Effortless Effervescence

From Mrs. Anna T at Domestic Felicity: 15 Common Breastfeeding Mistakes, Part 1 and Part 2. Anna is a conservative Jewish woman living in Israel, and has interesting things to say about feminism, feminity, homemaking and modesty. I’ve been enjoying her blog very much over the past couple of weeks.

On the other end of the spectrum, The Atlantic offers us The Case Against Breastfeeding. This article is radical, and I’ll bet it’s made a lot of people MAD. It’s very possible I might make some people mad by linking to it, but I’m too shocked and intrigued to care!

Yet another case of “just when you think you have all the facts…”

Hat tip to Tysdaddy for this one. I absolutely MUST see Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire. Here’s the movie’s synopsis, from the official website:

Lee Daniels’ Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire is a vibrant, honest and resoundingly hopeful film about the human capacity to grow and overcome. Set in Harlem in 1987, it is the story of Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones, a sixteen-year-old African-American girl born into a life no one would want. She’s pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and food on her mother, a poisonously angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is a place of chaos, and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and an awful secret: she can neither read nor write.

Precious may sometimes be down, but she is never out. Beneath her impassive expression is a watchful, curious young woman with an inchoate but unshakeable sense that other possibilities exist for her. Threatened with expulsion, Precious is offered the chance to transfer to an alternative school, Each One/Teach One. Precious doesn’t know the meaning of “alternative,” but her instincts tell her this is the chance she has been waiting for. In the literacy workshop taught by the patient yet firm Ms. Rain, Precious begins a journey that will lead her from darkness, pain and powerlessness to light, love and self-determination.

Just the brief glimpses of Mo’Nique’s and Mariah Carey’s performances in the trailer blew me away, and I’ve heard that newcomer Gabourey Sidibe kicked butt and took names in the title role. I’m half-tempted to pick up the book before the movie comes out in November, but since I’m ALWAYS disappointed in the movie if I read the book first, I think I’ll just wait.

My friend Jennifer sent me this one: Entertainment Weekly presents the 25 best episodes from the Whedonverse. Though I may not agree wholly with EW’s ranking (I think that “The Gift” should be a little higher on the list) it’s still a fun read. With nifty pictures, to boot!

Every time I watch this video, I laugh so hard I cry. Yes, I’ve posted it before, but I don’t care. Each new day needs another dose of kittens.

Also, can I just say that I’m SO. SAD. our kittens aren’t that small any more? I can? Thanks.

I have to give props to the United Methodist Church for their nifty new website. It’s definitely slick and interesting, and sooooo not “church as we know it.” I’m a little perplexed and put off by what the site’s purpose appears to be. I think the UMC is recruiting people to join and serve within their church, with folks who are already professing Christians as the target audience. All of which gives me kind of a creepy feeling, and I’m not sure why. I mean, I wholeheartedly believe that the church should be an agent of blessing in the world, and I’m super impressed with any Christian organization that helps people rather than lecturing them. But something about a large-scale marketing campagin being targeted at reeling in new members doesn’t seem quite right, even if those new members are supposedly being reeled in to serve God and their neighbor.

I don’t know what to think about this thing. What do y’all think?

I’m just going to remind you, again, quickly, that if you’re looking for an AVON lady, I’m your gal. Shop online at my e-store 24/7 and have your orders delivered directly to your home.

Also, I’ve listed a few bottles of BPAL for auction on eBay. Quite poor in the pocketbook right now, so I’m cleaning house. It’s always hard but sometimes necessary.

What are you waiting for? Go, shop!!!

Jennifer at Conversion Diary has written an excellent post titled The Ultimate Burnout Survival Guide, which I highly recommend to anyone and everyone who finds herself in a mess of deep doo-doo. Go, read, learn. Disclaimer: Jennifer is a Catholic who writes with a decidedly Christian bent, but her advice is good for people of all faiths. Seriously, go, read, learn!

ETA: And, thanks to Grey, I found this H-I-LARIOUS letter from a frustrated laundress/mom. Oh, how I LOLed.

ETA2: The brilliant Steve G just left a comment on Conversion Diary about how optimists and pessimists approach problems, and OMG IT IS AWESOME. So don’t just read Jennifer’s post, but read the comments to. Go on. Read em!

This weekend I made a seriously awesome dish that my entire family looooooved. (And by entire family, I also mean my dog Milo, who stole a taste from Chrissy’s bowl when she left it on the coffee table, LOL.) When I bragged about my culinary stylings on Facebook, several friends asked for the recipe, and it occurred to me that I ought to share the yumminess with my Smooch-fans; not just the yumminess of this particular recipe, but every awesome recipe I try. So I’m going to attempt a regular blog feature called Munchies Monday. Since I normally do my cooking experiments over the weekend, it makes sense to share the spoils with y’all at the beginning of the week - and this way, if you’re stuck planning your menu for the week ahead, you just might get some inspiration.

