bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Finally where I want to be, again.

    Almost seven months after the baby was born, I've finally returned to my intended postpartum weight.  

    Interestingly enough, it took me longer to lose those 28 pounds than it took me to lose the 40 pounds I lost in the first place, back in 2008.  What's the difference?  Well, I didn't really have a sense of urgency — once I saw that the weight was coming off without too much difficulty, I felt content to let it happen slowly and with less effort.  I didn't regard it as a health problem — postpartum weight is normal, after all.  I didn't do much other than stick to my habits (with some allowance for the need to eat and drink enough to keep up with breastfeeding) and watch the chart I was keeping, to make sure the weight kept going down.

    Which means I am in maintenance again.

    I am going to try staying at 112, four pounds heavier than I was before I got pregnant.  I figure I ought to be carrying a little more weight just because I'm nursing a young baby.  And, truth be told, I thought I looked too thin at 108.  Where I am now, my clothes fit fine but the edges are a little softer, I hope.

    I feel so much more confident entering maintenance this time than I did last time.  Back then I was pretty bewildered by it (see here, here, here, here…)  But now I think I finally know what I am doing.  

    I'm still working on the "printable version" project, by the way, but it's one of those few-minutes-here, few-minutes-there things.

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    7 comments on Finally where I want to be, again.

  • “One raw, one plain, one fancy.”

    From a comment I made on an earlier post. 

    It's a rule of thumb I use when putting together meals — for getting three vegetable side dishes on the table with a minimum of fuss.

    I don't always have three vegetable (or fruit) side dishes on the table, especially if my main dishes have plenty of veg in them, but it is nice to shoot for.

    "Raw" includes most salads, fresh cut fruit, and also simple things like a bowl of baby carrots.

    "Plain" is anything steamed, boiled, or roasted, either truly plain or maybe with a little butter or oil.  Roast sweet potatoes, plain microwave-steamed fresh vegetables, or cooked frozen vegetables.  Also something like applesauce would count here.  The essence of "plain," though, for the purpose I mean (not doing too much work at dinner time) is "simply prepared."  I didn't have to stir it or cut it up much or measure anything.

    "Fancy" would be anything cooked any other way, or anything that required a recipe.  Sauteed broccoli with olive oil and lemon; cream of tomato soup; stuffed squash; marinara sauce.  That kind of thing.

    "One raw, one plain, one fancy" puts a variety of textures (and usually colors) on the table without my overdoing it in the last minutes before supper.

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  • Enthusiastic food writing.

    I thought this piece by Michele Kayal at NPR — about the local, multiethnic food culture of the Hawaiian Islands — was a great example of intriguing, unpretentious, and enthusiastic food writing.

    Gorgeous food photos and recipes included!  Bonus:  one is a gluten-free, cakey dessert.

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    1 comment on Enthusiastic food writing.

  • Introduction to the Devout Life: 4-1, “Worldly Wisdom.”

    An index of all posts on St. Francis de Sales's Introduction to the Devout Life is here.

    ***

    As I wrote in the last post, Part 4 of the book is kind of the "Troubleshooting" section of the how-to-live-devotedly manual.  And the very first chapter is almost like a warning:  "You will have this kind of problem."  What's the problem?  In short, other people will wonder what's wrong with you.

    It is a fantastic chapter.  And, I might add, it is actually much more widely applicable.  It would apply to anyone who makes a sincere effort to change their own character and behavior in any sense, not just the spiritual one.  Someone who decides to get clean and sober; someone who decides to quit goofing off and get a real job; someone who decides to get out of debt; somebody who decides to start taking care of their body instead of abusing it — all these people could gain some wisdom from this chapter.  Bottom line, change-for-the-better threatens a lot of the friends, acquaintances and family in this world, and sometimes they try to undermine it.  

    So let's take a look at St. Francis's words.

    As soon as worldly people see you bent upon the devout life they will shower you with mockery and detraction.  

    • The more malicious will attribute your change to hypocrisy and insincerity, saying you have turned to God only because the world has disappointed you.  
    • Your friends will raise countless objections which they consider wise and charitable, saying that it will only make you morose and unbearable; that it will discredit you in the eyes of the world; that you will grow old before your time; that your domestic affairs will suffer; that those who live in the world must live accordingly and that you can get to heaven without all these mysteries and so on.  

