Beautiful

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Five Minute Friday: Beautiful

Beautiful“When I saw you, I just thought you were so beautiful.”

My God. I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I’m one of the lucky ones, those blessed among women, those who are gifted with attractiveness. But when he told me that, I just went dumb. I had no words. I didn’t know what to say.

Not because I hadn’t heard it before.

But because he meant it.

That kind of sincerity can’t be faked. And when I heard it, I knew it. I can spot flattery a mile away. I’ve got 20/20 vision when it comes to schmoozing. Enough men have tried to pick me up that my feet need never touch the earth again.

But this was real. This was so real.

These are the words that every woman wants to hear. And I was hearing them. And I was crying and laughing all at the same time. That’s a feeling that can’t come from a bottle, be it booze or pills.

That is real. That’s beautiful.

*****5-minute-friday-1

What’s Five Minute Friday?

A blog-prompt project dreamt up by LisaJo Baker, which you can read about here. The basic idea is that you spend five minutes of writing, generally unedited (I correct typos, WAY too OCD not to do that), on a prompt that she provides just after midnight via a tweet, then spread the word, and link up. Interested? Join up. Enjoy a delightful assortment by clicking on the picture to the right.

Today’s Five Minute Friday selection is also here!

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Five Favorites: Volume 1

Five Favorites Moxie Wife“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…” Those were certainly Maria’s favorites, and while I’m not saying they’re not adorable, I’ve got some other things in mind.

This week I’m linking up with a delightful blog called Moxie Wife for a little doo-dad she calls “Five Favorites.”

And away we go, though not necessarily in order of favoritism!

1. Antique holy cards.

Holy family Turgis 1040

I can’t get enough of them, and really, how can that be a sin?
The site for this card is here!

2. Best parody song video. Ever.

Russian Unicorn

Look, I love me some Michael Bublé, but this is a scream.
You know it’s great when Mr. Bublé himself loves it. Watch this!

3. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Therese of Lisieux as Jeanne d'Arc

Oh, she’s just the best. If you don’t like her, it’s only because you don’t know her.
This picture shows her dressed as Jeanne d’Arc.

4. My utterly brilliant daughter, Sophia

gardening 008

Choosing her name was easy.
It had to have significant religious meaning,
and be suitable for a Supreme Court Justice.

5. Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book

Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book Updated Version

The only bread-making book you’ll really ever need.

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Visual Descriptionary

I ran across a really interesting blog article the other day, and thought it was so cool, I decided to duplicate it (sort of) here.

  1. At the end of this post is a list of questions. Type your answer to each of these in Flickr Search.
  2. From the results, using the first page only, choose an image.
  3. Copy+Paste the URLs of the chosen images in FD’s Mosaic Maker.
  4. Insert the resulting Mosaic in your blog post.
  5. Drop a link to it in the comments to this post

Here’s what I came up with (with the questions and answers following):

mosaic0b1f6c1d3b5c02e8ae7d5d6d2caaf6cf18a18041

Here are the questions:

1. What is your first name? Cynthia
2. What is your favorite food? Right now? Chicken and noodles. (This is a hard one, because I like a lot of different foods.)
3. What high school did you go to? New Haven High School
4. What is your favorite color? Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Johnny Depp (Sigh…)
6. Favorite drink? Milk
7. Dream vacation? Paris
8. Favorite dessert? Cherry cobbler.
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? Grow up? What’s that?
10. What do you love most in life? My daughter.
11. One Word to describe you. Amazing!

Here are the links for the pictures: 1. Waiting for Cynthia, 2. Chicken Noodle Casserole, 3. New Haven High School, 4. Blue Morpho, 5. JOHNNY DEPP, 6. Milk, 7. [Opera House staircase, Paris, France] (LOC), 8. Cherry Cobbler serving, 9. Sprout is now growing up., 10. Waiting for the rain to pass – cycling with my daughter, 11. Black & White Amazing Landscape12. Not available

Everyone, on your mark, get set, and go. Go do this, it will be fun.