So without further ado, I bring you the inaugural post of Munchies Monday… *drumroll*

photo credit

My husband isn’t a fan of Mexican food, so I was taking a chance with this recipe, which I invented based on weird cravings I was having Saturday afternoon. (Actually, craving enchilada sauce is NOT all that weird for me, but I usually supress my desires until I’m out to lunch with a friend who shares my preferences.) Despite his suspicions of beans and peppers and chunky bits of tomato, my hubby LOVED this super-easy, super-yummy casserole. I hope you like it, too!

5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 TB. olive oil
.5 cup chopped white onion
8 ounces white button mushrooms, sliced
1.5 lbs. ground meat (I used ground turkey)
1 TB. cumin
1 TB. chili powder
1 4-oz. can diced jalapenos
1 15-oz. can petite diced tomatoes
10 6-inch flour tortillas, cut in half
1 large can refried beans
1 14-oz. can enchilada sauce (I used half a can each of red and green sauce)
4 cups (16 ounces) shredded Mexican-style cheese

Saute garlic and onion in olive oil until soft, then add mushroom slices Cook until the mushrooms have given up their liquid, about five minutes. Add ground meat and spices; cook until no more pink remains, about 10 minutes. Stir in jalapenos and tomatoes (including juices) and remove from heat.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9×13-inch casserole. Line the bottom of the dish with half of the tortillas, then spread half of the canned beans over the tortillas. Follow with half the meat and veggie mixture and half the cheese. Drizzle layers with half the enchilada sauce. Repeat with remaining tortillas, beans, meat, cheese and sauce.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes, until cheese it melted and bubbly and all layers are heated through. Serve with sour dream, guacamole, salsa and/or tortilla chips.

There are multiple ways you can “tweak” this recipe to make it healthier or more suited to your family’s tastes, such as use less ground meat or substitute it with tofu, or even eliminate the meat altogether and add more veggies. I’ll probably do something slightly different every time I make this recipe, depending on what I have on hand. For instance, I wish I’d thought to pick up a bell pepper and some fresh cilantro while at the store on Saturday, but the favorable reaction of my family (the casserole dish was three-quarters-empty within ten minutes) leads me to believe that this incarnation was fine just as it was.

Seven Quick Takes is all about collecting random thoughts that, on their own, wouldn’t make a substantial blog entry, but gather together make something silly and wonderful. If you’re looking for new & interesting blogs to read, check out the other Quick Takes links over at Conversion Diary.

Take 1: Jennifer’s Quick Takes last week made me laugh so hard I cried. I beg you, PLEASE go read her about Trucknutz. It’s just so much comedic awesomeness I just had to share. Go on, I’ll wait.

Take 2: Back now? Great. I just wanted to let you know that on Monday evening (9/28) I’ll have been smoke-free for two months. Yaaaaaay!!! Interestingly, last night I dreamt that I smoked a cigarette. I’m happy to report that it tasted disgusting. I don’t know WHY I smoked it (and even if I did, dream logic is super weird, so knowing the why could very well just confuse me even more) but apparently my subconscious realizes that lighting up right now would be seriously unpleasant.

Take 2.5 How odd is it that I was able to TASTE in my dream? I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything during REM sleep before.

Take 3: This past Wednesday was the first “official” week of the Boundaries Bible study that I’m participating in through Reality Church. I LOVE the ladies in my group (it’s a chicks-only study) and I’m enjoying the material, but I still have the weirdest feeling about it. This probably has a little to do with the fact that the last time I jumped into church fellowship with both feet it ended rather badly. I think it’s quite fitting that the first Bible study I’m participating in after YEARS of avoiding churchiness is about setting limits with myself and others, because my lack of boundaries is one of the reasons I ended up in a cult. So although I’m pretty sure I’m on the right track spiritually, I am a little uncomfortable. But Jesus never promised us that the Christian life would be comfortable, did he? No.*

Take 4: AVON Calling! I’m challenging myself to work a little harder at my “second job” as an AVON Independent Sales Rep, so I want to take a second to point my loyal readers to my AVON e-store. I’m not saying you have to buy stuff from me to be my friend, but you know, it helps. (I’m kidding, of course!**)

Take 5: On an AVON-related note, yesterday I hung twenty product sample packs on doors in my neighborhood to let folks know that I’m “open for business.” At one of the houses I visited, I had a chance to say hello to the gentleman who lived there. He was courteous, but seemed a little shy and lonely, and also appeared to be ill. I’m trying to devise a way to reach out to him that will come across as neighborly-in-a-welcome-way not neighborly-in-an-annoying-and-creepy-way. He has a dachshund who was NOT happy to see a stranger coming up the driveway, so maybe I’ll stop by sometime with doggy treats. Do you guys have any other ideas?

