bits and bants vol.24
frozen thoughts from a frozen girl
Winter has well and truly arrived. We finally have a thin blanket of white and arctic temperatures have returned. We all knew it was going to come eventually, but that initial shock into the -30s always hurts.
The desire for hibernation is strong, and if it weren’t for a very important pre-op/admission appointment for one of my kids today at the hospital in the city, I would gladly not leave my house until food ran out or the temperature decided to be reasonable.
Things that can be cancelled have been cancelled, or at least I’ve cancelled them, because it really has to be important to have to leave the house when it’s nearing -50 with the windchill, especially once the sun goes down. Only firewood being restocked, and animals being fed will be the reason any of us venture out for more than a minute to run to the car and back. I can see the trees moving now in the wind and I can practically feel the frostbite.
I had hoped to have gotten things back in order after the Christmas season this week, but this cold that is enveloping the entire continent, and a day spent in bed this week with what felt like the flu has thrown me off! I hate being sick, and can’t remember the last time I was so ill I couldn’t get out of bed but Tuesday was one of those days. And while I’ve recovered quickly, I now have to get the house recovered from Christmas and a mom sick day. School hasn’t gotten up to full speed yet either, math has been forgotten completely, Greek history never happened, and let’s not talk about punctuation.
And the tree is still up. I think moving would be easier than trying to clean and organize my house at this point. The eternal problem, as you know, is getting a decent amount of time to actually clean one area of your home and having less people constantly make a mess of it. At my current season of life I have to just accept that things need to be cleaned because they are dirty, and I have to do it when I can. I’m talking about really, truly clean. Not kid clean. (I see moms on instagram vacuuming all the time when they have able bodied children and I just want to scream, “don’t do the daily easy tasks! That’s kids chores!” No mom should be doing all the cleaning every day. It’s impossible. And wrong. End rant. Also, don’t get me started on the constant display of “messy homes” as some kind of “look how crazy my life” is content. Everyone’s house is messy when they live in it, you’re not original, it’s not the end of the world. End second rant.)
Aren’t you glad you came over here today? I am your ray of sunshine.
bits:
One of the most fascinating aspects of C.S. Lewis’ life was his complex relationships with women. I think it would be impossible to say that it didn’t impact his writing or his faith, but I find all of his female relationships to be pretty weird in one way or another, and not simply because they were from another time. I'm sure most of that can be attributed to his losing his mother at such a young age, but I think it is a great testament to how we can have difficult and complex relationships that we struggle with and which change as our faith develops. I thought this piece to be a good introduction to Lewis’ relationship with Janie Moore.
- ’s wonderful piece on AI makes me sorta want to crawl into a hole to escape the apocalypse but also I heartily agree that AI will eliminate fun. Any real, tangible, enjoyable fun. If you’re into tangible, experiential, real fun you can come along with Katie and myself on a tour to Ireland this coming October! ;) You see what I did there.
And something lovely and encouraging to think about as you’re reviewing goals and so forth this January; how to bring more joy and fun into your family with
and celebrating your family’s feasts. I think we do this more often than I realize, but a little more intention wouldn’t go amiss around here either!
reading, watching, what have you:
Started A History of the Island by Vodolazkin. It’s been on my nightstand for a good six months and I am summoning all of my power to read hard, but great books in 2024! I do weirdly, like reading hard books to start off the year. I think it lends greater senses of accomplishment which is essential for that New Year, New You feeling. So far, so weird which is what I expected, but weird in ways I didn’t expect.
Haven’t been watching much because we spend our Christmas holidays watching movies with the kids- the Christmas classics, family faves, new releases that involve too much cgi, but I did manage to watch Maestro. It took me two weeks. So I got approximately two and a half hours of alone time in two weeks. That’s the headline here. The movie was very good, the filming, Carey Mulligan being fantastic, Maya Hawke - very good, Bradley Cooper being Bradley Cooper being Bernstein, and music was phenomenal, of course. But I keep thinking of the story it told and somehow it doesn’t feel whole to me. And I’m not sure what more I wanted since it is the story not of Bernstein’s genius or career, but of his marriage. It shows the very broken aspects of the marriage, but also its beauty and deep love, but is that the whole story? I’m not sure if I am simply too cynical or if there is technically something missing that I can’t put my finger on. I’m open to your thoughts!
I also binged through the new Netflix series Fool Me Once which was pretty terrible. I am such a sucker for those overly produced, thrillers that are really just a bunch of scenes of running and chasing strewn together for not many discernible reasons. I use my illness as the excuse as to why I finished it!
I hope you stay warm this weekend! I will be taking down my Christmas tree barring anymore unforeseen illness. If I can get that one thing off my list this weekend things have got to be progressing around here, right?
- Christy
Kid clean vs. mom clean 😆(though I actually find vacuuming very therapeutic so tend to doing it myself). The “kid cleaned” downstairs bathroom probably needs a “mom clean”. And our tree is still up too. Maybe this afternoon... but I do just want to be warm and sleepy.
Also, I wonder if part of this “mess as justification” stems from the fact that there’s an awful lot of people who 1) don’t really live in their homes, but use them as a place to sleep, and 2) have a warped idea of what normal aesthetics are due to social media. Every once in a while I do go over to someone’s house where it looks like a magazine, but they almost always have less than three children and a much larger space. So it’s not that the mess doesn’t exist, but that it can be put out of view much more easily. We tidy/reset/clean all the time, but at 1:30 pm on a school day it invariably looks like something exploded.
"Everyone’s house is messy when they live in it, you’re not original"
I am laughing, and we also got a ton of snow and have negative temperatures next week. We were supposed to get a new furnace installed then. lol
The whole genre of writing on the life and person behind C.S. Lewis' public work is fascinating. And I've only been exposed to it in recent years. Interested to check out that essay.