I was on the Albert Einstein Diet but I've switched to a new one.

Is anyone else on this diet? I suspect many of us are. I guess you could also call it the Insanity Diet. This post is pursuant to this one, in which I (happily) announced that I AM NO LONGER OVERWEIGHT. Well, one comment on that post (Mrs. Sockey, I'm looking at you) hit the nail on the head: Christmas is a tough time to 'maintain'. She wasn't whistling Dixie.

I like it when I accidentally say the same thing as a smart person

In fact, I feel downright affirmed. 

I eat donuts and do not feel guilty.

I eat quinoa salad and do not feel righteous. 
I generally dislike the saying, but in this case, it applies: "It's all good"

Mr. Warren weighs in (pardon the usage) on the evils of the diet and food-research/health industries:

What [researchers] have done is far more evil than this, however: for they have been exploiting the human propensity to guilt, which serves an irreplaceable purpose in the moral order. Compunction about sin and wrongdoing is distracted to meaningless dietary issues. The success of the nannying public health authorities has helped the principalities and powers to accomplish a complete moral inversion — in which abstinence and fasting to a spiritual end is now dismissed as silly, yet dieting for health is done with insufferably morbid gravity. We have, as a consequence, a society of obsessive dieters, deluded fitness fanatics, and low-calorie muffin eaters, who are utterly shameless in committing crimes contra naturam: that Culture of Death which Saint John-Paul identified with such harrowing accuracy.

Mr. Warren describes most "health" related research as "bullsh**", and I am inclined to agree. In the last few years, I've had two health scares, neither of which (thankfully) turned out to be anything serious, but in both cases, I was advised to alter my diet. What made life more difficult was not adjusting to eating (or avoiding) certain stuff, but rather constantly reading conflicting and contradictory information about various foods.

 It would seem that grocery science isn't any more settled than climate science. I more or less gave up worrying about food, and wrote about it for The Record. Mind you, I am not judging people on special diets; eat what you choose, but for pity's sake, don't make it a religion.
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There's hardly any point in having a blog

If you don't promote your work. I published this piece twice before, in slightly different incarnations: about a hundred years ago in the Catholic Family Ministries newsletter, and also in the Australian Catholic newspaper, The Record (back in April of 2012, when it was still a real pulp and print newspaper. It is entirely online now). 

Today's Gospel reading was about the Transfiguration, which reminded me of this column. If you choose to read it (thank you), I hope it blesses you in some way. 

Overcoming the Post-Transfiguration Blues

It's always interesting to find yourself

in places that you didn't know you were. Apparently I have my own articles page on Crisis Magazine, and this all happened without my knowledge or consent. It's all reprinted stuff from Mercator, so there's a clue. The internet is a funny place. 

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I'll take it

According to LifeSiteNews' Facebook stats, my Dangerous Housewives article was the second-most read item on LSN this past week. It's still on the "most viewed list" at Merc too. When one's writing career is as 'modest' (ie. relatively unsuccessful) as mine, that's kind of a big thrill. At any rate, it's probably more uplifting than giving a campaign speech in front of someone's garage and having hardly anyone show up for it, and then being told that one of your chosen 'hosts' might not even vote for you.
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How cool is this?

My "Dangerous Housewives"article on MercatorNet got picked up by LifeSite News! That's a first for me. Thanks, John-Henry, if you made the decision. The article has also been on the "Most Viewed" list at Merc, garnering a bunch of "Likes".

Sometimes you totally need a pick-me-up, especially on a Monday when the usual avalanche of stuff looms...
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My latest posts on MercatorNet

This one is about babies, and this one is about family dinner conversation. Neither one is earth-shaking (in fact, as is often the case, the comments section is better than my post), but Merc always appreciates the hits. And hey, you could leave a comment too.
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Gosh, where does a year go?

Gracious editor elevated my lowly blog post to the main page of Mercator. (Just a little more caché  than the blogging pages and slightly more cash, but we don't pay attention to that sort of thing do we?) About families who are just too too busy.

Raising kids is not a Sunday stroll in the park, but if you never get there, whose fault is it?

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My March columns in The Record

Can both be found here.

Have a Blessed Holy Week.

Update: thanks to Deborah Gyapong for the link. 

The most eloquent job offer

I have ever received. This is part of an email I received last month from the editor of The Record, a Catholic newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia.

One of our regular columnists... has recently asked to take a break from writing for us for a while, perhaps some months. [...] Would you be interested in coming on board for a while?

I have always tried to maintain the presence of an at-home mother columnist for a number of reasons, one of them being that it is one way of reaffirming the importance of mothers and motherhood in the face of a culture that regards this role as being a second or third-best option compared to other, perhaps more glamorous but ultimately less fulfilling roles, in the workforce.

The general brief is to to write pretty much on anything from the perspective of a mother who is a believing and practising Catholic. The Record is a big fan of Benedict XVI and his predecessors. We think the sometimes-difficult nature of the Church's teachings are there for good reasons and we're interested in writers who can be counter-cultural and help show that Catholic Christianity is not completely dumb. We're unashamedly pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family among other things but whereas many people think the Church is irrelevant and out of date we very definitely take the opposite view.

Gosh, how can you say no to that? And why would you want to? I start this week. I know DOH doesn't have many Australian readers who are in a position to support the paper version of this publication (it's been printing since the mid 1800s! Kudos), but everyone can access the online version and give the editorial staff positive feedback for the work they do to advance the New Evangelization. 

