Seven Quick Takes: Volume ??? (Let me get back to you.)

Joining Jen at Conversion Diary for 7 Quick Takes Friday.

-- 1 --

So.  I disappeared for about a week there because MY AIR CONDITIONING BROKE.  You have to understand.  September is virtually still summer where I am, and it was worse inside than out, in an apartment that has no fans and only one tiny window that opens in the back room.  Like trying to breath and move in fudge that's just come out of the oven.

We took refuge at my parents' house for most of the week, which would have been fine and dandy if it hadn't been for the fact that. . .

-- 2 --

I started my brand new job this week!  Even though we were headquartered at my parents' house (with frequent trips home to restock on vitamins and changes of clothing), it was worth it to receive this opportunity.  I am now part-time secretary (read: Jack-of-all-trades) at a small Catholic childcare center in small Catholic community outside of the slightly larger Catholic community in which I grew up.  Daily responsibilities include writing creative ads for bulletins, polishing up the website and Facebook page, making pretty fliers for book sales and fundraisers, answering the telephone, and occasionally holding babies.  You know, the pits.  c;

I'm still working at the grocery store on Saturdays, to keep the much-needed income . . . well, coming in.

-- 3 --

Because I'm working at a childcare center, it only makes sense to take the Squirt along with me.  So he's going to be getting toddler-interaction on a regular basis now, with a lovely employee discount (totally free once DCF plucks me off the waiting list).

I also think it will be good for him to be under the care of a non-sentimental adult authority figure.  You know, to reinforce the behavior he's learning at home outside of the home.

-- 4 --

That means Sundays will be my only "off" days.  Friends, take note!

Having Sundays free regularly is a change of pace around here.  Usually, I'm having to squeeze in Mass between a late Saturday schedule and noon Sunday.

I've started walking over to the Episcopalian church the next block over to take the Squirt to the nursery.  I know the woman who watches the kids, and the church's secretary works with me at the store.  After that, it's an quick walk to the local Catholic parish for 11 o'clock Mass.  It's not our home parish, but I like that I don't have to load everyone into the car; and the Squirt and I can take our time enjoying a Sunday morning stroll, while I point out nature.

-- 5 --

I intend to carry on full-speed ahead with the Harry Potter book club (dubbed Harry Potter Project on Spinning Straw into Gold) and will try my best to continue to write timely posts.  (I'm failing already!)

About two weeks ago, we had our first live Harry Potter book club meeting in a small natural food store while Jenna was down visiting with her grandmother.  Masha joined us via Skype.  The other patrons probably gave sideways glances when I announced that out loud, but I! Just! Don't! Care!  It was that awesome.

We can confirm that Jenna is a flesh-and-blood person.  Jury is still out on Masha.  c;

-- 6 --

All this on- and off-the-clock activity does not bode well for my writing.  While I am a little grieved at that, in over the summer I've solidified the knowledge that my storyteller track is one for the long run.  And I'm okay with that.  I'd rather take a long time doing something, and do it right (or at least well).

And who knows?  Maybe I will find myself in a cottage in north Wales, my husband playing with our son in the garden, me pregnant with our second (of many?), and writing by the open window in the quiet evening with a hot cuppa after supper, this time next autumn.

Only probably much louder and messier.

In the meanwhile, I've a poem in the newest issue of Dappled Things and one in Goblin Fruit, with a recording of me reciting it.  Goblin Fruit is great fun for the imagination, visibly beautiful, and in harmony with the seasons, but their poems tend to the more fantastical and hard-to-interpret.

These may be the last publications for a while.  We'll see.  As others have noted, autumn tends to be a writing time

-- 7 --

Speaking of seasons, I've had it on my heart for a good while now to order our lives toward the seasons, both literal and liturgical.  I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do that.  For one, the seasons are subtle here, and while beautiful in their own way, I'm an Anglophile raised in the mid-west.  I want my stark fall, winter, spring, and summer.  For another, I wasn't raised steeped in Catholic culture until I was an adolescent, and even then it was only a Sunday and praying-before-meals thing.  I crave the monastic rhythm of the middle ages, the liturgy laced inseparably with the harvest cycle, like bone and muscle.  But how does one incorporate that in an age that is so detached?

And how does one do that working almost thirty hours a week, and keeping house and making healthful meals, and raising a two-year-old?