bits and bants vol. 8

to-do lists, suffering, gin

The Maid in the Kitchen by Anne Archer

Hello, long lost readers!

I was going to write something last week, but because the weather was so bad and my mood so rotten I decided to spare you. My family and friends could barely tolerate me so I thought I’d not put those vibes out onto the internet in fear of permanent cancellation.

This week has been incredibly warm compared to last. And even though we are still not above freezing it’s remarkable what not having an arctic windchill will do for the attitude!

I’ve been busy with regular things like starting hundreds of seeds in my basement, helping out family, and having weird sickness go through the house. It felt like a fairly productive week even though I was sick for a day or two and basically useless.

The one thing I have on my to-do list that bothers me is finding new shoes for a boy and he’s particular, and I’m particular, and it seems like a problem that will take too long to solve so I’ll just keep putting it off until summer when he can just go barefoot.

What’s on your to-do list that you keep putting off?

I wish we could come up with a gig economy of passing off our most dreaded chore in trade of doing another person’s dreaded chore that we don’t mind doing at all. Someone probably already has. If I didn’t live in the middle of nowhere this would probably be something I could actually get done for me!

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Bits:

I’ve realized I’ve come up with an unintentional theme with my articles this week…roll with me here:

• This piece on suffering in the modern world was an excellent read. It seems as if the wider world is coming upon this theme that we as a society have been trying to eradicate suffering for the last fifty years and it’s only making us more unhappy and more psychologically screwed up. In other words, less human.

• A similar vein of normies seeing suffering in the world is the idea of a frictionless society and what the consequences of the pandemic has done to a generation that is unfamiliar with human relationship outside of screens. I agreed with so much of this article.

• And as it is Lent I need to be reminded that suffering is a defining part of what makes me human. It is not useless, but full of meaning. Of course, the brilliance of Saint John Paul II is continually ignored, but this piece is a great encapsulation of his teaching on suffering.

And not completely suffering related, but, go read this perfect piece on what the theology of the body actually is and what it means for sex by the one and only Emily Stimpson Chapman. You will have to pay to read it, and you should, because this one article is worth at least one month’s worth of substack. So much of Catholics’ angst towards everything would be resolved if they actually read and understood what the Theology of the Body actually teaches. Don’t even get me started.

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Ireland, like all the world, is heavy with sin, but Ireland is in love with God.

- Caryll Houselander, The Dry Wood

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Reading, Watching, What Have You:

• I’ve been reading The Dry Wood by Caryll Houselander, her only novel and a unique story of the lives of a poor community in London. The story involves the themes of sainthood, suffering, and what sanctity looks like in the lives of host of very different people. I’m halfway through but it’s a great lenten read.

• My Korean romantic dramas are saving my March. I finished Business Proposal last week and this week I started Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha (okay, so they didn’t come up with these titles for English translation) which is a play on the Hallmark trope of big city girl needs to move to a small town to learn how to love again, but this one includes a lot of elderly Korean ladies who are worth the price of admission alone!

• Random recipe for you, but if you’re stuck for Lenten soup meals, and frankly, if you’re not eating soup every Friday you’re doing it wrong, this ramen recipe makes me so happy and it’s so easy.

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I think that’s it for me this week. I have begun my seasonal alcohol change into gin from bourbon (tequila season begins with Easter, obvs), and I really liked the bottle of Stump I picked up a couple weeks ago. It really does taste like a west coast forest in the best ways conceivable. I’m mostly drinking martinis, but it would make a lovely g&t too!

- Christy