Category: Family

As Jacinta brushed Tina-the-three-year-old’s teeth tonight, Tina explained that “I have spiders in my mouth.”

This matter-of-fact pronouncement was startling and indeed alarming–at her age, she might well have done the unthinkable–until her sister provided the backstory.  Teresa the five-year-old had explained to Tina that we have to brush our teeth to get rid of the bugs in our mouth.

And for Tina, bugs = spiders.

As I reviewed Latin with the kids tonight, the following sentence sprang into my head and made me grin:

Is pedes magnos hobbit.

Regina the seven-year-old lamented, “I’m bored!”  Her mother responded, without a lot of sympathy, “Then clean your room.”

Some time and many sighs later, Regina slouched in the living room, staring morosely out the window.  “Did you finish your room?” her mother asked.  Regina nodded.  “You still look bored,” her mother commented.

“I’m not bored!” Regina objected quickly: “I’m watching the trees!”

Yesterday morning, Kyle Washut sent me pictures of the bull moose he saw in his Lander back yard.  He is a never-ending source of weird happenings and funny things.

We ended up having dinner together last night, and of course we chatted about the local news.  The big debate in town has been whether to change the Lander ordinance that prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sundays before noon.  Advocates of the change point out that Wyoming’s state law allows the sale of alcohol earlier, and they argue that the special rule on Sunday is a law favoring the Christian religion.

Kyle explained the real backstory.  In away, the advocates are right:  the law was introduced because of religion.  Specifically, the Catholic Church in Lander used to be downtown, and folks at Church could hear the cowboys brawling in the local bar during Mass.  So the city passed an ordinance making it illegal to sell alcohol before a time when Mass would be over.

Nowadays, the law really is irrelevant.  A bold pastor won a big plot of land at the edge of town on a poker bet, and the Church moved out and away from the bar.  That’s why Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Parish has a big hayfield out front:  it was included in the bet.

The Lander Journal announced this morning that the ordinance about the sale of alcohol on Sunday has indeed been changed, but probably not much will change:  the guy who wants to sell alcohol is a restaurant owner who wants to serve mimosas with Sunday brunch–hardly a cowboy drink.

David the ten-year-old was a terrible speller.  He would take weeks to finish a spelling lesson that took his older sister only days to master.  And yet in other areas of life, he has the most phenomenal memory in the family:  if anything is lost, we ask David, because he can search his visual databanks and pull up anywhere he has seen it.  He can see something once and later reconstruct it in legos.

It finally occurred to me that maybe his 3-D memory is better than his 2-D memory.  So I began having David build his spelling words out of legos first, before trying to write them out.

The result?  Overnight success:  David mastered his next spelling lesson in one day.  The next lesson took only two days.  He tells me that he can not only spell the word, but he can picture in his head the different colors of the legos that went into each letter.

Weird.  And neat.

[By the way, I did screen him for dyslexia, and he turned up negative.  I don’t really know what goes on in his incredible brain.]

Teresa the five-year-old lost her second tooth a couple of days ago.  To prevent it from slipping away and getting lost under her pillow, she put it in a small, clear plastic case (originally the case for an SD card).  After night prayers, she stood distractedly, nervously chewing on the clear case.

“Teresa!” I scolded, “Stop chewing on your tooth!”

And then I had to laugh.

Each semester our freshmen and sophomores go through “don rags,” in which the individual students sits down with all his or her teachers to get feedback and ask questions about how he or she is doing academically.  Yesterday during sophomore don rags, a particularly bright young woman received accolades from every side for a stellar academic performance.  At the end, the session moderator asked, “And do you have any questions for us?”

She thought a moment, and then responded, “Well, I don’t have a question about academics, but sometime I wanted to ask why all of you got married.”

One of the professors glanced hastily around the room, as if considering this relationship to his colleagues for the first time:  “But we didn’t all get married!”

Every week I attend morning Mass on at least Monday and Tuesday, because the boys serve on those days.  We show up ten minutes early, so I get to watch the boys light the candles, the other parishioners file in, and finally–just before the bell rings–the arrival of the 8:00 Club.

At least, that’s how I think of them.  There are a few ladies who come in the side door at exactly 8:00 a.m. every morning and slide into the front two pews, usually edging their way around altar servers waiting to process in.  These are not slackers, by any means:  they are the ladies who make the parish tick, without whom all would fall into confusion.  And they are never late–never–but always precisely on time.  You gotta have skills to join the 8:00 Club.

This morning, just before communion, at a high and holy moment when all eyes were on the priest, one of 8:00 club purses began ringing–and ringing with one of those bouncy ring-tones that makes everyone want to jiggle in their seats.  The poor lady leaped from the pew and hit the side door running, digging in her bag as though she had discovered a grenade.  The priest momentarily struggled to keep a straight face, and then we all refocused on the mysteries at hand.

As Fr. Dave processed out past the front pew and out the side door at the end of Mass, his face was rigidly serious, but he rubbed his right forefinger over his left forefinger in the universal “naughty” sign.

You’re not going to catch the 8:00 club out every day–may as well enjoy it!

Winter in Lander is not harsh, but it is long.  By now the sun is up eleven hours a day, the days alternate between warm (40 degrees) and cold (10 degrees), and the city has decided they have enough budget left for the year to plow the roads promptly when it snows.  But we could all use a change.

This morning Jacinta hopefully commented that “It’s almost summer!”

“No,” I replied, “It’s February.  You can’t say it’s almost summer when it’s February.”

“But it will be March on Friday!” she countered.

“But today is TUESDAY!” I objected, “Aren’t you getting a bit hopeful?”

“Yes,” she admitted, laughing.

But you know?  I am, too.

The boys were up early this morning, even though we had been to the vigil Mass and they could have slept in.  You see, last night David realized that he had lost his alarm clock.  And that his alarm clock was on.  He and Isaiah looked and looked, but couldn’t figure out where it had gone.

But no worries:  they found it this morning–bright and early!

[Hey, the fiftieth FTT!]