    …They are interested neither in your health nor in your affairs.

    Wake up! says St. Francis.   What's the real reason for the objections?  It can't be for your own good, because they approve of many things that would be worse for you and your business:

    We have seen men and women spend, not only the whole night, but several nights in succession, playing cards or chess… And yet it does not disturb worldly people in the least; but if we spend an hour in meditation or are noticed getting up in the morning earlier than usual to go to Holy Communion, they send for a doctor at once to cure us of melancholy and jaundice!  

    They can spend thirty nights in dancing without experiencing any ill effects but if they have to spend one Christmas night in watching they are full of coughs and complaints the next day.

    Ha.  I could add an example from my own life back in college:  "She is perfectly content to eat M&Ms out of the vending machine for breakfast, but ask her to eat two lighter meals on Ash Wednesday and she frets about not getting enough protein."

    St. Francis points out that critical people are generally hypocritical and inconsistent:  they will stick to one principle when it suits them, and to the opposite principle when the wind changes.

    It is quite obvious that the world is an unjust judge:  gracious and forbearing with its own children, but harsh and rigorous with the children of God. … "When John came, he would neither eat nor drink, and they said of him that he was possessed.  When the Son of Man came, he ate and drank with them, and of him they said:  Here is a glutton; he loves wine."  (Mt 11:18-19)

    You just can't win with these people:

    The worldly will be scandalized, Philothea, if we condescend to laugh, play, or dance in their company, but if we refuse, they will call us melancholy hypocrites.  If we dress well they will attribute it to a bad motive; if we dress simply they will attribute it to meanness.


    Whatever you do, others will be able to put an unattractive spin on it, and they'll hold you to an artificially high standard:

     They will call our joy dissipation, our self-denial sadness, their jaundiced gaze never satisfied.  They will magnify our imperfections into sins, count our venial sins as mortal and our sins of frailty as sins of malice….[I]f they cannot find fault with our actions, they censure our intentions.

    …The worldly are against us whatever we do; if we are in the confessional for a long time, they express surprise that we have so much to confess; if we are only in there for a short time they will say that we have not confessed everything.  

    They will watch us carefully; one word of anger and they will say we have an ungovernable temper; if we show prudence in our affairs they will say we are avaricious; if we are gentle they will call us foolish, while as for them, their anger is courage, their avarice economy, their overfamiliarity honest fun…

    I have to say that I notice people of all stripes having this attitude towards their political opponents.  Haven't you?

    So, what to do?

    We must ignore such blindness, Philothea; let them cry out like owls trying to disturb the birds of day as much as they like while we go serenely on our way, unwavering in our resolves; our very perseverance will convince them that we have dedicated ourselves to God and embraced a devout life.

    Ignore the naysayers, and be persistent.  After all, it's understandable that we might not be taken seriously at first:

    …[H]ypocrisy is hard to distinguish from true virtue externally; the test lies in the fact that hypocrisy is inconstant and vanishes like smoke whereas true virtue is ever firm and constant.

    Consider that the criticism might even be good for us:

    To meet with reproaches and criticisms at the beginning of our spiritual life helps to establish our devotion, for it prevents us from falling in to pride and vanity…

    A closing thought:

    We are crucified to the world and the world should stand crucified to us; it counts us fools; let us count it demented.

    .

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    4 comments on Introduction to the Devout Life: 4-1, “Worldly Wisdom.”

  • “Imagine that you are driving a rocket-powered sled around the inside of a frictionless cone of ice.”

    Aw, come on!  A post that contains a line like that HAS to be awesome!

    It's from Gravity and Levity, on forces that don't equal mass times acceleration in the classical physics world.

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    1 comment on “Imagine that you are driving a rocket-powered sled around the inside of a frictionless cone of ice.”

  • Announcing a new category: “Lower on the food chain.”

    I hear that some readers are interested in my family's ongoing project to eat "lower on the food chain," consuming fewer meat meals and less meat overall.  I have written a number of posts about this topic, and I think it would be good to gather them together in this new category.

    Most people know how to make a meat meal and how to make a meatless meal, but a very-low-meat meal — the "meat as a flavoring agent" meal — often seems trickier to put together.  I want to blog some more about those recipes, but even more, about the whole menu — because it's really the menu, the way a small amount of meat can fit into a whole meal, that is the tricky part.

