Sayers Sayings

I'm currently reading a collection of essays by Dorothy L. Sayers called The Whimsical Christian. They are Christian apologetics along the line of C. S. Lewis, and like Lewis, Sayers is exceedingly quotable. Here are some good ones from various essays.

On the nature of sacrifice in "What Do We Believe?":

Ask yourself: if there is something you supremely want to do, do you count as self-sacrifice the difficulties encountered or the other possible activities cast aside? You do not. The time when you deliberately say, "I must sacrifice this, that, or the other" is when you do not supremely desire the end in view. At such times you doing your duty, and that is admirable, but it is not love. But as soon as your duty becomes your love the self-sacrifice is taken for granted, and , whatever the world calls it, you call it so no longer.

On human nature (quoting Lord David Cecil) in "Creed or Chaos?":

As Lord David Cecil has said: "The jargon of the philosophy of progress taught us to think that the savage and primitive state of man is behind us, we still talk of the present 'return to barbarism.' But barbarism is not behind us, it is beneath us."

On the role of recognition in true art, from "Toward a Christian Esthetic":

This recognition of the truth that we get in the artist's work comes to us as a revelation of new truth. I want to be clear about that. I am not referring to the sort of patronizing observing: "Yes, yes, very good, very true--that's just what I'm always saying." I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a new knowledge of ourselves within our grasp. It is new, startling, and perhaps shattering, and yet it comes to us with a sense of familiarity. We did not know it before, but the moment the poet has shown it to us, we know that, somehow or other, we had always really known it.

Special shout out to Troy and Britt for the book turn-on. Good stuff!

"Tragedy" Starts with Tea

This may be my last post; I expect Child Protective Services to be arriving momentarily in their large black helicopters. But it was all an accident, I swear.

It started out as a standard Daddy's-home-and-making-tea kind of morning. L got up and demanded her usual portion. It was a fresh brewed pot and I filled her little sippy-cup about 3/4 full. We were just about out of milk, so she got a dab rather than the usual 50% mix. I added the sugar and went to cap the cup. I couldn't find the little flow restrictor stopper that fits in, so I went without, thinking L is a mature young lady who can handle her drinking. Wish that were the case with Daddy.

As I bring her cup over to her at the table I launch into a paternalistic lecture on the dangers she will soon contend with. "There are two things you need to be aware of," I said. "The first is that the tea is a lot hotter than usual since we didn't have much milk. The second is that there isn't a stopper, so be careful when you drink it."

At that point, standing right over her, I plugged the sipping spout with my thumb and gave the cup its standard sugar-mixing shake. All you physics-inclined folks already know where this is heading, but for those less engineering-geek types, or for those engineering-geek types who tend to do things without thinking, there is an interesting phenomenon that occurs when relatively cool air in a cup is suddenly shaken violently with tea that's sitting a mere degree or two from 212. It wants out.

Stacy, who was sitting one seat down, managed to give one of those Janet Leigh/Psycho kind of screams as an explosion of molten tea lava erupted from every seam of the cup and rained down on our daughter. L, on the other hand, had the uberdramatic one second of shocked silence before adding her part to the cacophony. Do you have any idea how long it takes all those writhing bubbles of liquid pain to fall silently to earth once things switch into slow-motion world? I'd say fifteen to twenty minutes.

L was quickly scooped up by Mommy while Daddy was banished from the room in shame. Fortunately L inherited Mommy's mane rather than Daddy's and other than the need for a good shampoo, the damage was minimal. Cold Elmo was called into service nonetheless - that's her Elmo-decorated owwy icepack - and other than Mommy's glare at Daddy, which is, not surprisingly, as cold as the tea was hot, things generally are all resolved. Julie Andrews might have summed it up in a more 60's psychedelic version of the song:

Tea - a drink that scalds your head.
That will bring us back to "Doh! Doh! Doh! Doh!"

Stacy calls this my typical Daddy-guilt post. But Hey! - my thumb was owwy too, you know.

Dramatic reenactment.

Of Dinosaurs and Seriously Ferocious Arachnids

Had another midnight visitor last night. I quizzed L this morning on why she ended up in our room. She had a bad dream.

"There was a Tyrannosaurus on my wall. It had scary eyes and big teeth."

"Most of them do. But it wasn't real, right? It was just a dream?"

"Yes. And there was a spider too. It tried to eat the dinosaur. It ate its hands, but the dinosaur ate its head."

Maybe I shouldn't have been watching those Walking with Dinosaurs videos on YouTube with her last night...

Midnight Time Bandits

Arrggg!

With a hangover, aren't you at least supposed to get a good night of pointless debauchery beforehand? I have a hangover from one too many toddlers last night. (Hot Toddies?) At 3:30AM I was woken by a horrific screaming from the kids' room. N was all wrapped up in his blankets, mummified, facing down into his mattress in quite a panic. I extracted him and carried him, melted into my shoulder, back to our bedroom. He explained through choked sobs that a ladybug had tried to bite him while he slept.

