Here and there

I have not posted much here lately, so here's a few random items.

Elder is a full time university student.  Younger is doing well in high school.  She even joined the games club, raising the number of girls in the club to one.  Frodo remains in his own little world, although he has moments where he comes out and joins us in our world.  However, our world does not seem all that great to him, and he returns to his own.  It seems to be a happy place.  I wish I could join him.

I was going to take my mother to Ottawa this weekend to visit with some family.  My mother believes her 70 year old god daughter could do with a visit from her 92 year old god mother. Unfortunately, mother got an injection for her right eye which left her pretty much immobilized for the time being.  It's too bad.  I was looking forward to getting her out and about, showing her fall colours and all, and seeing my cousins.  We've had some wonderful times visiting in the past.

Puff's anxiety returned for a time, but she is starting to get it back under control.

I have been busy with building some stands to hold pictures for my group of knights, finishing a commission, making  things for the next round of bazaars, correcting Elder's essays, taking younger to air cadets, watching Frodo, baking goods for Younger's lunch (which, I discovered, she sells to her friends), working, singing, practicing my singing, the miscellanea of keeping a house up and running, and a hundred others things. I quit facebook for a month to give myself more time to tend to these other things.  I really haven't noticed any extra time popping up without it.

I have also been trying to get my Brief History into some form that I may send to the Cardinal.  This has proven to be something of a challenge.  I didn't keep proper footnotes when I was writing, because I never intended it at the time to be anything more than a series of edifying yet entertaining blog posts, and now I believe it should be properly annotated if I am going to publish it and sell literally a few copies.  Unfortunately, most of my research was on line, and several of the sites I used no longer exist.  Even better, my research through journals and periodicals has uncovered variant versions of the events I covered- not variations in the interpretations of events, mind, but variations in the events themselves.  I have no way of determining which variant is true.  Also, I have been a little thin on primary sources, as the only primary sources to which I have any sort of easily available access are newspapers- and I can only do that if I have hours of time to look. I don't have hours of time to look.  More and more, this is looking like a stupid idea.  But, the Cardinal said he would be happy to go over it, and I feel now obligated to send something to him.  The first part, which begins with Father O'Grady arriving at St Paul's parish and ends with the death of Michael Power, is almost complete.  If I could find just ten hours to work on it, it would be... more ready than it is now.

I also got off Facebook because I no longer wanted to be bombarded with the American election.  I had that, hoped being a Canadian, I would be insulated from it.  Instead, I found it unavoidable.  I even got into an argument with my sister when visiting my mother some weeks ago.  Somehow, she took my statements that "I think both candidates are awful" was a declaration of my unwavering support for Trump.  "I thought you were smarter than that!" she cried. No one knows how to debate any more.  No one actually listens anymore.  They don't hear your meaning, only their own feelings- what it feels like to be told you're wrong, or that the party you have chosen, the party you have embraced, the party that you declare to be good, is not good at all, although it might, just might, be the lesser of two evils.  But what of that?   It seems very simple to me, and a very swift leap down a very dark ladder: when you vote for the lesser of two evils what you get is evil.  When you embrace the lesser of two evils, what you embrace is evil.  When you declare the lesser of two evils to be a positive good- you have become depraved and stand in need of a miracle.

And that's why I have not blogged much of late.  Now it's time to get back to work.