1. Today, I’m very pleased to be part of a neat website called 3 Things for Mom, created by Lauren Warner (who is the wife of Matt Warner, of Flocknote andRead the Catechism in a Year fame).
3 Things for Mom delivers bite-sized nuggets of information and insight from one mom to another, with a truth, a tip, and a find. Their line-up includes moms who are, oh, editors-in-chief of Martha Stewart Living and Redbook, writers for the NYT, producers of the Today Show, anchors of the news (is that how you say it?) at ABC and CNN, and sitters around in their kitchens, picking their scabs at 3 a.m. because they can’t sleep because they’re worried their children can’t recite the seven deadly sins, and besides, it’s hot.
My entry includes very edifying photo of Benny sporting a huge mosquito bite on her eyelid, and spazzing out at the beach, wearing nothing but a swim diaper and a string of plastic beads. They’re homeopathic beads. For her mosquito bite. Why do you fear the things you don’t understand?
2. I love photoshopped “what if” pictures. Not to be an overanalytical creep, but I often can’t help thinking, “Yeah, but if the change you’re depicting actually happened, that’s not all that would be different!” Like the series about what the sky would look like if other planets were as close to Earth as the moon is.
Pardon my scientific pea brain, but if Saturn were that close to the Earth, wouldn’t the Earth also be drawn to Saturn and pulverized more or less instantaneously? Or is Saturn, like, gas or something? But it still has gravity, right? Or else it wouldn’t have rings. Can you be pulverized by getting drawn into gas? Or doesn’t it have an ice core or something? This is why we don’t homeschool anymore.
Or here, as long as I’m ruining stuff, there’s this gorgeous series, that combines city scenes with starry nights from another place on the same latitude, showing what the night sky would look like if there were no light pollution.
But I can’t help thinking that the scenes would only exist if all the people were suddenly dead. Because the only reason the bridge is there is because there’s lots of people who need to cross it, and if there’s lots of people, there’s going to be lots of light. I’m not really complaining; I’m just saying that these are works of art, not portrayals of anything possible or even desirable.
Sort of along the same lines, we have Celebrity Makeunders, which imagines what famous faces might look like if their lives were a little bit more like the lives of me and thee.
Scientology would be like, “Never mind, forget it, you can go now. Sure, sure, you’re clear, just go!”
I actually play the opposite of this game in my head all the time — trying to spot people who, if they had better clothes and a personal makeup artist and didn’t work at the Walmart dressing room, would look like models or movie stars. O fortuna!
3, Speaking of fortuna, did you realize that there’s such a thing as tuna Jello salad?
Apparently the advantage of this dish is that the Jello really binds the tuna together, so.
4. Today you can read Lumen Fidei, started by Benedict XVI and finished by Francis. Brandon Vogt, the second most helpful man in the world, has converted it to several popular formats so you can download it for free. The most helpful man in the world is the one who got my van unstuck from that unexpected median in the Citizen’s Bank parking lot.
5. Despite my gloomy ruminations, we had a lovely day on the Fourth of July. My teenage daughter read the entire Declaration of Independence out loud. My brother, who studied Jefferson very closely in college, says that the description of the “long train of abuses” was actually the heavily edited, carefully toned down version of what he actually wanted to say. Things were, apparently, much much worse than what they describe. I asked why they heck they would do that, since they were already declaring their independence. Why make their case weaker? He says that some of the signers were hoping to sort of make a clean break with England, without any bloodshed. Just kind of, “Hey, we’re just gonna . . . go over here now, okay? Cool? Cool?”
I don’t even want to tell you how long I just spent looking for a photo of George Jefferson giving the thumbs up.
Anyway, my parents, two brothers, nephew, niece, and mother-in-law all came over, we grilled meat, drank beer, argued about movies, laughed and told stories, and set off fireworks. It was great.
6. This is Benny on Albuterol.
She struck this pose and then froze until I took a picture of her. Lots of moms told me that Albuterol makes their kids nutty, but this is actually what Benny is like all the time, except when she can’t breathe. She’s much better now! Still coughing, but her lungs are clear, and the fever is gone.
7. I had a fascinating two-part interview with the charming and talented Steve Gershom
planned for this past Wednesday and Thursday, but I didn’t want it to get overlooked because of the holiday. So I’ll save it for Monday and Tuesday. It’s tentatively titled, “Ex-Gay: Is That Even a Thing?”
Check out everyone else’s 7 Quick Takes at Conversion Diary, where Jen is contending with a huge and daunting deadline. We all know that she is awesome enough to absolutely crush it, but still, a prayer couldn’t hurt.
And today we celebrate...