When I got back to our bed I was surprised to find L already in it. She had slipped in much less dramatically who knows how much earlier and I had never noticed. How I managed to bolt out of bed to get to N without crushing her I'll never know. I deposited N with Stacy and then relocated L back to her bed -- she was sleeping soundly at this point -- and then crawled back in. N was out like a light and Stacy was quickly asleep again.

That's when time began to warp and morph around me. I looked at the clock - still around 3:30. An hour later I looked again. 3:35. I stared at the ceiling for another two hours or so. 3:40. I focused on the book I was reading. 3:45. I focused on plans for the weekend. 3:48. I focused on work. 3:50 and knots in my stomach. I went back to focusing on the book I was reading. Several hours later at 3:50 I gave up and went and surfed the net for 5 minutes. 6:30.

I tried to catch another catnap, but by then L was up again and it proved pointless. I'm resigned to my fate of a low-grade headache and a general bad mood for the rest of the day. Meanwhile its closing in on 9:00 and N is sleeping like a log.

In my bed.

Arrggg!

Another Day, Another Ballet

Wow. Already another ballet recital? Didn't she just have one? Another semester, another recital; I think I need to get used to the rhythm. I sense its going to be a drumbeat of life for a while.

This one was special because Poppa got to come. So did Aunt Claudia and Grandma Donna and Grandma Flo (L has a couple dozen neighborhood grandmas.)
It was your typical affair, with kicks and bends and the occasional prancing from one side of the studio to the other. This time the repertoire was expanded to include tap. (At times it seemed more like a Stomp audition.) But L has enormous amounts of fun and N thoroughly enjoys watching in the wings, mimicking her every move. Yup, hands over his head, one foot on the other knee. The other day, I kid you not, I caught him lying on his back with his legs up in the air, wiggling his feet, saying "Ex, Oint, Ex, Oint,..."

I looked to Stacy and she translated. "Flex, Point, Flex, Point -- It's L's ballet exercise."

Sigh.

I have to give it up for Miss Heather, her dance teacher. She has an incredible amount of patience with the girls. L adores her.

iDolatry

In every heart there exists an iPod-shaped hole waiting to be filled. Mine was filled on Thursday. Can anyone doubt why the original sin centered around an Apple?

Please pardon me while I quietly give way to unbridled materialism for a week or two.

Homeward Bound

Our last morning in Big Bear we were able to get in a mini-hike in down by the lake. It was a beautiful day, but the kids were tired and ornery and we didn't make it too far. But it was nice to pretend to get out and see some of the countryside.

L, whose favorite color is purple, was quite pleased to find some flowers that matched her outfit.

We found the very same log that we'd taken a picture of L on nearly two years ago. It was cool to see how the trees had grown up in front of the lake.

And here's another one from the dusty old vault of times long gone by. I think this is my favorite video we've ever taken of L; she was just a little over two at the time - about the same age N is now. (I'm sure N was asleep in a stroller at the time.)

Stacy's great uncle, Uncle Mike lives in a retirement community in Chino Hills. We used to visit him every so often when he lived in Cerritos, but since he's moved to Chino Hills, which is much further away, we haven't had the chance to get out there and see him. Our return from Big Bear was a rare opportunity, so we took it on the spur of moment. We tried to call ahead and let him know we were coming, but he was out and we couldn't reach him, so we decided to just try our luck and see if we could catch him anyway. We found the place with no trouble and as soon as we walked in the door of the lobby area we spied him immediately in the wine lounge hanging out with all his lady friends. (If we guys can make it long enough to move into a retirement community, the ratio is SOOOO in our favor!)

Rather than being put out at the interruption of his sweet talking, Uncle Mike was thrilled to see us. He showed us his digs which were significantly larger and nicer than our house (again, another motivation to make it to a ripe old age!), and introduced us to all the staff in the place. He was thrilled to have folks to show off to all his friends and hauled us briskly all over the facility.

You never know exactly how older people will handle really young kids, but Uncle Mike took to both L and N, and they to him, quite easily. N was in hog heaven there. Every little old lady was all over him, cooing to him and pinching his cheek. We had dinner with Uncle Mike in the residence restaurant and at least three times I had to get up from the table with N so he could go over across the room and give hugs to the little old ladies who had been flirting with him throughout the meal. ("Daddy, go see ladies!" I wonder if Uncle Mike started to feel threatened.)

As the evening went on Uncle Mike chatted our ears off with stories of the air force and California generations ago, reminiscences pulled from vaults far older than the ones from which we drew the L video. It was fun to hear the stories which are still so vivid to him, though so long behind him, and wonder how the passing of the years had modified the telling. He kept fawning on the kids, but in the end it was the frazzled kids (who needed a long car ride to put them to sleep) who drove us to leave. It was good to see him since it obviously made his day, and we had that funny knot in our stomachs knowing how unlikely it would be for us to get out there again any time soon.