Welsh Daybook (a.m.)

April 12, Feast of Pope St. Julius I, a staunch defender of the Faith against the Arian heresy.

7:55 am  //  wake, morning offering

8:00 am  //  dress, wash face

8:10 am  //  start laundry

8:20 am  //  breakfast

8:40 am  //  reply to Facebook messages and emails

9:05 am  //  brush teeth, apply makeup

9:15 am  //  meditation

9:40 am  //  study Welsh

10:10 am  //  Afon wakes--feed, dress, tend to Afon

10:45 am  //  wash dishes, tidy up, chores, laundry

12:00 noon  //  lunch

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This is just a basic outline.  Some days start later, and the time slots are rounded off.  Some days I don't get a good start at all; others, I give up halfway through, or have some errand calling me away from the house.  This is an ideal morning.

Some things I've learned:

• If at all possible, I ought to dress first thing in the morning.  It gives me a sense of something already accomplished and a demeanor prepared to face the day.  I tend to want to put it off because I take a long time choosing outfits.  I suppose I could lay out something the night before, but that's a bit too proactive for my personality. 
• Clean as you go.  It saves you from having to do one big clean later on and reduces anxiety.  (It really helps if you can teach this nifty trick to your husband!  I'm still working on that one.) 
• If I'm feeling a bit under the weather or depressed, for any reason, give myself a free pass for the day and rest or do something emotionally fortifying, like reading a good book or going for a meandering walk.  If I feel renewed afterward, I can pick up where I left off.  If not, the tasks and tidying will still be there tomorrow! 
• Try to have something special planned for every day.  It breaks up the monotony and gives a sense of purpose.  So far, I've had: Welsh class, writing session at the library, Mama-toddler playgroup, planting seeds with Afon. 
• Laundry is the alchemical key to eternity.  (Note to self: put this in a book some day.)

Seven Quick Takes: Volume 30

March 28, Feast of St. John Capistrano, confessor.

-- 1 --

-- 2 --

We've been ill with colds over the last few days, so I spent most of my time in bed watching Avatar: the Last Airbender on my dad's Netflix.  Much like my Firefly revelation, I can say heartily "I get it now!"  It's warm, breathing characters make the show.  Without them, Avatar would be just another fantasy world with all the good guys uniting to defeat the one really evil overlord, but it's the characters' development and personal struggles that kept me from clicking away to watch Portlandia.  The fact that they've managed to do all this while not complicating is a real strength, I think.  It would have been so easy to misconstrue "simple" with "shallow."  Somewhat reminds me of Ender's Game in that way.  It's easy to understand and follow the deep emotional and moral questions without dumbing them down.

The only thing I just couldn't get into is the same thing that made cast down The Golden Compass in the first chapter.  Reincarnation isn't in itself something I can't accept for the sake of story; it's the I'm-more-than-one-person-at-a-time thing.  If you're not familiar with Avatar, the main character Aang is a reincarnated being similar to the Dali Llama.  But when they present his past lives as other selves--as opposed to times when he lived other than in his present lifetime (think Tolkien's elves or "the sending back" of Gandalf in tLotR)--my Thomistic sense of philosophy rejects it with all my being.

Despite that, look for a 10 Reasons You Should Watch Avatar: the Last Airbender post in the future.

-- 3 --

I'm brushing up on my Welsh with a Welsh starter course, and I'm pleased with how much I've retained.  I never learned it like I wanted to when I was here before.  The free course offered at the university conflicted with my one and only weekly lecture.  And then I was elbow-deep in my studies (and a romance!).  It will be good for me in the future to speak conversational Welsh when looking for work.

The Welsh language is one of the reasons I wanted to study in Wales.  It's beautiful, lyrical, and not as hard as Irish.  And while it's phonetic, the spelling is intimidating and lovely.  Words like llyfr (book), cynnwys (contnets), and wyddor (alphabet).

Hint: the y and w are actually vowels.

-- 4 --

I've never heard a child eat so expressively.  With each bite or sip, Afon growls and "mmmmmmmmmm!" from the very depth of his little being.  It's the cutest.

We took him to visit a playgroup yesterday.  It's like a preschool, though it starts with two-year-olds, and then they move on to the actual preschool, which they call nursery school.  It's almost fully funded, and with my experience working at a childcare center I could see that they were very well run.  We signed him up for two days a week, for the social interaction.  They are also trained there in speech therapy and working with children who have disabilities, so I think this is a good choice, though it makes my homeschooling-wannabe self a little nervous.  They were already talking about him going on to "nursery school" in the September term.  Now as I'm typing this, I think I ought to look up some homeschooling groups in the area.

-- 5 --

There were a handful of things I prepped myself for before moving across the Atlantic, some good some not so good.  Things like:

• the cashiers at the stores sit down and aren't required to help you pack your groceries
• you bring your own grocery bags or get charged for each they provide for you (granted, they're much sturdier than the flimsy, see-through bags Walmart offers)
• the electrical sockets themselves have an on-off switch
• people ask "Do you drive?" instead of "What kind of car do you drive?"
• Worcester sauce tastes good in everything; this is an indisputable, scientific fact
• flowers are a part of daily life, not just for special occasions; if they don't have them in pots or planted in the yards, the shopping carts have built-in holders for affordable bouquets of flowers--and people do use them
• curtains are functional--75% or more of the population use closing curtains rather than blinds
• there are two taps (faucets) at each sink, one for hot water and one for cold; there's no way too get luke-warm unless you mix them
• there are duplexes everywhere, aka semi-detached home; even the name suggests that the norm is to have houses smack up against one another
• the doctor is seen in his actual office, rather than moving around to patients in consultation rooms
• Mother's Day is this Sunday, not in May
• and, of course, the left side of the road, fish-and-chips, metric system, yadda yadda, etc.

