Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

Mark Shea runs a podcast radio program through Breadbox Media called "Connecting the Dots."  He's graciously offered me the opportunity to be his guest on Mondays.

If you'd like to listen to the first one, complete with Simcha Fisher's final podcast and the telling of the Duck Joke, click here! 

Download the app for your smart phone and I'll be on next Monday at 5 o'clock.  Thank you Mark and Simcha!  It was loads of fun.

Saturday Spambot Returns and Weekly News Round Up

Today, I'm feeling it. The house got smaller.   We are now a family of ten, tomorrow it will be nine. Each time it shrinks as one leaves for college, it gets harder.   I have a piece on it over at Aleteia.  I wrote her an email, I just feel her absence everywhere and I will feel her older sister's as well.   There is a load of work to do, and what am I doing?  Sitting, feeling it and finding it hard to move.  

However, I know sitting is not good for the brain, body or soul, so I'm posting this link to an excellent podcast here for you; Fr. Riccardo's talk on Prayer. I'm going to put it on and go take on putting the house in order for next week when school is about to start.

For those curious, I'm returning to writing on both books, The Book of Penelope and the 365 Doctors a Day, and will start to give weekly updates to keep myself on track.   I've also been asked to be a guest co-host on Mark Shea's Radio Show, Connecting the Dots.  So download the Breadbox media app for your smart phone so you can listen in, and I promise, I'll post links, tweets, Facebook feeds and linkedin notes when it happens.  Very excited.   That's all for Saturday's news.   

Oh, and finally, Spambot Saturday returns! That's right, I take a blog piece which received a Spambot comment this past week and relink to it on Saturday so you can enjoy leftover blog.  Enjoy!  Here's this week's Spambot Saturday Throwback.

Hey! I'm Excited because That was Fun!

There's a saying, "Act like you've been there." I've never liked that phrase.  To me, acting as if what is extraordinary is a walk in the park is a joy robber of what makes life so much fun.  So I'm bouncing up in down in my head, delighted to tell you about my first ever podcast. 

Here's the link:

Eat Sleep Write.net

It's the premier round robin with Adam Scull (host), and Roy Griffis and me discussing and deconstructing historical fiction.  

I hope you enjoy it, that you let Adam know if you liked it, maybe check out Roy's book, By the Hands of Men, and if you're a writer, consider taking the podcast plunge.  It was a lot of fun and Adam does a great job of walking you through the process and asking interesting questions to keep the ideas flowing.  

I'm not acting like I've been there before.  I'm acting like that rocked, I want to go there again.

7 Quick Takes

1.  Blogging may have been light, but writing has not been.  This week The Book of Penelope got an outline. (Ye Gads!)  She also got two parallel themes.  There are index cards with semi-legible writing on them outlining the journey of the Odyssey with the simultaneous "Meanwhile back at the ranch" plot lines.  She grew from 25k to 31.7 in a week. 

2.  Writing may have been heavy but I'm not.  I've enlisted my second daughter as a personal trainer. She is ruthless. She is motivated, and she gets to boss me around.  I've done 600 more sit ups than I have since I took consecutive years of gym. 

3.   Hello, I'm your mother and I'll be driving you today.  This week we started summer school and so I've been dropping Paul off at one school, Regina off at another, and of course, both start at the same time.  Why oh why have I not received the gift of bi location?

4.  It's less than a week from another birthday.  My son turns 14.  It's funny. When I gave him a sheet of paper and a pen and said, "What do you want?" he drew a blank and wrote chocolate chip cookie dough.  I have some ideas and I'm sure he'll think of some before long, but it was neat that he felt at home enough to simply not have a known heart's desire that he lacked. 

5.  This week, we also ventured into the great unknown, podcasting. Sometimes I get motor mouthed, and the desire to use metaphor to illustrate effect is a favorite tool of mine.  I do wish I'd been a touch more reflective and choosy with my words but for a first try, they liked it.  I'll post it here when it is done being edited.  