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Just in time for Lenten fasting

Or at least thinking a little more seriously about why we (and our children) have weight problems. My latest at MercatorNet. Will Big Government save us from Big Appetites?
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I'm getting ahead of myself

And trust me, that doesn't happen very often. After a haitus from blogging with MercatorNet.com (so the horror film goes)...  I'm baaaaaaack.

Read not one but two of my latest Family Edge posts at the followng links:

Why Sensible, Well-balanced Parents are Superior (in response to a new parenting book that says French parents are superior. Oui, those folks who aren't, by and large, having children anymore)

Handgun Daddy  Oh, and let it be understood. I am all in favour of responsible gun ownership (yes, there is such a thing). But this is just crazy.
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DOH fever is gripping the nation.

Colin at The Theology of Dad is kind enough to add us to his Canadian Catholic Blog Roll.

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Just for The Record

And I mean that, literally. Here's a piece (pdf version) I published in The Record, "Australia's oldest weekly newspaper" (est. 1874). It presents "Catholic news and opinion from Perth, Australia, and the world." (I guess I qualify for that last one).

And so, for the droves of Record readers who come here as a result of the article, welcome to DOH!

UPDATE: it seems that despite the magic of computer wizardry, most of DOH's fans are having difficulty opening the pdf link. So here's the plain old text of the piece.

God is present in every moment of our time

December wasn’t long enough; it never is. How I wish I’d have done less rushing around, doing the necessary evils (shopping, office parties, meetings, recitals), and spent more time with loved ones: more time with aging parents, with the aunt in the senior’s home, with the friend who has cancer, with our daughter who has now travelled the 500 km back to university, not to be seen again for months—more ‘quality’ time with my husband and younger children, whom I see every day, but sometimes don’t “see” at all. More time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

Having just rung out the old year and ushered in the new, “Time” may be on our minds these days. What did I accomplish last year? Did I meet all my goals? Did I meet any of them? What do I hope to achieve in the New Year? We make resolutions, surely one of which is better time management.

For some, especially those who are suffering, elderly, or lonely, time may drag interminably—it doesn’t need to be managed so much as endured. For others, time goes by all too quickly. Those of us who are living through the double-whammy of being middle-aged and far too busy with family life and community activism can sometimes get confused—as I remarked to my sister a month or so ago: “I can hardly believe 2010 is coming to a close.” There’s nothing like momentarily losing an entire year to make one sit up and take notice that perhaps things have gotten away from you.

We are (quite naturally, in a fast-paced world) obsessive about time: we wear watches, carry datebooks, calendars and schedules (if not the archaic paper variety, then in digital form: iPads and iPods and iPhones and iThings too numerous to name). I’ve even programmed my new laptop to tell me (out loud, in a semi-human voice) what time it is, on the hour, every hour, so that I don’t waste too much time on the computer. Since I have relatives, friends, and even editors (groups not mutually exclusive) living in various time zones all over the planet, my laptop also displays clocks telling me the time in the UK, Prague, Australia, New Zealand.

We follow friends and celebrities on Twitter and Facebook for minute-by-minute updates on their every thought (and bodily function). Constantly online, we don’t bother reading news that’s more than six hours old. We even like to remind God what time it is: bold reformers in the Church constantly tell the Holy Father that he should change Church teaching to ‘get with the times.’

I am grateful for the season of Advent, now past (and all too quickly, alas), which tells us, in the bustle and frenzy of Christmas preparations, that Christ is Lord of all eternity, and sooner or later, we will be joining Him there. That God exists outside of time, and therefore, at least on a certain level, so must we.

Time is on our side, because God created it; it is there to serve us, and in turn we must use it to serve Him. We shouldn’t seek to conquer it, slow it down, speed it up, pass it, waste it, much less kill it. In every moment, God is eternally present to us. Whether our lives consist of empty loneliness or harried activity, we must, mind and soul, be eternally present to him, because we know neither the day nor the hour when he will call us physically to Himself.

We don’t need New Year’s resolutions or the strength to carry them out, because inevitably they ask more of us than we seem to have (hence, the abandonment of such resolutions by the third week of January). What we need is to remember that God is in charge, and everything will unfold according to His plan. Mainly we need to repent of our stubbornness in cooperating with Him, and have a firm purpose of amendment to do a better job of knowing, loving and serving Him—not in the next decade, or year, or upcoming week, but during the next sixty minutes of our life. He’ll take care of the rest. 

 Happy New Year. 

Copyright 2012, The Record, Perth, Western Australia

In honor of our second follower.

"I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it."

Flannery O'Connor

DOH has its first follower!

See the sidebar.

Look out, Mark Shea. We are coming for you and your minions, and we are going to take. you. down.
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How will you celebrate Mother's Day?

Flowers? Dinner out? Breast implants? My latest article (main page, woohoo!) at MercatorNet.
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New article up on MercatorNet

It's about bullying, and YouTube's role. (Hey, I made it to the Main Page this time...woohoo!)

The coverage seems to have been immediately helpful to Casey: he is less likely to be bullied from now on—unless of course, it backfires at some future point, “revenge fantasies” being inherently self-perpetuating. The media coverage of this story certainly hasn’t been helpful to teachers and schools—I’m probably not the only one asking where the school staff was during the altercation in question. (Perhaps at a union meeting discussing their demands not to have to do playground supervision outside of classroom hours.) Not that teachers are entirely (or even mostly) responsible for solving this huge problem. I agree with NY Times columnist Lisa Belkin, when she asks: “Where were the parents?”

I guess this is a good thing...

My latest Mercator post "Should dads lay off baby care?" has been picked up by Washington, DC's Family Research Council's blog "Social Conservative Review." (If only cash could come along with links and endorsement...)