What I'm Reading, and What's Finished...

Having survived my first (and hopefully ONLY) root canal, I decided to treat myself. Well, I did have to go to B & N for a bible. It's kind of a story...

Bible Study Commences...

As a cradle Catholic, I am woefully unfamiliar with the Bible. Seriously, if you could answer the questions in the Baltimore Catechism, you were golden, as far as the Church was concerned. The less you thought, the better. The less you delved into the Bible, the happier the priests were, I think. 

Our church has started a Bible Study, and I thought I'd give it a whirl. Except I couldn't find my Bible. Granted, it's a Catholic Bible, and I attend an Episcopal Church...but according to the person hosting the group, that was fine, because "I'm going to use about a dozen Bibles anyway, and it's all interpretation." 

I went downstairs to look in the boxes of books for my Bible. I did purchase a Study Bible when I worked for the nuns, and practically never cracked it open, honestly. And I couldn't find the thing for the life of me! I even had Hubby go downstairs to see if I was missing it. He couldn't find it, but he did point out, "You have 2 of them on the top of the red cabinet." Which I did. And I suspect the kids put them there, because they're both Gideon Bibles. They'd do that, figuring, "Mom wants another Bible." I have all the funeral bibles that were given to the family when people died. It's a funeral home thing, and the crucifixes and bibles somehow ended up with me. I have a crucifix in every room except the bathrooms... Each from a relative. 

Anyway... No bible. So I trotted over to Barnes & Noble to peruse the Bible section. I was given a couple different editions to review. 

And I ended up buying another St. Joseph Bible. Sorry; it's habit. I bought tabs, too, and a case to carry it around, since it's a paperback and will get shabby. 

I was going to knit tonight - instead, I tabbed a Bible. Talk about futzy, picky work...the pages are thin, so you have to be careful to get the tabs lined up. 

So far, we haven't even cracked the bibles, but it's only going on the 3rd meeting this coming week. Our facilitator is a noted Biblical scholar - we're talking someone who's taught in seminaries, and can read two versions of Hebrew, Aramaic, and 2 versions of Greek. We're very lucky to have someone of that caliber here in our area. 

Last Tuesday was Mary Magdalene. Quick lesson: No, she wasn't a prostitute. She was a woman who believed in the ministry of Jesus, and if you delve into it, while the guys were off preaching, the women were back home making sure they had food, shelter, and honestly? Cash. So to disregard their contribution is remarkably short-sighted. 

But then again, most organized religions always do discount the women. The feminist in me is coming out more and more. 

So what was the treat? It wasn't the Bible. It was books. This is the one I started today at lunch, and boy was that a mistake! I wanted to keep reading. I'll be reading tonight; when I should be sleeping, probably!

I loved the series "Anne of Green Gables," and I eventually bought the books. I read all of them. This is a "prequel," I suppose, written by another author, not Lucy Maude Montgomery. It's Marilla's backstory. 

So far, it's lovely. The same kinds of lyrical descriptions in the original. It reinforces my desire to go, someday, to Prince Edward Island. Which I'm sure is kind of a tourist trap now, but I'd love to tromp around where this story originated. 

I also picked up a couple boxes of Christmas cards, and two books - one for each kid - as a stocking stuffer. 

Speaking of the kids, it's also time for The Annual Ornaments... 

2018 Ornament Project...

As is my wont, it's ornament time. I ended up, earlier this year, ordering some over the internet because I could no longer get the plaster ornaments at Michael's. Well, I could find some, but they were - honestly - stupid... Squares of plaster. What the heck??? I need ornaments in different shapes for the kids. I had a couple years of those idiotic squares, and then I found a bunch of cool ones.

For those who might be newbies to this tradition, it's about, oh, almost 35 years old. I started it right after Kid #1 was born. Born of necessity (not a lot of $$ to throw around on gifts and my siblings and I all had our kids around the same time), I became "The Aunt Who Paints Your Ornaments." 

Each nephew got 18 years of ornaments, one a year. Mostly, I was able to stick with "themes." One kid got all Santas. One kid got cats. One got gingerbread houses. Honestly, I still make them for MY kids...What can I say??

Now, I'm on to the great-kids: my siblings' grandkids. There are only a few of the original nieces & nephews left. I keep a spreadsheet. It's necessary for my own sanity! 