    Last night's dinner was an excellent example of a summer low-meat meal.  I split one twelve-ounce steak among five people (our genders and ages are, by the way, M-37, F-35, M-10, M-6, F-4).  The baby is only just beginning solids so he doesn't count.

    Here was the dinner menu:

    Marinated White Bean Salad

    Roast Sweet Potatoes

    Sauteed Broccoli with Lemon and Garlic

    Skewers of Bell Peppers, Red Onions and Sirloin Steak

    Fresh Peaches

    One thing you have to get over, if you're going to eat low-meat meals, is the idea that it's not worth firing up the grill to cook one steak.  

    Skewers help.  Midday, I partially thawed the 0.75-lb steak and cut it into about twelve one-inch cubes — so I guess each cube was about an ounce — which I threaded onto two skewers and then salted.  I placed the skewers over a plate so the beef could drip if necessary, covered it up so I wouldn't contaminate anything, and left it in the fridge until about an hour before grilling.

    Three bell peppers and part of a red onion, I cut up and put on different skewers.  I find it's better to skewer veggies separately from meat, because they may cook for different times.

    Roast sweet potatoes are pretty easy, of course, you just pierce them and put them in a parchment-lined roasting pan in the oven for a couple of hours.   Or, if you forget until the last minute, you can always microwave them, or peel them, cut them up, and boil them for ten minutes.

    The marinated white bean salad I made the day before.  This is one of those recipes that doesn't need a recipe.  Cut into small dice:  some celery, some carrots, some red onion.  Mince a couple of cloves of garlic.  Toss in a bowl with olive oil, red wine vinegar, basil, and dill.  Stir in a couple of cans of well drained white beans.  Refrigerate at least a few hours, overnight is even better.

    The broccoli was cooked briefly in boiling water ahead of time, and then as soon as the other stuff went on the grill, I finished it by sauteeing in olive oil with minced garlic and lemon zest, the juice of the lemon being added at the end.

    Mark and I each got three cubes of meat, and the three eating kids each got two cubes of meat, plus as much of the veggies as we wanted.  I put my steak on top of the white bean salad, but everybody else dredged theirs in ketchup or barbecue sauce.

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    4 comments on Announcing a new category: “Lower on the food chain.”

  • Introduction to the Devout Life: Structure of Part 4, “Troubleshooting.” No, wait, I mean “Overcoming Temptations.”

    I've learned by now that instead of jumping right into discussing each chapter of St. Francis de Sales's work, I should consider each section of it as a whole so I can see where he's going with it.  And so let's move on to try to understand the purpose of Part 4, "Overcoming Temptations."

    If the book overall can be regarded as a sort of user's manual for the devout life, then we've already covered the naming of parts, the quick-start guide, and the fundamentals of operation.  When I skimmed over Part 4, it was pretty obvious that I was reading the Troubleshooting Section.  It's essentially a catalogue of obstacles and what to do about each one.

    Here's the list of chapters, each with an alternative title that, like a real troubleshooting guide, names the problem that the chapter tries to solve.

    1. "Worldly Wisdom"  Read this when other people try to undermine your efforts.
    2. "Courage in Devotion"  Read this when you feel regrets about what you've given up or when you fear that you won't be able to stick with your resolution to live a devout life.
    3. "Temptation and Consent"  Read this and the next chapter when you are dismayed and annoyed that you are experiencing temptation away from the devout life.
    4. "Two Examples"  (continuation of the ideas in chapter 3)
    5. "Encouragement in Devotion"  Read this when you begin to become confident — perhaps too confident — that you can resist temptations.
    6. "Sinful Temptation and Sinful Pleasures"  Read this when, tempted, you find yourself taking pleasure in the temptation rather than being dismayed and annoyed by it.
    7. "Remedies for Great Temptations"  Read this to understand what to do about a single significant temptation
    8. "Resisting Small Temptations"  With the next chapter, what to do about many small temptations
    9. "Remedies for Small Temptations" (continuation of the ideas in the previous two chapters)
    10. "How To Strengthen Your Heart"  What to do to strengthen yourself against your troublesome inclinations
    11. "Anxiety"  
    12. "Sadness"
    13. "Spiritual and Sensible Consolation"  Read this when enjoying good feelings and consolations in prayer, so as not to become too proud or too dependent on them.
    14. "Spiritual Desolation"  Read this when not enjoying any feelings of joy or consolations, so as not to fall into despair or anger.
    15. "An Excellent Example"  A story to encourage the devoted one in all these trials.

