A Sticky Situation

This afternoon I had a little adventure in the kitchen. I was home alone with my sister, and my sister was at the computer. If I had older, wiser, or nosier family members at home with me, it would not have happened. But I get brilliant ideas when I'm alone that turn out to be not so brilliant.

I was going to have some chocolate chip ice cream. I scooped some into a bowl, got out the hot fudge, and suddenly had one of those "brilliant" ideas. I decided that I would melt some caramel in the microwave and put it on my ice cream. I unwrapped four caramels and into the microwave they went. For only 20-30 seconds. I took them out. They did not look at all delicious... Part of the caramels had indeed melted and turned black and bubbly. I touched the black-and-bubbly part. OUCH. The phrase "blonde moment" comes to mind. You would think that I would be smart enough to do the math. My finger didn't hurt for very long, fortunately.

I melted the caramel some more and took them out of the microwave in a hurry when I started to hear a hissing noise in there. I stirred the caramel around, thinking, "This might work..." But in stirring the caramel around, I stirred in the black parts too. I ditched the whole idea. I put my bowl of ice cream into the freezer - I didn't need melted ice cream on top of everything else! I spooned some of the caramel into the trashcan, wrinkling my nose at the little black bits mixed into it. I then turned to the sink to puzzle over how best to clean the quickly-hardening caramel out of the little bowl. I REALLY didn't want anyone to know about my kitchen problems and stupidity. The spoon I had stirred the caramel with was pretty easy. But that bowl. *shudders* I soaked it in hot water, and scraped and scraped and soaked and... augh. I was so glad that I had cut my fingernails a few nights before, because I would certainly have broken several in the scraping process.

FINALLY I got all the caramel out, and either into the trash can or down the drain or vanished somehow or other. I ate my ice-cream without further decoration than hot fudge and enjoyed it very much. And I told my mother later that day. She thought it was pretty funny, but I don't think she would have thought it so funny if I had left it for her to clean.

So. That was my minor kitchen catastrophe for the day. At least, it seemed like a catastrophe at the time. It also seemed very interesting, but now it just seems stupid and dull. The moral of the story is: Never leave me alone in the kitchen for too long.

One Million Rosaries

This was brought to my attention by Lady Rose.

From the St. Michael The Archangel Organization website:

The ONE MILLION ROSARIES FOR UNBORN BABIES prayer event is scheduled to happen on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008. The intention for this Rosary will be: For an end to the surgical and non-surgical killing of unborn babies. On the day of the prayer event, it is hoped at least one million people in the U.S.A. will be praying the Rosary within the same sixty minute time span

To register, just click on Register as A Participant on the sidebar. No personal information is needed, just click and you're in. :D I, my mother, and my sisters are all going to get up at 6 am on Saturday morning to pray the rosary! :D

A Bookshelf for Delaney - A Picture Blog

Once upon a time there was a girl named Delaney. She bought so many books that eventually she was buried alive in them. The End.

Luckily, that's not a true story (yet)! But it was beginning to look like it might be! Behold:

Yes, folks, that's about how many books I usually have stacked up beside my bed. And this is what I had in a bin under my bed:

We had talked about my desperate need for a bookshelf, but furniture is expensive. And I can't have any old bookshelf, you know. So last night I decided to do something about it.

In the closet in the room I share with my sister, there are two dress-up bins, (With clothing and costumes from when my mother was young), a bin full of shoes (most of which we have outgrown) and a bookshelf, which was more of a magazine/notebook/scrapbook/old book/paper shelf. It was very ugly. Last night we cleaned that out, moved the bins into the part of the closet where the bookshelf was, and moved the bookshelf so that we could actually get to it. We threw a lot of stuff away, and now all my old notebooks are hidden safely under my bed in a storage bin. Then ... we made this junk shelf into a real bookshelf, as my sister says!



(Just a note: I don't learn Latin from Latin For Dummies. I use Henle Latin.)

Aaahhh. Now, here's the pile by my bed; only books I'm reading, and books from the library.



I think I now know why there is that practice called "Spring Cleaning." There must be something about spring that shows up the dirtiness of your house. And spring is a time of newness.

