Quick Takes Friday

1.  Happy Mother's Day

I must call my mom sometimes two and three times a day.  Just because she's in Texas doesn't mean I don't want her imput when I'm on the mental proverbial ledge because kid one after ice cream and going to the park said something awful to kid two in the car who began crying which woke up the baby and made that ten mile distance the longest drive in the world; I also call her when they show up at the beginning of an all school mass at the back where I am with the youngest four and stay to assist with the littles so I can actually recall something of both the Gospel and the homily and I feel broken with joy from blessings.  These sort of things often and oddly enough happen usually on the same day.

Basically, I call because she's my first best friend.  

2.  What I'm Reading

It always feels good to me to have a stack to read. I go through jags where I read the way I eat chocolate, and then I go through periods where opening a book "feels" like a chore.  Right now, it is the later, but I've decided it must be done.  Ergo, The Disorganized Child and The Red Tent are sitting at my bed. We'll see if I feel like Fiction or Non Fiction tonight.  

3.  What I'm Praying

The daily rosary, but I'm behind by a decade of yesterday's.   Prayer too, sometimes is breathlessly easy.  Sometimes, it is very difficult to get through this discipline, but it's always better if I do.   It's like exercise, I'm always shocked how much better I feel if it gets done.  You'ld think by now, I'd know to just do it.

4.  What's Going On

We have a ninja night time freeze tag party coming up with up to 24  fourteen/fifteen year old girls.  Should we discover that it is raining and the outside is not available, pizza and either Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, Spirited Away or some other Ninja but Not Really movie will be shown.  My 18 year old has decided he's going to be busy that night...anywhere else but here.

5.  Faith Report

Followers of this blog know we started treating her for ADD with medication.  So far, things are going pretty well. She made 100 on a science test --without the extensive grilling by an older sibling or me.  This is huge progress.  The material we always knew was going into her creative happy sparkly brain is being accessed.   Yeah! Yeah! and Yeah Again!  I am keeping a daily Faith log for when we go back to the doctors in a month of any changes good and bad that might indicate a need for tweaking this process.

6.  Tomatoes Tomatoes Tomatoes

My bathroom is returning to normal.  There are still 16 or so plants surrounding the tub, but the beans have been planted, as have the carrots and the first six tomatoes.  Last year we didn't get to plant much because of time constraints on my husband with work and the fact that I don't garden well, but this year, it looks good.

7.  Six impossible things before Breakfast

As a mental exercise, I came up with six things that I hope happen sometime in the next few years but would be impossible before breakfast.  It's fun for coming up with goals, and for exercising the brain in imagination.  Writing always takes me to visit my brain which often is thinking of things but not telling me. 

So here are my six seven impossible possibles before breakfast:

1) finish my book
2) start writing another book --I've outlined in my head and just have to do it.
3) go to Greece and put my feet in the Adriatic, and take a boat from there to the island of Rhodes.
4) get in shape by going for walks with my three middle children.
5) Get my Ph.D. maybe in assessment of learning disabilities, as I see that that is a critical area where we do not have enough people who a) are versed with assessment tools and b) able to use them in the educational setting in a way that is affordable to ordinary folks.  
6) See a whale in the wild.
7) Raise all ten to be happy, healthy, holy and educated.

These goals are mostly only impossible before breakfast today.