Hi! I’m Meredith. Two of my five children have had trampoline-related leg breaks, so this week, we bought one on Facebook Marketplace and put it in the backyard. To be among the first to hear about the next trampoline injury, subscribe now!
The end of January always feels a bit fragmentary to me. Whatever goals I set have either fallen apart or hit the point of “Ok, that was a cool idea, but living this cool idea is less glamorous than I thought it would be.” So all I have for you this week are five snippets. Just for fun, let’s have each of the five start with the letter “S”—we’ll wrap up with a survey (see what I did there?) at the bottom regarding Hinds House and backyard summer fun.* Inquiring minds want to know!!
A Stat
My three-year-old received a LiteBrite for Christmas as part of a “cousins’ white elephant” gift exchange. If you don’t have the pleasure of knowing what a LiteBrite is, just imagine preschooler pointillism, medium: plastic. Of the 214 tiny plastic pieces that originally came with the LiteBrite, 50 have been recovered. The rest have either been vacuumed up, lost around town, or hidden in my house. Survival rate: 23.36%.
A Song
The kids have been singing sea shanties in the garage (thank you, Spotify) during “shop time with Dad.” A favorite is “Riding on a Donkey,” which is not about the animal (it’s mostly about seaports in Canada). On our way to school one morning last week, my five-year-old daughter was belting out a song of her own invention. This is not terribly uncommon, and I couldn’t tell you what she comes up with most of the time. But that morning I stopped to listen and this is what she was singing:
“I am the strongest, I am the toughest/
I am an airplane, I can hold a HUNDRED PEOPLE!”
Watch for her album to drop sometime in the 2040s—I am an Airplane.
A Saint
This past Wednesday was the feast of Saint Frances de Sales, Doctor of the Church and a patron of writers and editors. We’ve been reading his Introduction to the Devout Life. In the first chapter, he makes this great bird analogy about the spiritual life:
The ostrich never flies, the common fowl flies but seldom, and then heavily and near the ground; but the swallow, the dove, and the eagle are ever on the wing, they fly far and easily. Even so sinners rise not to God, but always grovel on the earth in pursuing earthly things; well-meaning people who are as yet not truly devout, mount up to God in good works, but rarely, slowly, and heavily; whilst the devout fly to Him perpetually, soaring lightly.
So Jonny and I have been joking about being “spiritual chickens”—those “common fowl” that have a hard time flying and look funny when they do it. Lest we spiritual chickens be discouraged, at the end of the fifth chapter, Saint Frances de Sales writes, “It is a favorable feature of this war, that so long as we will fight, we must be victorious.”
As Jonny said, “I think that gets misattributed to C.S. Lewis a lot.”
A Sandwich
You need:
A few tortillas
Mixed greens
Some combination of: olives, chopped red onion, cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots, avocado
Grated cheese (any kind)
dressing: ranch dressing (or mayo), splash of oil, splash of vinegar, crumbled feta cheese (yes, it needs more cheese). You’ll have to mess around with the units, I don’t know what you like.
The magic of this sandwich is that it looks like a salad but mostly it’s cheese.
Mix the greens, veggies of choice, and cheese in a bowl. You could throw some meat (chopped deli turkey, shredded chicken) in there if you wanted. Then mix all of the dressing ingredients together in a different, smaller bowl. Only make this recipe if you’re okay with cleaning up two bowls or leaving them on the counter for a while. Pour the dressing over the veggies. Toss. Grab some with some tongs and put it in a tortilla. You will want a second tortilla.
A Survey
*we will (probably) not rely on this data exclusively for this decision.
If January is getting you down—we all know it’s a hard month to get through—I just want you to remember this: you are the strongest, and you are the toughest. You are an airplane—you can hold a hundred people. I know you can.
I didn’t vote beehives because I think they’re a lot of work BUT James’ grandparents used to keep bees and it’s on my bucket list to one day have a hive ourselves!
Totally beehives!! The honey you used to get was the very best!