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Here We Go Again…

invitacion de bodaI’ve playing piano and organ, and helping sing for a wedding tomorrow afternoon. Weddings are always a beautiful thing, when it comes right down to it, but I’m usually not that excited about the preparations. Brides are fussy creatures, by nature, and they naturally want things to turn out well on such a special day. They’ve got ideas about what they want, but they’re not always too savvy about the specific rules that govern Catholic weddings, even if they are Catholic, and woe betide the bride who isn’t Catholic, but is marrying a Catholic groom in a Catholic ceremony! I just have to shake my head and pray a little bit more.

Tomorrow’s wedding is even more interesting! Not only is a non-Catholic bride marrying a Catholic groom in a Catholic ceremony, but she is “Anglo” and he is Hispanic. So half of the wedding party doesn’t speak the language of the other half! Fortunately, it’s not a large wedding, and the couple is pretty easy going!

Maybe it’s not so bad living in a small town.

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It Happened Again!

Smart_&_Sexy_Profile Retouch with CaptionIt always does. Not that I didn’t suspect it, of course… It was my birthday! And you know, for a woman that just turned forty-six, I look pretty damn good! Must be genetics, because I could do a lot more in the watching my weight and maintaining healthy eating habits. So, as the old Pantene advertisement says, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful!”

What a busy day. First, hopped out of bed and started to check what, over the course of the day, amounted to over fifty Facebook messages, which is the most birthday greetings I’ve ever received. Yay!

In between all that, collected water in various containers to save for when it’s not raining, so I don’t have to draw it from the tap. Then went to the food drop off, had lunch at Applebee’s with my delightful daughter, then took her to work and came home, where I stopped at Schlemmer’s Hardware to pick up my birthday present, garden cartwhich a friend bought me: a garden cart! I had to walk it home, because it was too big for the car, then walk back and pick up the car. A couple miles, so it was good exercise. Fortunately, the rain had stopped. Then I came back to the apartment, where I fooled around on the computer playing games that utterly wasted my time (though it was fun!), answered some e-mail, and finally drove to pick up my daughter from work at 11:00 pm. By then I was exhausted. But I came back and checked some more messages, then finally hit the hay at 12:30 this morning.

Great day!

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Patio Garden, at last!

gardening 009

Finished this incarnation of my patio garden last night, but WAY too tired to write. I think I can say that it’s pretty much done, or at least as much as any garden is actually done at any given time. Oh, there’s more I’d like to do, but I’ve pretty much run out of containers and I’m about out of money, too. I have no personal problem with using any cast off pails or other recycled containers for plants, but since this little patio is also my “front yard” and directly faces the entrance to our apartment complex, the management is a little picky about having random 5-gallon buckets sitting around.

We scored some free Zinnias and New Guinea Impatiens from Wal-Mart because they were going to throw them away. I just helped myself, and then the manager said I could keep what I had, but not take any more because since they’re a loss, they have to just put them in the trash, which I think is just wrong. All they needed was some water, and they’ve come right back!

We also decided to take the plunge and get two of those Topsy-Turvy Tomato plant hangers because I was running out of room. So we have grape and roma tomatoes. And I did get a dual hanger for a couple of hanging baskets, one of parsley and another of Salvia. There’s a couple of containers of Stock “Vintage Mix” and a miniature rose bush, and a couple of planters of two different mints, and there are marigolds (the Gem variety, which are edible. And there are other herbs too: basil, oregano, rosemary, and two kinds of thyme. There are still several containers of Mesclun going, but I need to add a few more, and there’s a Banana Pepper.

 

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Blooming!

Vicki's Flowers 002

These are the flowers I planted last fall at Chris and Vicki’s! Daffodils and Hyacinths. Just in time for Easter, although it’s supposed to rain again tomorrow. Yuck. Too bad Easter isn’t today.

Planting bulbs is always an exercise in faith. You have these dry, onion-like objects, that you put into the ground in the fall (for spring-blooming flowers, that is) and they stay in the ground all winter long, during the cold and snow. There’s always the chance that the soil isn’t good for them, too wet or not enough drainage. They might get eaten by an animal, or just dug up and planted somewhere else. (We found some in the back yard!) But then in the spring, up they come! Hooray!

And just look at all these related articles about spring flowers. They’re so inspiring.

