we’d rather just die at the same time, despite the immense grief it would cause our offspring. They’ll get over it.

Earlier this week, Bill sent me an email from work with this picture attached. Here are his words:

Hey,

I was sitting here looking at the picture I have on my wallpaper and thinking about us and how great life is and great it will be to grow old with you and be with you through retirement. I figured I would sit down and write a few lines to express how much I love you. You are so wonderful and thoughtful. I love you.

Me

This picture is now my wallpaper too. I really hope, God willing, that I get to grow old with this man.

“We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” said the statement, signed by “Abu Abdel-Rahman al-Iraqi,” identified as the deputy “emir” or leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Joyous, indeed.

May his “martyrdom” lead to peace and healing for all Iraqis.

I once read that the whole point of etiquette was NOT to make people feel like buffoons if they didn’t get it right, but rather to provide guidelines so that everybody felt most at ease and comfortable. This was accompanied by a chastisement for those who would make somebody feel uncomfortable for committing a gaffe.

With that in mind, I strive to follow my golden rule of etiquette which is to treat everyone respectfully and also to not take offense at the omissions of others. For example, I try to remember to introduce someone who joins me in conversation with another person, but if I am the person who should be introduced and my aquaintance fails to do this, I just do it myself and don’t get worked up over it.

Well, yesterday I failed completely in my attempt to “make everybody feel at ease.”

I took Katie to her last Start Smart Baseball program session (oh, thank goodness this is over!) yesterday afternoon. One of the other participants is the younger sibling of a girl from Fritz’s CCD class. Olivia had said, at one of the last CCD classes before they made their First Holy Communion, that she wanted to have a party – not just for her FIRST Holy Communion – for her 100th Holy Communion. I asked her to please invite me if she did have such a party.

So when I saw Olivia, I asked her, “How many Holy Communions have you made, Olivia? Four?”

“No….”

“No? Oh, come on…at least 2 or 3, right?”

“No, just one.”

For a second I thought that she just didn’t realize that every time you go to Mass, and you go to Communion, you would count that. But quickly, my brain caught up with the reality of the situation and I knew that, no, she really had only received Communion that one time, nearly a month ago.

And I felt awful. Olivia was probably unaware of my point and quickly discarded my comments as that odd talk that grownups do. But her mom was only a few feet away and very likely heard everything. It’s not that I don’t think they shouldn’t be attending Mass every Sunday. It’s not that I don’t think it’s hypocritical to have your child attend CCD and receive the sacraments but to not go to Mass on Sunday. I really do. I could never have gone through the motions of “raising my kids Catholic” without full faith, without full soul. It’s dishonest.

But I don’t want to make somebody who isn’t where I am spiritually feel bad for not being where I am spiritually. I think it’s the job of priests and DREs to tell parents how to properly raise their kids in the Catholic faith. If she had asked my opinion, I wouldn’t have lied. But in casual circumstances, I don’t think there is much to be gained by making somebody feel bad.

I am just now reminded of another similar circumstance where, once again, I opened my mouth and inserted my foot. It was at a meeting at my last parish. I was a part of the Elizabeth Ministry, which is a great ministry for women. The original group of us who began this ministry were all extremely devout Catholics – most of us had been “born-again” fairly recently. We all grew in our faith tremendously as a result of working together in this group. It was fantastic. This particular meeting came more than a year after the original group formed, and many of the original members had moved on to other things, or were not present at this meeting, and many different members were there instead. Bill was deployed at the time and I happened to describe to the group that I had a babysitter for one thing, but was trying to squeeze confession in as well, but there was some special pre-Cana Mass going on and confession was canceled without warning, making me pretty mad, since my opportunities for confession without kids in tow was limited. One of the ladies present dropped her jaw. She hadn’t been to confession in over 10 years and couldn’t imagine that somebody would want to go so badly that they would get a babysitter.

She felt bad, guilty. I felt bad, for that wasn’t my intention. I was just comisserating with my fellow die-hards.

But my gaffe must have been the prompting of the Holy Spirit. She decided she wanted to go. Her son was in the 2nd grade and would be making these sacraments too. It took about 3 or 4 months with me asking her, at her request, if she had gone yet and with me providing some info on how to go to confession, but in the end, she did go, and felt good afterwards.

So, perhaps my ignorant comments to Olivia did not fall on the deaf ears of her mother. Perhaps she will feel a little guilty for not going whole-hog Catholic (I don’t mean that somebody has to obtain and use every single sacramental or icon or statue available…I just mean if you intend to raise your kids Catholic, then have Catholicism be an integral part of your being). Maybe it will only take Olivia two years to reach her 100th Holy Communion, and not a lifetime.