Say What?

I love the learning-to-talk stage.

There's something to love about (almost) every stage of your child's life, if you look for it.  Some years you have to look harder than others.  But the learning-to-talk stage doesn't take much work to enjoy.

New words and sentences come out of Amos's mouth almost every day, and we're constantly saying, "Wait, what?  When did he learn THAT?"

We're also constantly saying, "Wait, what?  What are you trying to say?  I just don't understand."

Like this morning.

Amos said, "Eee pa, grrrr."

"What, sweetie?"

"Eee pa, grrrrrrrr."

"I don't understand."

"Eee PA, grr."

"I'm sorry, I just . . ."

"EEEEE PA! GRRRRRRR!"

"Panda says grrr?"

:points emphatically at the empty middle of the room:

"I'm just not getting it, baby boy."

:points, screaming:
 "EEE PA! GR!"

And I finally looked out of the window and saw . . .

The squirrel was eating my lettuce plants.

I'm pretty sure he'd had half a salad while watching me not understand Amos.  I think I saw him smirk.

He'll stop smirking when he gets a peek at my google search history.

"Hunting season squirrel Alabama."
"How to field dress a squirrel."
"Brunswick stew recipe."
"Tanning squirrel hides."

Anyway, some days, communication goes more smoothly than others.  But it's fun to watch Amos grow in confidence that he can communicate with us.

The Only People Crazier Than Theologians Are Linguists

I read this article earlier today, and I've been because-noun-ing all day.

Because Linguistics

"Why do you need a Moodle course for this class, Christian Ethics? (Please give a reason so that the administrator can determine the need for this course.)"
"Because God."

"I can't quite figure out why none of you are taking notes on what I just said.  Because, you know, exam."

"And so we see here that James makes the same explanatory move that was made in Leviticus.  Why shouldn't you hold a day laborer's pay back until the next day?  Because God."

"Please don't email me during another professor's class!  Because courtesy."

I feel very hip.

Well, I felt hip.  And then I realized that, by the time someone writes a blog entry on a hip thing, it's not hip anymore.  (Because, you know, novelty.  And boredom.)

And then I realized that someday, someone will write a second-grade grammar textbook in which "because" will be listed as a preposition, because of this article.  (Because idiocy.)  And I was tempted to repent of my participation in the stupidification of my own grandchildren.

But then I went back to because-noun-ing.  Because fun.  And also entropy.

Experiments

I made some cupcakes this weekend.

I wanted to try a few new things, since I felt as though I was getting into a cupcake rut.

So, I tried this recipe for salted caramel buttercream.  It was very nice.  Maybe a little subtle with the caramel flavor, especial in comparison with the other cupcake I made.

Oh my gracious heavens, this cupcake was insane.

Okay, the cupcake on the left is a chocolate cupcake with the aforementioned salted caramel buttercream.  It really was a nice cupcake.

The cupcake on the right is a lime-coconut cupcake with a lime buttercream.

The lime-coconut cupcake was just your standard 1-2-3-4 cake batter, with coconut milk substituted for the milk, a little lime zest and coconut extract added with the liquid ingredients, and about half a cup of shredded coconut added at the end.  It was pretty subtle in both the lime and the coconut departments.

I may as well have made plain white cake, because it was the buttercream that did it.

I made my usual French buttercream recipe.

Then I zested and juiced two limes.  I added the zest to the finished buttercream, which made for a very subtle, but very nice, vaguely lime-ish flavor.  If you wanted to stop there, you could.  No one would say, "Oh, this is lime!" But everyone would say, "Oh, this is good!  What's that flavor in the background?"

Well, then I took the juice and boiled it down until it was syrupy.  I added the syrup to the buttercream.

It was yowza.

I probably would use a smidge less of the condensed lime juice next time.  It was perhaps a little too assertively lime.  Or if I did it this way again, I would put it on a little more flavorful cupcake--something that could really stand up to the lime.

And it did make the buttercream a little soft.  It started to slump pretty quickly in our warmer-than-room-temperature kitchen.

But I will definitely do buttercream this way again.  Just not until I lose the seventy-eight pounds I gained "sampling" and "testing" this one.  ("You know, it's for company.  I'd better make sure it really does taste okay.")

Even Protestants Need the Saints

Dear God:

Thank you for the example of your servant, St. Martin, who reminds us that simple, impulsive acts of charity do not go unnoticed in heaven, that willingness to die for one’s country doesn’t have to be the same as willingness to kill for it, and that vigorous opposition to heresy and non-Christian belief doesn’t have to include violence or hatred toward heretics and non-Christians.

Through his example and the power of the Holy Spirit, make us both more gentle and more fervent, more humble and more daring, and above all more loving toward all whom we encounter. 

In the name of your Son Jesus Christ, Amen.

Brudders

Theo, on the other hand . . .

These are such sweet names for a Sunday School group.

Something tells me, though, that long about December of Theo's third grade year, it will occur to someone to rename the groups something else.

Something like Third Grade Quiet Lifers and Fourth Grade Contemplatives.

Just a guess.

On Not Being Jane Austen

If I hadn't learned French first, I might have enjoyed learning German.

But, alas, after mastering (more or less) the glorious beauty of the French tongue, speaking German felt like gargling used motor oil.

I suspect the same might be true of my appreciation of Elizabeth Gaskell: if I hadn't read dear Jane first, I might have really liked Mrs. Gaskell.

I finally finished Wives and Daughters last week, which rather felt like I was doing my duty by Gaskell than anything else.  

Perhaps not--it was a story worth finishing, but I would have preferred that she had wrapped it up a hundred pages earlier.

(Everyone does, in fact: her death left the novel unfinished, by a mere one or two chapters.  An appended reflection by her editor and publisher was highly unsatisfying.)

I am being too tepid in my praise.  There are some real gems in here--scenes, observations, turns of phrase, characters.  Hers must have been a tremendous skill, to have created such characters, with such modest, quotidian virtues and vices, such realism in their very multi-facetedness.  

I mean, really--who can create such a character as Cynthia Kirkpatrick nowadays?  Her comment about being a "moral kangaroo" will be my epitaph, I'm quite sure.  What passes for a flawed hero or a "complex" character now is too easy: add rudeness or grumpiness or an inexplicable sense of having a "tortured" soul to an otherwise perfect character, and you're done. 

The plot, too, is delicate, realistic, modest.  Gaskell has too much innate charity to write a genuinely immoral person into her narrative.  The very meanness of her worst "villain" prevents her from having any worse effect than the domestic discomfort of those around her.  This is no small evil, in a tale of domestic proportions, but a Willoughby or a Wickham has more effect on the social body than does Mrs. Gibson.

But I never could quite overcome my annoyance at being spoon-fed throughout. No character has a thought, a motivation, a movement of the spirit that Gaskell does not report--in as charitable and gentle a manner as could ever be, but, nonetheless, with a thoroughness that began to grate long before the tale's denouement.  Austen could have conveyed as much, and more, with half the words.  There is a great artistry in saying things by leaving them unsaid, and it is not the sort of artistry that Gaskell displays.  I never got past the first chapter of Little Women, for that very reason.  

Gaskell's work is worth persevering through, however.  There is delicateness and subtlety here, in spite of the wordiness, and the moral sensibility, on full display throughout, never trips over into frank preachiness.

Incidentally, the BBC film version of this novel does a lovely job of bringing to life those complex characters.  Cynthia, Mr. Gibson, and especially Squire Hamley are beautiful creatures, and the production has far less of the odor of typecasting than the BBC Pride and Prejudice does.  I highly recommend it.