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Stuff Catholics Like: Single Ladies & Beyoncé

Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)Image via Wikipedia

All the single ladies, that is! Put your hands up, hands up! Because if you’re a single lady, and probably going to stay one for any foreseeable future, there is just no better place to be than the Catholic Church! Gobs of single ladies are running around every Catholic parish, because there doesn’t seem to be the stigma of being “gifted with singleness” that you find in Protestant churches. (Shout out here to Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like for developing a Surviving Church as a Single Scorecard.) Instead, being a single Catholic lady puts you in with some great company. Like Mother Teresa, Hildegard of Bingen, and Tasha Tudor! (Wait, she’s not Catholic? Oops! And I think I read somewhere that she did used to be married…yeah, cause she has kids. Crap! Well, two out of three ain’t bad! Well, she’s great anyway. Maybe she should become Catholic!)

Saint Monica ModernBasically, unless you’re a Very Special Married Lady like Saint Monica, or Saint Gianna Molla, but if you want to become a woman saint, you’re going to have to be a single lady. (Good for me!)

I don’t know if Beyoncé had this single lady in mind when she wrote her song, but Saint Catherine of Sienna actually did get a ring! A mystical wedding ring, visible only to her, that she got from Jesus. THAT IS Gianna MollaSO COOL! I wonder if it looked like the one Kate Middleton is sporting now. Nah, probably better, ’cause it actually came from Jesus himself. (And even though the Jesus in my children’s Bible had blond hair, He was definitely not as cute as Prince William, though I guess that’s to be expected, since Isaiah prophesied that Jesus would have, “no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him” (Isaiah 53:2b, New American Bible). I do know that if I starting making noises that I had received a mystical wedding ring from Jesus that was only visible to me, I would probably be put on some kind of special medication only available through a licensed psychiatrist. (Definitely one thing that sucks about not living in the “olden days,” although I think those particular olden days were called the Dark Ages.)

His PrincessThere’s been a lot of chatter over the past few years in Evangelical Protestant circles about seeing Jesus as some kind of Prince Charming, made especially popular in the works of, among others, Sheri Rose Shepherd. But Catholics have, literally, centuries of that stuff to go on. Hey folks, wake up and smell the incense already! I realize that He does ride a white horse in the book of Revelation, but I think seeing Jesus as a Prince Charming is honestly, not even close to good enough. Nope. What are the single ladies then, the Heavenly Harem? I’m not sure about that…

Any church that makes celibacy a requirement for its ministers is bound to have any number of single ladies who, as Protestants, would’ve probably married a minister. Unfortunately, all the ministers are “taken” (as it were) in this denomination, so right there there’s a whole bunch of ladies.

And we even have groups of single ladies, that band together to help each other—they’re called sisters! (You’re only a nun if you’re cloistered, FYI.) Once upon a time, a very long time ago, some ladies joined religious orders because they’d been jilted, but now that’s frowned upon. And too bad, in my opinion. You want an increase in vocations, let those bitter chicks join up, and we’d soon have a lot more stories about kids getting their hands hit with a ruler again. (And probably fewer in jail, but that’s another story!)

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Cut my hair!!!

IMG_0202Not an April Fool’s Day surprise, but I did actually get a whopping six inches cut off my hair. Sophia had arranged for me to get a haircut at It’s All About You, a local salon. My lovely stylist asked about how much I’d like to get cut, and when I said four inches, she replied that if I cut six I could donate it for a wig for a child with cancer, so I did it! Yay!

Since this month’s theme for National Blog Posting Month is “Sprout,” I’m hoping my hair will grow back quickly, even though I don’t think it looks that much different!

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On keeping up appearances…

6a00e54f05e1bb883400e5512e6d058833-800wiI’ve discovered, over time, that keeping up appearances is something I both love and hate. Some days, there’s nothing I’d rather do than just hang out in a pair of jeans and a grungy t-shirt and do nothing to my hair. But then, I think, what would Marie Antoinette do? Did she EVER have a day when she just didn’t get dressed?

“Oh, sorry, Louis, I just wanted to be déshabille in my chemise and stockings. Non, I didn’t want to wear a beauty patch and powder my hair. Oui, I thought about not wearing mes bijoux diamantes.” No, she got all dressed up. Every day. Even for the guillotine!

