7 Quick Takes: Edda Helps This Week

7 Quick Takes

Edda is taking refuge from Daniel on my lap (where he has to use gentle hands to pet her) so she’s going to help me with my quick takes this week.

— 1 —

Orphans. Do you see these two sweet children?

L-R: Brett and Iris
BrettIris

Brett still needs a mama. Iris finally has a family committed to her and they are compiling their dossier to send to her country.

Click on their names to see their Reece’s Rainbow pages.

— 2 —

“Mom of the Year” material here. Just a word of advice: if your child has been terrified of car washes in the past, it’s not incredibly good to take him through one because “he might have gotten over his fear”. It’s sensory hell and in addition to your kid flipping out to the point that they puke, you’ll also have a headache from the screaming.

Totally the “Mom of the Year” here.

— 3 —

Fasting for peace. I’m not sure what I’ll be fasting from because I’ll be with my parents but I’m taking part. There’s also a beautiful prayer here. (HT: Fr. James Martin, S.J)

Fasting for peace on September 7th.

— 4 —

Where bloggers blog. There’s a Tumblr that is showing pictures of where bloggers blog. I haven’t submitted one yet but I’m considering it.

— 5 —

Al Franken delivers. A couple weeks ago, I posted about some harmless political fun. He offered to let people vote on what Minnesota State Fair food he would eat in a virtual postcard to supporters. The verdict: deep-fried pickles with chocolate sauce. To spare you having to surf to one of his donation pages, I’m embedding the video below. (The actual eating of the pickles is at 1:18.)

And no, I don’t live in Minnesota — I just like Al Franken. 🙂

— 6 —

Wow. When Jon went to pick Daniel up today, his teacher asked why we hadn’t told her that he knew all his capital letters. Ummm… because we didn’t know? It sounds like someone has been paying attention during Circle Time! Go Daniel!

— 7 —

Hot hot hot! It’s supposed to be in the triple digits this weekend. Seriously, I’m wishing it was December in Montana with sub-zero temperatures. I hate heat. At least when it’s that cold, you can put a ton of layers on. When it’s this hot, you can only take so much off.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

Five Favorites: Miscellanea (XIV)

Five Favorites

One

The guy who helped me at the Social Security office today. You know how I was complaining about having to deal with Social Security today? I got the one competent person in the office. He figured out immediately what had happened regarding Daniel’s SSI and fixed it. (It was a data entry error.) He also had the brilliant insight about the SSA not needing copies of my taxes because they could just get the numbers from the IRS. Wow… government agencies actually communicating. That’s so… obvious.

Two

Black cats. Why yes, Edda is helping me write this post. How did you guess? (Edda, for those new to my blog, is my house panther.) She would like to register her objection to the existence of the Daniel kitten and the fact that he torments her by chasing her and not petting her with gentle hands.

Three

Sub-zero temperatures. Wishful thinking on my part because it’s bloody hot here and I also miss living in a place where there are four distinct seasons. We don’t have decent fall colors here because it doesn’t get cold enough and I strangely miss snow. (Edda would like to register her objection to snow because it confuses her as a black cat.)

Four

Daniel’s ABA therapists. He loves them enough that last Friday, they were meeting at our house outside of session and I had to very pointedly distract him because he couldn’t understand why they weren’t there to play with him. (These are people who exist to make him do things he hates doing.) He also fell asleep snuggled between two of them while they were tabulating data today. (They feel similarly about him.)

Five

Sleep. Daniel was off for Monday and Tuesday (translation: no sleep-in day for Jen which she needs in order to fight off a stomach bug) and I was on the go all day today other than an attempted catnap (in my case, an attempted nap with a big orange tabby) before Daniel’s ABA session started this afternoon. I think I’ll page my tabby and curl up now.

Go love up Hallie and the others.