I do still have to paint my kids' ornaments, but this is what's done so far. I still have to finish them, but it was too cold to spray the finishing on them. This weekend, I think I can get it on. 

So: the trees go to Seattle. The pink snowflake, wreath and "Joy" go to Michigan, and the mitten, snowman and two name tags go here in town. 

Finishing includes spraying them with a sealant, adding "fake snow" texture and glitter, and for the name tags, I'll write the recipient's names on them, "From Santa" perhaps. Not sure yet.  Oh, and sometimes, I gild the ornaments, when appropriate. I tie on ribbons for hanging and we mail out what goes elsewhere. The remainder go to my Mom's house for Christmas Eve dinner. 

As far as I know, the nephews have used their ornaments on their trees. And Kid #2 asked me, "As long as you're doing the ornaments this year, can you paint me 5 or 6 more ornaments?" What??? I asked him why and he said, "I don't have mine."

Well... They're here in a box. Somewhere. I'm going to pull them out for him. This is what the bottom of our tree looks like. We have exactly 4 ornaments on the tree - maybe we'll get the rest on over the weekend. 

Hubby has become enamored of my Frosty Friends theme, and he's gotten a bunch of the animated thingies. 

He pushed all the buttons the other day, and honestly, I wanted to take a hammer to the whole thing... I had a 2-day migraine, with a 1-day rebound headache. I really didn't want to hear all the cacophony of 5 different carols playing. These things go round the entire tree. It's adorable. As long as it's silent...

Knitting...

Yes, there's knitting. I was at the gastro doc the other day and I was knitting. And knitting. And knitting. 

He wondered why my BP was high. Well, he was nearly an hour late, and I had to be somewhere (I was late). Not cool, dude, but he's a doctor I'll wait for. 

For my Terribly Simple Shawl, I found A Knot. I do not like Knots... 

I knitted through it, and it's for me, so I wasn't going to splice it. If this was a gift, I might cut away the knot, double knit a few stitches, and weave the ends in. 

It's a pain. 

The shawl, however, is coming along. 

Remember the other day when I said I was "monogamous" when I was coming close to the end of a project? I'm kinda there with this. I'm close enough to the last third or so of the yarn, and I want to get it done and wear it. 

I still have a sausage. The Precious Metals scarf will, I'm afraid, perpetually "sausage." It's not the yarn, not the blocking - it's the pattern. I thought, knitting this, that I'd do it again. 

I will not. I had to block the living daylights out of this scarf, and I think I blocked out the texture of the yarn. It was a nice fluffy 4-ply but now it's...flat. I feel like I blocked out the "warmth" of the yarn, if that makes any sense. And as you can see when you click on the picture, it's still sausaging. I wore it today, wrapped around my neck; it wasn't as warm as I thought it would be, but it was long enough for me. 

I'll live with the sausage. 

By the way, the gastro guy says my gut is messed up with the food poisoning and then the antibiotic for my tooth. He gave me a rather expensive probiotic (Rx only) used for folks with IBS. I have 90 days to get my gut in order. And in January (happy birthday me), I get an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. Joy. But it's time; I can't complain about that. 

I hope my gut settles down. I'll tell you - the probiotic has 950 BILLION bugs... I took the first dose at lunch. I've been burping all afternoon, and belly is gurgling. Those side effects were noted in the leaflet. Teaching my yoga class tomorrow night ought to be interesting, to say the least.

I'm excited because, between work commitments and The Root Canal, I've not taught for 2 weeks. I miss it and miss my students. They're not going to know what to do in my class anymore! 

Random Picture...

I did get a little bit more Christmas up in the house. This is a Lizzie*Kate cross stitch I did years ago. I have a few more in the series, but I'm not sure I can find those metal frames again. I love the way they look, for these in particular. 

What I also love is the hand-dyed floss. I have the box full of them, and my goal in 2019 is to finish at least one more snowman, finish my mother's angel (finally) and find a way to get back to doing more of the cross stitch along with knitting. 

My friend J and I did these together. I think she framed hers in a rustic kind of barnwood frame. I know I fiddled with the clay buttons on mine. And she did an ivory fabric. Mine is Lugano, tan with gold flecks in it. I think I should have doubled up on the white floss, because even in person, it's not easy to see. 