Hm.  I'm beginning to see the formation of a master "You Know You're in Wales When" list.

-- 6 --

I'm finally happy with my title banner picture thing-y on the top left side (for now).  As I've mentioned previously, I'm the worst kind of perfectionist, so this is kind of a big deal.  And um, just in case you were wondering when the look of this blog was finally going to settle down (for now).

-- 7 --

The bedroom window is open to let the cold freshen the the room, and Afon and I have a game of bed-making calling our names (he lies under the covers and I throw the duvet up-and-down, up-and-down, like a parachute).  Thank you to everyone who have sustained us with your prayers and intercession throughout this tedious transition.  It's feeling more and more like home everyday, and I'm so happy to be at home with my baby.  I've got more energy now to play with him and attend to him than I ever had when I was working and worrying about paying the bills.  God is good.

Take a moment to add me to your Google+ circles (bottom left side bar) if you keep with that kind of thing, and visit other Seven Quick Takes at Conversion Diary.  Have a lovely weekend!

Twenty Hobbies

Feb. 16, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

I stole this quote from Sarah of Little Progress Notes, and even though I have read it before, it stuck in my flesh like a thorn, sharp, sweet, and chastising, as it did the very first time I read it.  Someone close to me was very upset by this quote at the time, and I couldn't understand why.  Not intellectually.  Intellectually, I could understand how someone, a woman, who aimed for a profession or the perfection of a trade would balk that Chesterton thinks she oughtn't.  But my heart cannot fathom it.

When I read this quote, it's like if someone handed me a translation guide to the language of my soul.  People talk about wanting to be stay-at-home moms, and the majority of that talk revolves around the raising and education of children--which is, obviously, the most important aspect of homemaking if you're blessed to have them.  But there's more to it than that, and I see the fruits of the domestic woman in those who are not able to have children.  They're free to perfect their skills and passions.  They're broadly educated, not necessarily formally.

My own mother is extremely well-informed about current world events; her relatives in high political places talk down to her "narrow" point-of-view and are abruptly put in their place by a southern housewife.  I have a friend university-bound after seventeen years of graduating high school; she speaks with more lucidity and grace than most of my college professors.  My godmother has helped her husband raise the children from his first marriage, run three successful businesses, and start a grassroots ministry addressing the sorely ignored crisis of human sex trafficking.  My favorite women bloggers are, by a landslide majority, homemakers; more than gifted writers, they are photographers, crafters, architects, chemists, seamstresses, artists, philosophers, poets, botanists, activists, farmers, chauffeurs, and cooks.  They're quite literally everything to someone (their families).  And it just wouldn't be possible for them to be that astonishingly versatile in a career.

It's very telling that after a century of liberation, women are choosing to go back to the professions (oppression?) of their great-great-grandmothers.  Instead of being taught in an unbroken chain of mother-to-daughter lore, they're having to re-learn many of those skills that made suppressed Woman so dangerously skillful.  I suppose the feminist movement was necessary because it helped us understand.  For now we have the double benefit of having the freedom to choose and choosing not to be "free."

As for myself, being a Catholic, I have no problem being told what I ought to do and what is good for me.  But then, I believe that the so-called restraints of the patriarchy are not man-made at all, but transcend the world.

I don't think that a woman can't be focused on a single aim to forge a career.  Or that some women are best suited to that lifestyle.  I just know that in my first-hand experience with competent, thoughtful women, and for me personally, that would be sad.  It would be a kind of compromise.

I have so much to offer, so much that I'm passionate about.  God has generously equipped me.  I don't care that my ability to make a dwelling a comfortable home, or the home a place of spiritual peace and healthful stimulation, will go unappreciated by society.  And I grow weary of rationalizing my "career" preferences to that same society.  Like if I don't chose something concrete to achieve and then run it down like a fox, I'm irresponsible or somehow mis-made.  I feel, when I tell the world that I wish not to work formally for a living, a reaction akin to sexism.  If I can chose a lifestyle, God willing--and not without knowledge and acceptance of the sacrifices, as well as the blessings--in which I need not be distracted by the minutiae of the outside world, then that is what I want.  Because this is not a useless, fruitless aim.

Chesterton's logic gives me permission to embrace the scattered person I am; and he gives me comfort by telling me my efforts are not vain, nor shameful.  The domestic woman is unimpressed by the limp equality offered by a world that seeks excellence at the expense of freedom, that considers seclusion oppression and liberality narrow.  Our role model for Womanhood is a virgin and a mother--a handmaid and a queen.  And the domestic woman is the original Renaissance Man.

Thanks to Sarah of Amongst Lovely Things for hosting Weekends with Chesterton.