Take 6: To celebrate our first anniversary, Jon and I spent last weekend at a friend’s house in North Carolina with my brother and his girlfriend. We cooked out, we ate oysters and clams, we boated, we drank wine - all in all, it was the PERFECT way to mark our first year as a married couple.

Take 7: Furbaby Update! I can’t believe how our kittens and puppy are growing. Last week I took them to the vet and found out that the kittens have quadrupled in size (they weigh four pounds apiece now!) since they came to live with us two months ago, and Anastasia has more than doubled in just four weeks - from 5.6 lbs to 12.8. Yikes! It makes sense, though, when you consider how much these little monsters eat.

Ana and Milo playing tug-of-war. It’s a typical older brother/baby sister relationship - Ana just ADORES Milo and is constantly bugging him. Sometimes he’s totally into playing with her, and other times he lets her know in no uncertain terms that she’s getting on his last nerve! He’s getting better about being her buddy, though, which makes me very happy.

Randall, chilling, and A.C. being so cute it’s just not even right. Randall is staying true to his snuggle-bug personality. Sometimes he doesn’t want to be held because he’s in the middle of playing (and he plays ROUGH!) but most of the time, if you pick him up, he starts purring immediately. He’ll squinch his eyes up and smile and let you kiss him about five hundred times. I love it! A.C. is still the adventurous one - not really into cuddling unless it’s her idea, and constantly on the move.

When I took the kittens to the vet, I had them re-tested for FIV. I’ve been saying I’d rehome the kittens immediately if they tested FIV negative - I’m a bit overwhelmed by the expense (not to mention the copious amounts of urine) of so many animals - and, well, the tests came back positive. I believe that things rarely happen for No Reason At All, and I’m starting to feel that maybe God wants us to have all these animals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, some folks might think I’m a little cuckoo because I look for signs from God even in my pet’s lives, but I don’t think it’s too far out there. God created these animals, and I’m sure he’s just as concerned with their welfare as he is with mine. I believe God wanted them to have long, happy and healthy lives and that he wanted to bless me with two delightful little friends (seriously, aside from the urine issue, it’s impossible for me to have a bad day with these guys around). It’s the little things, y’all, that make me so wonderfully happy every day. And realizing that God cares enough about two little furballs to coincidentally put them into a loving home helps me to trust God to provide for all of my needs.

* There ought to be a clause about that in the Baptismal Covenant.
** Mostly.

This was the weekend for disturbing yet awesome movies. Let me tell you all about it.

On Saturday night, my father came over for dinner and a movie to celebrate his birthday. I baked two loaves of bread (from scratch!) and made a big pot of 15 Bean Soup. (Can we say “NOM”? I think we can.) I’d been to Blockbuster earlier in the day and had a handful of movies waiting to be watched, and my father chose Knowing even though he’d recently seen it - he said it was a great flick, and he wasn’t lying.

Here’s the movie’s synopsis from Fandango: “Academy Award® Winner Nicolas Cage (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Leaving Las Vegas) stars in KNOWING, a gripping action-thriller of global proportions about a professor who stumbles on terrifying predictions about the future—and sets out to prevent them from coming true.”

There are a lot of things I didn’t expect this movie to be, including FREAKY AS HELL, thought-provoking, and truly awesome. I didn’t arrive at “awesome” and “thought-provoking” until the very end, though, because I was so enraged throughout most of the film at what I perceived as the story’s unfairness and the villains’ (if you can call them that) terrorizing of innocent children. This is certainly not your run-of-the-mill disaster flick, but I’m not quite sure what else I’d call it. Sure, it’s designed to sell tickets and popcorn - which is obvious by Cage’s casting in the lead role and all the great special effects that everyone loves to see - but it’s a little more intelligent than I thought it would be, and had elements of horror and sci-fi as well as a decidedly philosophical bent. It reminded me a great deal of The Day the Earth Stood Still but was much more frightening and unnerving.