6.   Puns.  The other night, we were having dinner and started fruit punning. I can't remember how my daughter got durian to work but we did orange, kiwi, dragon, apple, grape, quince, apricot, cherry, berry, and banana. I do remember my son complaining about not being able to think of some choice ones. He was massaging words to craft one around star fruit.  I told him I was surprised it had stumped him. I'd thought he would be my star fruit punner.  Then I ran out of the room and called it a day. 

7.  Today, my two year old was playing with dolls. She placed the baby in a high chair and went back to the other room.  She brought back a math computer my older daughter owns for multiplication drills.  She opened it up like a laptop, patted the baby doll's head and started typing.  It might be time to put the laptop away. 

7 Quick Takes Friday

1. It's been a while since I did this exercise and I don't have a piece ready to go because this week has been so crazy so I  figured it was time.  Plus, I happened to catch Jennifer Fulwiler on EWTN's new Register Radio show.  Now that school started, I'm trying to return to writing more seriously.  Here's hoping!

2.  Rosary Catch up.  I'm trying to do one a day.  Some days, it's all I can do to get through the Apostle's Creed.  Prayer some days is easy, other days hard.  It's like parenting.  Often, we get more out of it when it's hard, but like parenting when it's hard, we think we hate it while we're in the midst of the tough stuff.  Just when I think about stopping, someone asks me to pray for someone or something.  So today, I'm through a decade...yes I'll do another when I finish posting this...I promise.

3.  I fell off the Wii Fit wagon and I haven't gotten up.  I know, I just need to step back on, but if I go downstairs, I'm going to have to clean.  So I've been in full avoidance mode.  I don't want to be lectured by a machine.

4.  My oldest started college.  We are now on day three.  I suddenly understand why 18 years ago, my parents drew breath sharply when three days in I said, "I met a guy," dated him for the next six years and then married him.  Ten children later....it's surreal to see one's first start adulthood.  I tell myself I'm ready for him to be ready to start life away from us...but the heart tugs hard. 

5.  Paul is almost three.  In two weeks, we will celebrate his birthday.  I can't tell you how much joy he brings because every day, there is more. I am learning more from him about life than I did in graduate school when I studied Trisomy 21 while earning a master's in Special Education. Paul teaches me hands on, how boundless love can be. It reaches out beyond speech. It reaches out beyond age --he charms every one of his brothers and sisters, even the surly teen girl who pretends that she doesn't belong to this motley noisy messy lot.  It's hard to remember how frightened I was for him, it's hard to remember how sad I felt that he would have Down Syndrome, because very little about his life evokes those feelings now. 

6.  I'm reading a book on Anxiety.  It's a bit funny because most of the time, I'm not anxious, but it's teaching me how someone who is anxious responds to things as versus me.  My main problem with any books like "The Hyper-Active Child" and "Your Over Sensitive Kid" and the like is that I can fit almost all of my square peg kids into the round holes that are presented; I can find examples of everything from their lives making them a mish mash of every psychological condition ever devised.  If there's a lable for kids who spend afternoons running around the main floor in a giant circle pushing a doll carriage while having a conga line and screaming, they have that too.  It makes applying the techniques for dealing with any condition theoretically universally applicable; it also means those same techniques are in my family's case, universally ignored. 

7.  Podcasts: I'm considering adding them to this blog.  Like blogging, I know nothing about podcasts at the moment when I'm considering this addition other than it's verbal, it's me talking, and it might be fun.  The questions would be: Why? and Would Anyone Listen? My why is, there's something more intimate about talking than writing; it also would be a bit different. In addition, spelling wouldn't matter.  I could finish sentences with dangling prepositions.  Humor that could not be fleshed into a full fledged column could still be conveyed.  Why not is: Could I actually pull it off in this house without interruptions that would mar the listening experience?(piano playing, fights over the last piece of pie, tv, computer and radio background noise, babies and toddlers requiring attention etc). 

Final Note: Faith &Family September Issue is coming out and my piece on homework will be in it.
You can hear a bit about it here: Back to School Podcast. It's my first magazine piece and yes I'm psyched psyched psyched!