So, while I’m sitting here in McDonald’s, typing this entry for my blog, I’m wearing mascara, lipstick, and I’ve done my hair, because even though I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt, there’s no need to look like the canaille!

What about Anne Boleyn? Contrary to popular belief (and far more like The Tudors or The Other Boleyn Girl), in his youth, Henry Anne Boleyn in the TowerVIII was a real stud. He really dug the hot chicks. Anne was one of them. (One of many more than the six official wives.) Believe me, her allure didn’t come from hiking around Hever Castle looking like one of the kitchen maids. No, she had it together. She knew what she wanted. And even when she was under the knife, she looked great and joked with the headsman.

If you need a more modern example, let’s choose Princess Diana. Practically a modern fairy tale, even at the end of her sad marriage and life afterward. I really don’t remember ever having seen a special issue magazine devoted to her bad hair days or wardrobe faux pas. Lady Di, as she was known before her marriage, was nothing if not charming, even when caught without a slip under her dress. Later, her fashions re-energized the London scene. Who can forget her hats, her hosiery? Yes, Prince Charles hung out with his mistress on the side, but did that change the savoir faire of Princess Diana? No. She got up, got dressed and made up, did her hair, and won the world to her side. By. Never. Looking. Like. Crap.

So what is it with so many ladies? I confess, there have been many days when I would go out looking like I’d just crawled out from under a rock. But I can’t tell you how often I go to the supermarket, or the mall, or even to church, and it’s as if there’s this attitude of, “You’re lucky I’m out of bed, and you certainly don’t deserve any better than this!” What it really seems more like is, “I’m lucky to be out of bed, and I don’t think I deserve better than this.” What is it with this attitude of self-loathing? Why, then, do we wonder why so many men pursue strip clubs, pornography both printed and virtual, and even the soft-core porn that we have delivered to our very doors under the label, “Victoria’s Secret”? You’ll notice that they aren’t reading Playboy because the scantily clad models are lacking makeup or haven’t shaved their legs in a year!

Sure, the above mentioned women were all princesses or queens. But they were also moms, and wives. Yes. Mothers. Each of them. To more than one child. And both Marie and Anne had miscarriages. Their husbands were either sexually incompetent (in the case of Marie’s, who literally had to have sex explained to him after they’d been married a year and Marie wrote to her mom that she thought something wasn’t right), or syphilitic (hence Henry’s increasingly murderous attitude, and everyday volatility), or just frustrated (will Elizabeth ever retire?) Except for Diana, who had the “fortune” to die in an accident, the other two spent the last month of their lives in prison, before being executed. Not fun.

And we complain about maybe our husband’s are a little dumb, or we live in a small town, or no one cares anyway, so why bother. Believe me, someone does care, even if that someone isn’t saying anything! Honestly, is anyone going to actually plead for you to put on a coat of mascara? I don’t think so. Seriously. And don’t give me anything about how it’s not about men. Because it is. But it’s also about women. Do you really think the women you go to your Bible study with appreciate your wearing curlers in your hair? Do you honestly think your girlfriends prefer you to be unwashed? I didn’t think so. We all appreciate beauty. Even in other women. Frankly, I think most of the time we really dress up for the other women, not the men, anyway.

No one is saying you have to wear June Cleaver pearls to mop your floor. I know women construction workers who wear lace  underwear, so don’t give me your I’m-a-hard-working-woman lip.

Oh yes, I hear you other ladies, too. No jewelry or makeup. Religious reasons. Fine. I have no problem with that. I lived with the Amish for a year. I know what that’s like. No one wears perfume to milk the cows at 4:00 a.m. But I never met an Amish woman who wore a dirty kappe to church. Who didn’t spend a lot of time ironing the pleats in her skirt. And that’s with an iron she heated on a wood-burning stove. Been there, done that.

So, no more! Enough of this. Ladies, lift up your heads. Get up and get going! No more nonsense. There is just no excuse for not looking like a million bucks. Cosmetics are not of Satan. Styling your hair is no longer optional. Rise up women, and claim your birthright to beauty.

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