    I'll start discussing these chapters in detail in upcoming posts.

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  • How do you make sure you’ll never forget the baby?

    Sobering post on hot-car deaths by Erin Manning.  

    Every year as many as 40 children die this way. Most of the children are under the age of two, still buckled up in car seats, which have to be in the back seat and which sometimes, in the case of the youngest victims, are turned to face the back of the seat. Much of the time, the child was not left in the car purposefully (which is obviously a bad thing to do, even if the parent only intends to be away momentarily), but was overlooked somehow.

    Many of the cases involve the kind of change in parental routine that's easy to understand. A father might not usually be the one who drops the baby off at the sitter's house or the day care–but today he is supposed to. A stay-at-home-mom always goes to the grocery store alone while Daddy watches the children–but today the eighteen-month-old asked to come along, then fell asleep in his car seat on the way there. Are all of these cases fatal? N0–and that's one reason why we can maintain the comfortable illusion that it only happens to one kind of parent: the bad kind. We never hear about the cases where mom and dad enter the house or the grocery store and realize five minutes later that the infant or toddler is missing.

    The one thing that most parents don't want to accept is the one thing that could save children's lives: it could happen to anyone.

    As I wrote in the first comment, no denial here:  I always read these stories with the horrible knowledge that I might be the sort of person to make such an awful mistake.  I know all too well what it's like to run on autopilot.   

    The other hypothetical that I worry about is arriving at the gym with all the kids, late for swimming lessons, and Mark and I each taking some kids, and each of us thinking the other one has gotten the baby out of the car.

     I might seriously consider buying one of the alert systems she links to in her post.   For now, I think I'll vow never to unload groceries before unloading the baby, and I'll commit to wearing the empty baby sling when I drive as a reminder that I'm supposed to put a baby in it after I park the car.

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  • Building muscle with light weights.

    I've always been sort of dismissive of the idea of "light weight, many reps," but maybe it's not so useless after all:

    Current gym dogma holds that to build muscle size you need to lift heavy weights. However, a new study conducted at McMaster University has shown that a similar degree of muscle building can be achieved by using lighter weights. The secret is to pump iron until you reach muscle fatigue.

    …"Rather than grunting and straining to lift heavy weights, you can grab something much lighter but you have to lift it until you can't lift it anymore," says Stuart Phillips, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University. 

    …it's really not the weight that you lift but the fact that you get muscular fatigue that's the critical point in building muscle. The study used light weights that represented a percentage of what the subjects could lift. The heavier weights were set to 90% of a person's best lift and the light weights at a mere 30% of what people could lift. "It's a very light weight," says Phillips noting that the 90-80% range is usually something people can lift from 5-10 times before fatigue sets in. At 30%, Burd reported that subjects could lift that weight at least 24 times before they felt fatigue.

    (Bold emphasis is mine.)  

    This is pretty exciting news for anyone who can't afford a fancy home gym.  If you're looking to add resistance exercise, you can do it without any weights at all:  start with your own bodyweight.  An excellent start is a bodyweight squat. Here's a "Less Thinking, More Doing" resistance program for beginners that includes a bodyweight squat at stumptuous.com (which is a triple-F-fantastic site about weightlifting, for anyone but especially for women and girls).  Here's how to squat.  Here's an introduction to another good bodyweight exercise:  pushups.

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  • Introduction to the Devout Life…. how’s that going?

    So I temporarily paused my blogging about the book Introduction to the Devout Life while I tried to put into practice some of its suggestions, which I organized in this step-by-step grand plan.

    I have followed through a bit.  I thought I’d write about how it was going.

    * * *

     

    SETUP  PHASE 1

     

    Begin by setting out on “St. Francis’s Three-Step Program” to rid yourself of mortal sin and of any attachment to it.

    (1) Read Part 1, Chapter 8 and then pray the “novena” formed by the ten meditations in Chapters 9–18 of Part 1.