I must tell you about one particular scene which I’ve dubbed The Most Disturbing Image in Motion Picture History. Seriously, it had me crawling the walls! Nic Cage’s character John Koestler is on the phone inside his home while his son, Caleb (the adorably defiant Chandler Canterbury) is playing outside. A shiny black sedan pulls up in front of the Koestlers’ yard, and an unidentifiable passenger extends his hand out the window, offering something to Caleb. Caleb, without any regard for the warnings he’s surely heard over and over since toddlerhood (don’t talk to strangers, take presents from people you don’t know, approach strange cars, etc.) walks down the hill to the street and calmly takes the object - a smooth black stone - from the passenger’s hand. At this point, his father sees what’s going on and comes running and screaming out of the house, and I was flipping out right along with him.

Luckily, though, the ending was satisfying enough to make out for the freakiness of the rest of the flick. Don’t worry, though, I won’t spoil it for you.

Now we come to Martyrs, which you can read about at IMDB or its official site (which, BTW, is in French). A good friend of mine recommended this movie, and I’ve been waiting to see it ever since; I’d noticed it on the shelf at Blockbuster a couple of weeks ago, and STUPIDLY let the clerk talk me into getting [REC] instead.* I’m glad I finally got around to renting it, because it was also so much more than I expected.

I knew Martyrs was a torture flick (and as my friend Vanessa had warned me, what you see in the trailer is NOTHING compared to what happens in the actual movie) which is okay with me because though I’m not a hardcore horror fan, I do like some splattery-blood-n-guts. I had NO IDEA! that the images I saw would unsettle me as much as they did and that the premise behind the torture would be So. Far. Out. There! I can’t say too much or I’ll give the “secret” away, but I will say that the perpetrators in this movie aren’t into child abuse for the usual perverted, deviant reasons. In their minds, they are answering a higher calling, and their acts are sensible, even beautiful. (Try wrapping your head around that and keeping your lunch down!) I’ll also say that there is a reason why the title of the movie is martyrs - that is, plural, and referring to a religious experience.

So if you have a strong stomach for violence, please rent Martyrs, and then come back and tell me what you thought. Were you amazed? Were you bored? Saddened? Disgusted? Something else? If you’re not into blood spraying across the TV screen, however, pick up Knowing. It’ll get your brain going, I promise, just in a different way. Same rules apply - give me your opinion once you’ve taken a look.

* Don’t get me wrong, [REC] was good, but I’ve already seen Quarantine and it’s pretty much the exact same movie, except that [REC] is in Spanish and its ending is ever so slightly more disturbing. Those two and a half minutes, though, were not worth the $5 price of the rental. Martyrs, however, was so good I’ll probably buy myself a copy.

…on 9/11/01?

Tell me your stories.

Last Thursday night, I watched the first half of The Reader, finishing it Friday morning before my mother-in-law picked me up. (She had invited me to accompany her to a family wedding in her Pennsylvania hometown - but more on that later.) I really enjoyed the movie, but I knew that it would take time, and thought, and re-watching, and pondering, and research, for me to truly understand the story and let it touch me as deeply as it wanted to. So of course I’ve been watching it over and over again since we returned from PA, and absorbing every bit of information I can find about its story and production!

I should have known this movie would be wonderful! After all, it stars Kate Winslet, one of the most beautiful and talented women of my generation, and Ralph Fiennes, who is one of my favorite actors. (As Amon Göth in Schindler’s List, he was the epitome of a hardened, diseased heart; in Red Dragon, he was pitifully sick man, abusive and abused; and no one can play the jealous lover like he did in The End of the Affair and The English Patient.) Stephen Daldry’s The Hours is another movie that profoundly affected me, and I had an idea that this movie would do the same - but I was fearful, too, because of the subject matter. Any story in which a teenager is sexually exploited by a much older person gives me pause. I’m glad that I finally got over my squickiness, because this movie was about so much more than sex or Nazism (the other Big Deal Issue that one might get stuck on when examining the story). More than anything, I think the movie was about being “marked” - by an event, by a deficiency, by a relationship - and how those unseen markings compell us to do many things, good and bad.

A synopsis from the Wikipedia entry about the movie:

[The Reader] tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who as a teenager in the late 1950s had an affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp in the later years of World War II. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past - a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial.

I’ll try not to give away Hanna’s secret, though I’m often the last person to see a hip, acclaimed, award-winning movie, so it’s likely that my dedicated readers* have already seen this flick. And if you haven’t but decide to rush to your local Blockbuster based on my review (wouldn’t I feel important!) you’ll likely figure out her secret as quickly as I did. Interestingly, some of the critical responses to the film dismiss the importance of Hanna’s secret, which is anticlimactically unshameful, especially compared to the crimes for which she is tried and convicted. In fact, at least one critic was disgusted that moviegoers were wasting their time feeling any bit of empathy for such an awful woman, a sentiment which perplexed me, despite its popularity in our modern world.

