He’s so excited to be 18, so ready to take on the world.  He marches to the beat of his own drum.  A brilliant boy, a gifted writer, a kid who doesn’t do his homework but engages in lively classroom discussions and aces his tests, he has no current plans to go to college.  He wants to graduate high school, get a job, and move out as soon as humanly possible.

And yet he was born only yesterday, or so it seems to me, our 11.8 lb. firstborn son, a beautiful baby with intermingled locks of light brown, blonde, and gold.  “I know this baby!” my mother said when she saw him.  Our first child was her father’s image, but Jake looked like my family–really the only one of five that does.  His hair would be the color of mine–if mine were not grey and he had not dyed his a dark red, just enough off the natural spectrum to be edgy but not extreme.  But he has the blue eyes and the fair Irish skin that only burns.

We knew nothing of boys–there were three girls in my family and John  is an only child–and Jake was a challenge.  He was a good baby and a sweet child, but he started breaking things at eight months old and never stopped.  Teddy arrived only a year later–poor Jake was the baby of the family for only a short time–and they because partners in crime, but Jake was the definite leader as they drove my car into the side of the garage, kidnapped the neighbors kittens, and ran away to “look at Chapman Highway.”

Jake would run around like a maniac and when I would try to calm him down he would say, “But Mommy, don’t you know I get all cwazed up?”  We didn’t know at the time that the “cwaziness” indicated ADHD, which both animates Jake and makes his life more challenging than the rest of us can understand.  Once we figured this out, proper medication helped him concentrate and do his homework, but at a high price:  sleep difficulties, loss of appetite, and a dampening of his personality that made him feel like he was in a fog.  His behavior when off the medication in the summertime led his brother to lament: “Oh, God.  Jake’s happy.”

All of us grownups know that high school is as painful as it is fun, and Jake’s experience has been no different.  He excelled in theatre.  He became a “rowdy teenager with a lot of friends” who loved to hang out together downtown.  His teachers loved him.  They praised his contributions to class discussion and his writing.  But homework problems and sleep difficulties dragged him down.  Clinical depression and conflicts at school made 17 (which I fondly recall as one of my best ages) a rough year indeed for Jake.  He transferred out of an environment that was becoming toxic for him–not my choice but one which I have come to believe believe has been best for him.  He walked bravely into an enormous public school, made friends, passed his classes, and got into a program that accommodates his desire to get out of high school and on with real life sooner than his peers.

Prom 2011

In a family of strong-willed people, Jake’s may be the strongest.  As his parents we realize that at 18 he has absorbed all he is getting from us.  One of my favorite quotations comes from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, when the main character, after reflecting upon her life, offers her friend this bit of wisdom:  “It’s a known fact . . . yuh got to go there to know there.  Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh.  Two things everybody’s got to do fuh theyselves.  They got to go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.”

Happy Birthday, Jake.  It’s your time.

My husband was listening to a playlist of “one hit wonders” this afternoon while we were working.  I don’t guess I’d heard that song since it enjoyed its run on the charts back in 1976.  The idea that bingeing on junk foods is a lot like getting high on illegal drugs is supposed to be funny, and as presented in the song, it is.  But WHAT IT IT WERE TRUE?

As I promised, I’ve been reading Diet Rehab, in preparation for giving its principles a try (love of bacon notwithstanding).  And Dr. Dow’s premise–one that serial dieters will find very attractive–is that they are addicted to food and it’s not their fault.

You listen to the song, and you laugh.  You hear your fat friend griping about how she looks as she eats her McDonald’s Value Meal and if you’ve never had a weight problem you feel secretly superior and scornful.  You comment on AOL articles about fat people with comments like, “He needs to stop stuffing his fat self and get some exercise.  That’s all there is to it.”

But what if food is a drug?  What if fat people are self-medicating their faulty brain chemistry?  You don’t cure a heroin addict by saying “Just Say No!”  You don’t tell your chronically depressed spouse to suck it up and just get over it already.  You don’t insult your alcoholic friend by telling him that it’s easy to quit drinking.

No one wants to be a drug addict, or an alcoholic, or depressed.  That’s a given.  Although there are plenty of mean spirited folks out there who attribute addictions and mental illness to character flaws, most of us have seen enough of the science to have accepted that these things are biologically based.  So far, the science in the diet rehab book seems sound.  What I’ve read does not contradict my long experience with dieting–about which more later.

One thing I know:  no one WANTS to be fat.  No little boy wants to be the last one picked for teams.  No teenage girl wants to be without a boyfriend.  No man wants to die young from heart disease.  No woman wants to feel frumpy and undesirable.  If it were easy to lose weight, NO ONE WOULD BE FAT.

Maybe Dr. Dow has come up with part of the reason it’s so hard.  Maybe he’s come up with an answer.  We’ll see.

Actually, that's not bacon, it's hog jowls. We are out of bacon so I can't photograph any. But that's close enough, right?

When I was growing up, there was always a cup of bacon grease in the refrigerator, but the only time I remember my mother using it was when she made green beans.  But I have recently discovered the joys of using bacon grease to cook practically everything!