    (2) Prepare for confession with these readings: Part 1, Chapter 19; Part 2, Chapter 19; Part 1, Chapters 20 and 21.  Make a good confession, preferably a general one, preferably general, accusing yourself directly, simply, and specifically as described in Part 1, Chapter 19 and Part 2, Chapter 19.

    (3) While still in the confessional:  Let a solemn resolution as described in Part 1, Chapter 20 be part of your Act of Contrition.

     

     

    I did this, except I didn’t really make a general confession (just hopped in the line before Mass on Sunday, and did the best I could in a reasonable amount of time given the long line behind me).

    I don’t make novenas very often, or perhaps I should say I don’t finish them very often.   I must have been more motivated than usual.  At any rate, I knew that one of the upcoming steps in my plan would be committing to a form of morning prayer, so I decided to pray each of the novena prayers first thing in the morning.

    An aside.  “First thing in the morning–” That’s pretty ambiguous, isn’t it?  “First thing in the morning” might mean before even sitting up in bed.  Or it might be “right after I get my coffee” or “as soon as I get to work.”  Hm.  Well, in this case, it meant “after I put on my glasses and get the book open, but before I get up to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth.”

    It probably helped that Mark was out of town for a lot of this time.  Solitude helps me pray.  Getting married and thereby sharply decreasing my solitude was good for me in a lot of ways, but there’s no doubt that one reason I pray less than I did 12 years ago is that I’m alone less.  (St. Francis had some specific things to say about “interior solitude,” which I hope I can use.)

    Anyway, the novena wasn’t accompanied by any fanfares, or even a tingling feeling by which I might know that it was working, but I did finish it, and I did go to confession last Sunday at the end of it.

    * * *

    Then I woke up on Monday and started fresh on my first two desires.

     

    FIRST  DESIRE 

    Learn to pass from prayer to my duties “with such gentleness and tranquillity that the soul is not disturbed.”

    Resolution 1:  I will meditate on St. Francis’s Part 2, Chapter 10, “Morning Prayer,” and use its counsel to compose a brief morning prayer which I will write down and keep at my bedside.

    Resolution 2:  I will try to pray the Morning Prayer daily and I will endeavor, with God’s help, to pass from the morning prayer to my duties “with gentleness and tranquillity.”  If I forget to pray it first thing in the morning, I will do it as soon as I remember, and again will endeavor to return to my duties “with gentleness and tranquillity.”

     

    So far so good.  I wrote down a morning prayer on a sheet of steno paper.  At the bottom I added a paragraph copied from St. Francis about keeping silent as long as possible after finishing, “so as not to spill the balm of prayer.”   I left the sheet of paper on my bedside shelf.  I have been praying it before even standing up out of bed, which works pretty well because my daughter and baby sometimes wake up when I get out of bed, but generally stay asleep as long as I am still there.

    This works much better than my previous attempts to get up, brew coffee, and settle down with a cup of coffee and a breviary.  So far I have been able to maintain tranquillity at least until the children wake up.

    Now, on to the second:

     

     

    SECOND  DESIRE

     

    Refuse to multitask, but rather, “Accept all the duties that come my way peacefully, taking them in order, one by one.”

    Resolution 1:  I will look people (especially children) in the eye when speaking to them or when being spoken to; give them my whole attention, not just what’s left over from my work.

     

    This is still shockingly difficult, but I am working on it.  Sometimes I forget.  Sometimes I remember and still don’t do it, answering my kids without looking away from the computer.  I am trying to follow through, though:  when I “catch” myself talking without looking at the children, I am forcing myself to put down my work completely and go engage with them.

    * * *

    I’m going to keep working on these through this week before picking up St. Francis again.  The next part of the book is about dealing with temptation, and maybe it will give me a chance to troubleshoot.

     

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  • Comment problems persisting.

    It is looking to me like the pages are taking a really looooong time to load, and the comment form is the last to appear.  I got some email letting me know people still can't comment.  I'll bug Typepad about it and see what I can do.

    update:  It's better now as I write this, but I'm not sure why.  Will check back later.

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  • Commenting problems?

    Melanie sent me an email to let me know there was some kind of difficulty posting comments to the blog the last couple of days.  I didn't notice (although I did notice the absence of comments!) 

    Did you try to post and have a problem the last couple of days?  

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