I have to find the December snowman - he's in the closet, I think. And get him hung up too. He's on linen. 

What's on your needles? What have you been making for this holiday season? And what decorations do you put out year after year that are "musts" for your holiday? 

"Biblical Marriage" Concept...

Well, with the recent Chick-Fil-A crap going on, I figured I'd just mention something obvious, that I learned in church last week...

The conservatives ramble on and on and on about marriage being "sacred" and "between one man and one woman." We'll leave the majority of the biblical citations alone - those showing that a man can have more than one wife (simultaneously) and is entitled to lie with his concubines, his slaves, prisoners of war, etc. Those are just "piffle" compared to the conservatives' strong moral assertion that marriage is SACRED, BY GOD, AND WE ARE THE STANDARD-BEARERS.

This inspite of so many Republican politicians being "caught with their toes tapping in the bathroom" among other things. And they don't resign. They keep going - which amazes me, because it serves that old adage, I guess. "If you repeat a lie long enough it becomes the truth." So conversely, if you ignore the willful disregard for the "sanctity" of their own marriages, then I suppose their constituents can as well. Remember, Newtie Patootie said he was compelled to have multiple affairs because of his "patriotism." And now as a converted Catholic, he and Calista (wife and former mistress while prior wife was dying of cancer) are paragons. I guess.

Anyway, on to church. We have recently been attending St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church and have truly enjoyed the switch from Catholic to Episcopal. It was a little strange at first, but we have rarely felt so welcomed and so embraced.

So we went last Sunday and the first lesson (First Reading in Catholic) was 2 Samuel 11:1-15... which I am telling you now that I absolutely do not remember in all my zillion years as a Catholic. At least not in this fashion.

This reading tells about David and Bathsheba. The following part caught my eye: "...he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, "This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite." So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house..."

Wowza. Period and extramarital sex all in a few sentences. And then, farther along in the reading, David gets Uriah drunk  so he and Bathsheba can play footsie together, Bathsheba becoming pregnant after the first round of sex. Then, David --- who, if you remember, is the David who slew Goliath, the poet, the writer of psalms.... David sends a letter, delivered to the battle commander by Uriah, who was apparently illiterate. The letter said "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die."

Add "murderer" to that glowing description of David.

My point is this. Well, two points. First, I've never quite heard this version, though I've seen the Hollywood movie. Second, let's add this to the pantheon of verses that really rather bash traditional marriage. I'm pretty sure Uriah wasn't keen on just letting Bathsheba go. Cultural differences of which I may be ignorant may play in here --- David was the Big Cheese. Perhaps whatever (or whoever) he wanted, he got and Uriah didn't have a choice.

But let's just suppose for the sake of argument that Bathsheba and Uriah were for the most part, contentedly married. Then, some Big Cheese summons her out of her purifying bath (sorry, the period thing still kind of blows my mind) and has sex with her. She's married. He knows that. And he goes ahead with his own selfish wants and desires.

This hardly sounds like a good biblical argument for 'traditional marriage.' It sounds like those folks were pretty randy and surely not as straight-laced and conservative as today's conservatives would like to portray them - or themselves, for that matter.

Either way, the Bible is open to interpretation. And without doing too much scholarly thinking, I'm thinking David didn't exactly respect the "traditional" marriage. He didn't have any qualms about seeking out a woman he wanted. And getting her. And then killing off her husband, if not by his own hand, by his own command.

This section alone kind of blows the conservatives' argument out of the water. And it's not the only one.

Gay marriage will happen in some form or another. There's so much science out there proving that it's not a "lifestyle" but a biological trait. It seems that with our economy in a snail's-pace recovery, a huge budget battle looming, wars on 2 fronts... with all that going on, Congress and the conservatives have this stuff to argue about?

How about, just for fun, you folks get the jobs done that we need you to get done? Oh, maybe they really ARE, since Mitch McConnell said that his job was to make President Obama a one-term president. But I think that with the "do-nothing congress" we're now seeing, Mitch may be sweeping out some of his buddies with that same broom. People are fed up with the wrangling and lack of action.

I think - and I hope - that we're past looking at the shiny objects distracting us, and we're paying attention to what matters: getting our country going again. Moving forward instead of staying in limbo arguing about stuff that in the end won't change anything.