What happened was that Weigel’s had a buy one get one free sale on bacon!  We go to Weigel’s (that’s a local version of 7-11, which we don’t have here) every day, and if I make a pound of bacon it gets eaten in five minutes by someone–in fact, there are actual fights over bacon.  Bacon is one of the few things William will eat, and Jake and Teddy are always ready for meat.  So while it was on sale I bought it every time I went there.

So then I’d have a big frying pan full of bacon grease just sitting there on the stove looking lonely.  After the fire, we received a gift of a whole lot of steaks.  A WHOLE lot.  Jake and Teddy eat steak almost every day.  I don’t know what they will do when those are gone.  So I discovered that a quick and yummy way to fix the steaks is to pan fry them in the bacon grease!  John doesn’t like his pan fried, so I put a slice of raw bacon on it before I broil it.   William won’t eat steak any more, but he does like boneless chicken, which also responds well to the bacon grease treatment.

Teddy and Jake will eat a plate full of steak and be satisfied, but for some reason John wants a side dish.  How about spaghetti sauteed in the grease that remains after the steaks are done?  (With some garlic and salt and pepper as well!)  Sweet onions sauteed in bacon drippings are pretty delicious too.

What do I do with the actual bacon?  Yesterday I made sandwiches:  avocado, a little leftover tomato sauce, the sauteed onion, bacon, some pepper jack cheese.  When Emily was home I made bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches.  Mostly, though, people just eat slices off the plate the bacon is draining on.

Even the dog benefits from the bacon regime–when I think the grease has had enough, I mix it in his dog food!  He hates plain dog food but he’ll eat that with gusto!

And don’t worry about my rehab–I actually get to consume very little of the bacon myself!

Humor me–listen to the song first.

I’ve spent the last couple of hours indulging in a rare occupation for me–listening to music.  I don’t own an iPod (well, I have an iPhone now but I don’t use it for that).  I usually don’t turn on the car radio.  My CDs, cassettes, and records are all gone.  If I want music, I usually sing.  And not surprisingly I suppose, what I really like to hear is SILENCE.

But I was feeling tired of my usual computer occupations, and it was too cold to go out, and our resident babysitters have their own social lives nowadays so going out on a date was out of the question anyway, so I decided to play with Spotify, which I was totally thrilled with when I first got it but forgot all about after a day or two because I just never think of listening to music.  I discovered Pandora before anyone else I knew and I don’t ever listen to it either.  But I digress.

I created a playlist with songs from my college days.  Now, I have a kick ass memory, at least when it comes to things that happened 20 years or more ago.  My high school friends know to call me if there is anything they want to know about the good old days.  Seriously, I can literally recall my entire high school class schedule, period by period, teacher by teacher, classroom by classroom.  So I don’t NEED music to remember.

But there’s nothing like a special song for taking you back to a particular moment in time.  I hear “St. Elmo’s Fire” and I’m a lonely homesick Freshman listening obsessively to the soundtrack of the last movie my friends and I saw together right before I left for Georgetown.  “How Will I Know?” comes on and I’m singing with my roommate and we are wondering how, with our complete lack of boyfriend experience, we WILL know?  Then it’s “Get into the Groove” and we’re dancing in our friend Tom’s room after saying the prayer to St. Jude, our pre-exam ritual certain to get us all passing grades.    The Georgia Satellites break out with “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” and I’m deep in the throes of first (and only) love, struggling to live up to previously untested ideals.  Love and anger, fear and joy, laughter and tears, hellos and good-byes–I feel them all again when I hear the songs.

I haven’t forgotten what HAPPENED when I was 18, 19, 20 . . . but sometimes I forget how it FELT.  But, as Trisha sings, the song remembers.

That’s a pretty provocative statement, and it comes straight from the press kit for Diet Rehab, a book by Dr. Mike Dow, the cohost of Freaky Eaters, which would probably impress me if I watched t.v.  I don’t know yet whether I believe it or not, but I am getting ready to find out.

That’s my copy of the book, which I now disclose to you that I received for FREE in return for reviewing it.   I have not read it yet.  But I’m going to have a little fun with this.  If it makes any sense at all, I am going to do what it says and share the results with you.

I know one thing I like already:  that blurb at the top stating that “You’re addicted to bad food and it’s not your fault.”  For someone who has spent most of a lifetime feeling guilty about every morsel consumed, that’s a refreshing message.  More on that later.

So the plan is that I will read the book this week, then start following the “28 days of gradual detox” the following week.  Once a week–let’s say on Mondays–I’ll share with you how it’s going. (This will definitely not involve any scales.  A tape measure MAY be used.  We shall see.)  At the end of the four weeks I will pronounce judgment on the book.  I’ll explain the theory and the procedure as we go.  If anyone wants to join in, let me know and I will send you instructions!

The tree is still in the house but I’ll have it out within the hour. Just waiting for one of my teenagers to help.