After all, it is easy to judge a person for foolish - and immoral, and cruel - behavior (and Hanna demonstrates each of these characteristics in the time we get to know her) until we find ourselves in that person’s shoes (and trust me, we are all foolish, immoral or cruel at some point in our lives, if not at several or several hundred). Then we start making excuses for ourselves, and expect people to see why our foolishness is so different from that other person’s foolishness, and therefore, understandable. Forgivable, even!

It is also easy to divide people into categories: GOOD (which we often assume includes us and the people we like, even if we or they have done Very Bad Things) and BAD (which includes people we don’t like and people that have done Extremely Bad Things, or sometimes just things that are Slightly Badder than the Very Bad Things we or our loved ones may have done) but the truth of life is that the Amon Göths of the world are few and far between. Rarely do you meet a Bad Person who hasn’t a single ounce of compassion in her heart, and it would take years of searching to find a Good Person who has never done or said or thought something selfish or unkind. In fact, I’d say that one could search for one’s entire life and NEVER find someone who is Truly Good. If you’re a Christian, you likely hold the belief that Jesus Christ was the only human being that lived without sin.** The rest of us - well, the rest of us are pretty much all in the same boat.

Yes, it would seem to make sense that Hanna ought to be more ashamed of what she did in the service of the Nazis than her petty, embarrassing little secret. But isn’t that how human beings are? Aren’t we often a mess of contradiction in what we profess and how we perform, in what we’ll forgive in others but not in ourselves (or vice versa)? In exploring the person of Hanna Schmitz, I see shades of myself, and of all people; I see souls corrupted, who sometimes blindly manage to do the right thing, and other times consciously make a choice that’s hopelessly, disgustingly wrong. In Michael, I see someone scarred, deeply and unaccountably, by another person’s misdeeds - as well as someone who instinctively offers kindness to his perpetrator, finding redemption for himself.

If you want a movie that will make you think, as well as possibly shock you and anger you and unsettle you, I highly recommend The Reader. And if you’ve already seen the movie, I highly recommend renting it to enjoy the special features (the deleted scenes are particularly enlightening) and taking a moment to read what Wikipedia had to say about its critical reception. As anyone who was forced to participate in a literature discussion in high school or college knows, our personal impressions of a work of art are only the starting place of our understanding it. It’s in listening to the impressions of others that we truly start to learn - not just about the characters in a movie or book, but about ourselves and our fellow travelers.

*Yes, all five of you, LOL! Or maybe I’m up to seven now?
**And goodness, did you see where that got him?

Jennifer over at Conversion Diary asked her readers on Monday to share the posts that capture the essence of their blogs. My blog is a real grab-bag, so I picked one of my Seven Quick Takes posts, specifically this one. It’s got everything I write about - cute animals, family and friends, God, books and movies.

I strongly recommend that you check out the links on Jen’s post because there are some darn good blogs out there. I’ve been working on them for the past two days!

Yesterday evening, my husband Jon was heading out to the store when he noticed something small, cute, and furry in the gutter in front of our house. It was a baby bunny, barely bigger than a golf ball. I nearly melted of the adorable. My brother and his girlfriend came out to look at the critter, too, and we all debated about what we should do. Feed it? I know what to feed orphaned kittens and dogs, but not bunnies. Would the folks at Petsmart know what to do? Should we just put her in a safe place and wait for the mommy to come and get her? Would the mommy not come back because we’d touched the baby? (I told Chrissy this was an urban myth, but I honestly have no idea if it is or not. I sounded very authoritative, though, so that’s a plus.)

Anyway, quickly googling “orphaned baby bunny” led me to the conclusion that attempting to feed or care for this widdle wabbit myself was a Bad Idea, since baby bunnies are apparently prone to really bad tummyaches. So I called a friend who makes a habit of rescuing animals; she, too, hopped on the net and found a wildlife rescue hotline for me to call. I left a message and received a call back this morning - apparently, an experienced wildlife rehabilitator lives just over a mile away from me! I dropped the baby off on my way to work.

I didn’t have the presence of mind to take a picture of the little guy (and my camera’s battery is dead, anyway) so I turned to the net again for a photograph that would take your breath away. You see those tiny little bebes? Don’t you just wanna kiss & snuggle them? The photographer says that “they were trapped in our window well, we rescued them and returned them to their mother.” AAAAAAAAAAAAAH I WUV DEM!

See? My blog is quite often just a stopping point for pics of cute animals!