(My apologies for the bad quality of the pictures. I had to edit them to make them brighter and not so ... yellow. *wrinkles her nose*)

Rest in God

"Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."

- St. Augustine.

Have a wonderful Sunday, resting from your week, resting in God.

Today, Saturday

Today was amazing...

First, I got up at 5:30. Even that was kind of amazing. Me, my mom, my little sister, and my baby sister all got into the car at 6:15 and drove to Eagle Rock, California to see my godparents being accepted into the Dominican lay order.

The church, St. Dominic's, was beautiful. There were stained glass windows, statues, high ceilings, the works. It was so lovely, and so easy to concentrate on the Mass.

After that, my day got even better. There was a used booksale in a library next to the church. I came home with quite an armload of books. Read more about that here.

I've felt so... free lately.

The Sign of the Cross

I believe it was St. Francis of Assisi who said that the Sign of the Cross is everywhere, if we're looking for it.

Today while doing math, I tried to see how many crosses I could see sitting in one place, in one half hour. Here are my results:

The sign of the cross:

On my notebook paper

The lowercase T in my last name (on my math paper)

The shape our wilting Easter lily’s leaves and stalk are making

Dried palm leaves from Palm Sunday folded and tied into a cross, hanging on the cork board

A guitar - the strings crossing the frets makes many crosses

The window panels on the back door

Seven signs of the cross in one room! That's something to be excited about!

Peter Pan (And The Promised Update)

I don't really feel like talking about myself right now, but here...

I finished the rough draft for my research report on Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. FINALLY. I'm so glad... I've sent it into Seton for feedback before I re-write. Now hopefully I'll have time for some of my own writing.

My little sister wants to go to some summer camp with her best friend. Catholic, very conservative, very strict about modesty, which is cool. On one hand, I think: "OH MY! A week without her chatter... so much peace... sounds tempting... but no! I would miss her too much!" and the other hand thinks: "Argh! Why does she get all the adventures?" Oh, well. I hope she does get to go. :)

Catholic, Reluctantly is on the way from Amazon. I hope. They sent us an email yesterday saying that it would ship on the 24th, and later that day they sent another email saying it shipped yesterday, on the 15th. I'm hoping it'll come tomorrow - at the very earliest, mind you. (Funny. When I'm waiting for something in the mail I keep saying, "Oh, I know it might not come," to whoever reminds me that it mightn't, but then I'm all disappointed when the Thing I'm waiting for doesn't arrive... Hmm... )

The Fairy Tale Novels Forum is having a group reading of the books. :D Come and join us, if you can! We're hoping to finish around the time The Midnight Dancers is released. (This summer! It's getting closer! :D )

Lately I haven't had any peace. I feel restless a lot of the time, and don't feel relaxed unless I'm being passively entertained - watching a movie, or fooling around on the computer. I began to think, "Wow, how pathetic." I also began to lose interest in reading, because it made me think too much. Hmm. Something was definitely wrong.

Then one morning, in that moment between sleeping and waking, when you're starting to lose your hold on the dream you just had, I realized what my problem was:

I didn't want to grow up.

Seriously. All this time, I thought I was embracing growing up and becoming a woman and who God wanted me to be, and I wasn't going to be like my little sister who would probably rather go to Neverland and run wild with Peter and the Lost Boys than get married and get a job. It must have been something in the dream, but by that time I couldn't remember it. I really thought about it:

I've just got a job, working in a toystore.
I've just started high-school. (Well, not just started, but you know what I mean)
I have to memorize a lesson from the catechism every week for a confirmation class - and we have finals...this Sunday! Eek!
I'm learning to take responsibility for my actions, and really learn about my faith, and myself.

Sometimes I fool myself with the "I'm still just a kid, I can take my time for a few years more!" But not anymore, apparently. Who knows, perhaps Responsibility and I will never get to be Arm-In-Arm chums, but after realizing my problem, I don't feel so afraid of him anymore.

Okay. That's all for today, folks! I need to find out what Raskolnikov is up to now... and what happens to poor Sonia! And whether Razumihin has a happy ending. I probably won't find out tonight (about 150 pages of Crime & Punishment left) but at least if I can get a little bit further I can make a few guesses.

*wonders mournfully whatever happened to the notes she was taking on the book*