Below are some of the many snowflakes I took off the tree. We got all new decorations of course. I seem to have gone overboard on the snowflakes.

Rick Santorum’s wife DID NOT have an abortion, no matter what you may have read to the contrary on your favorite website, or what your friend on Facebook said, no matter how much you want to believe it.  Here’s what happened in my own words:  Karen Santorum was about 19 weeks pregnant when her unborn baby was found to be suffering from a fatal condition.  This is where a lot of people choose to terminate.  Instead, the Santorums tried intrauterine surgery.  Tragically, the surgery caused an infection.  Mrs. Santorum had a fever of 105.  Again, instead of moving straight to early induction of their non-viable baby, the Santorums tried antibiotics first.  Labor started due to the infection.  Mrs. Santorum even asked for drugs to stop the labor.  Despite all the lies circulating on the internet, Pitocin was never administered.  Baby Gabriel was born at 20 weeks and apparently lived a short while.  Through this whole ordeal, the Santorums acted according to their stated principles.

Despite his admittedly strict anti-abortion/pro-life sentiments (no exceptions for rape or incest), I cannot find any evidence that Mr. Santorum ever said that abortion should be prohibited if it is necessary to save the mother’s life.  Both he and his wife in fact stated that if early if it came down to his wife’s death or early induction, they would have chosen induction.  Mr. Santorum did sign a personhood pledge, but it provides an exception to save the mother’s life.

Here are links about the Santorums’ baby:  Salon article

NPR interview

Here are more links about his position on abortion to save the mother’s life:  http://www.dennyburk.com/gop-candidates-dont-allow-exceptions-for-the-life-of-a-mother/

http://politics.foxnews.mobi/quickPage.html?page=23681&content=63653356&pageNum=-1

So hate Mr. Santorum (or vote against him) for being pro-life, or anti-abortion, or anti-choice if you want–I don’t really care how you express it.  But don’t hate him for being a hypocrite, because he’s not.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.

– Psalms 46:1-2.

It is natural for people of faith to turn to God for help and solace in times of distress.  When our home burned we looked for Him and found Him in the generosity of those around us.  An anonymous poet once said “What is bitter to endure may be sweet to remember.”   Truly the loss of our cherished possessions is bitter to endure, but we will always remember the way so many people embraced us during this time, even many who were not personally known to us.  We’ve all heard that during our trials we learn who our friends are.  What we have learned is that we have many friends whom we never even knew about until this happened to us, and for that blessing we are grateful.

Just look at where we were four months ago.

Here’s where we are now.

It was the generosity of family, friends, and yes, strangers, that enabled us to afford to rent this house, which has sufficient rooms for a family of seven AND our home office.  It was their donations that furnished it.  On September 23, 2011–Moving Day–our “crew” went out with the 28-foot moving van.  That morning we owned no furniture.  By that evening we had enough to fill the house–beds, mattresses, sofas, televisions, housewares, linens . . . it was amazing.  Gift cards enabled us to to fill in the gaps and to purchase clothing and personal items.

“Blanket” notes cannot go far enough to express our appreciation.  If you gave us something, and it wasn’t anonymous, you can expect a personal thank you at some point.   Please accept this as a first installment, with the balance due to arrive in the future–not that we could ever thank everyone enough.

Back to bath times, bedtimes, and waking up in the dark.

Back to rushed mornings and fighting traffic.

Back to daily stops at Taco Bell and Weigel’s.

Back to signing papers and stressing over homework.

And, worst of all, back tomorrow to Spring Hill for Emily–it’s worse for me every time she leaves.

I’m sorry to say, though, that in my experience many people who wear their Christianity on their sleeves (or on the back of their cars, as it were) frequently don’t appear to live up to the ideals they claim to espouse.  This is certainly a case in point.  A quick Google (by my son, not me–I was driving!) let us know the heart of this so-called Christian:  May his days be few; may another take his office!

Yes, that’s right!  The “Christian” in the car ahead of me wants us to pray that our President will die!

Lest you jump in and suggest the words are figurative, or that it means his days as POTUS should be few, go Google yourself some Bible commentary like I did, all of which made it quite clear that it his literal death that this prayer desires.

Asking God to kill people you don’t like is not Christian, folks.  You are the kind of “Christians” that give the rest of us a bad name.  You know, those of us who are trying (and failing, because we are human) to do all that stuff that Jesus actually said?  Stuff like “Love your enemies, do good to those who hurt you, bless those who persecute you, turn the other cheek, forgive your brother 70 times 7 times, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Don’t ask me for the chapter and verse–I’m Catholic, you know–but He said those things and you know He did.  WWJD about those bumper stickers?  Rip them off your smug little cars and tell you to get that plank out of your eye so you don’t have a wreck, I’m guessing.

You call yourself a Christian?  Then pray, REALLY pray, for your President.  Pray that he exercises wise leadership.  Pray that his heart changes on certain issues–yes, like abortion.  Pray, if you don’t like him, for wise leaders to arise to replace him.  Pray for your country.  But don’t pray for anyone’s death and then dare to call yourself a Christian.