What I'm Reading Wednesday

Make that what I'll be reading Thursday. (Potato, po-tah-to.)  I'm not reading anything today, because I've got a lot of housework and packing to do before I get up well before the crack of dawn tomorrow morning and head off to the airport.  I'm flying down to VA again to attend another wedding shower for my soon-to-be daughter-in-law, who is marrying my #3 son in December.

While I'm very excited about going to the shower and seeing the kids, I'm feeling a little bit apprehensive about the flights.  I've made great strides in my efforts to conquer my lifelong fear of flying, and had convinced myself that I was basically "cured"; but the last time I flew down to VA (just a couple of weeks ago), I was feeling the old nervousness again.  Even on the best of days, I need a good book to take my mind off the fact that I'm WAY UP HIGH IN THE SKY, RIDING IN A GIGANTIC TUBE OF METAL. And I'm feeling a tad nervous already about tomorrow, so I'm planning to bring along a brand new book that I haven't even cracked open yet and know nothing about.  Hopefully, it will be so engrossing that we'll be landing before I realize we've even taken off.

So I'm joining Jessica today for the Wednesday link-up, but I'm sharing the title of the book I'm hoping will help me get through my trip tomorrow.

I just love that vintage graphic.  It makes me want to participate, so fortunately I love to read.

Okay, here's what I'm going to pack in my carry-on bag (not the coffee, silly--just the book):

The author of this novel (who also goes by the pen name Mary Jane Hathaway) was kind enough to send me a requested copy of her novel All the Blue of Heaven so that I could review it for CatholicFiction.net.  I chose to read and review this book because it is categorized as a romance novel, which is a genre I normally avoid.  I don't enjoy Danielle Steele-style fiction; I read one of that author's books years and years ago and swore I'd never make the same mistake again.  Even as a silly head-in-the-clouds teenager, I couldn't stomach Harlequin romances.  But I thought it might be good to read something that is a bit of a departure for me, just to keep things interesting--and I have a feeling that this book might surprise me. Carmichael's novel is actually a Catholic romance, and I can't help but believe that therefore it will be different (and oodles better) than the mainstream ones with Fabio on the cover and way too much heavy breathing on the inside. When I finish, I'll let you know what I think.

Now head on over to Jessica's to see what the rest of the gang is reading.

Life is Good (Better Than I Deserve!)

Have I got any readers left?  Have you all stopped coming by my little "String of Pearls," sick and tired of never ever seeing anything new posted on here?

It used to be that blogging was as much a part of my daily life as drinking coffee, but that sure hasn't been the case lately!  I'm on the road too much these days--and although I lug my ginormous, heavy old laptop hither and yon, whether I'm traveling by car or by plane (because my husband and I are never home long enough to get my new smaller, lighter laptop loaded and ready to go!), I rarely get around to using it for the purpose of blogging. Actually doing stuff, instead of spending my time telling you about the stuff I'm doing--or stuff I'm thinking about doing, or stuff that I did twenty years ago, or stuff that I wish I had the guts to do--has been getting in the way, I guess.  That is a sign, I believe, that life has been very full...and very good.

My husband and I drove out to South Bend over the long Labor Day weekend to visit our youngest son, and also to meet up with my husband's seven siblings and various and sundry members of their families.  We always try to get together for at least one Notre Dame home game every season, and this was the weekend everyone was able to make it. It was the 2013 "Pearl-a-Palooza," an event that gets more epic with each passing year. We rented a big house, had a big tailgater before and after the game, and basically just enjoyed being together, laughing, talking, and drinking an adult beverage or two.

We got to see the Irish win their Saturday opener against Temple, handily.  During his outdoor comedy show on the South Quad Thursday night, comedian Jim Gaffigan made fun of the fact that we were playing Temple, which is hardly a football powerhouse; but still, it was a W.  Gaffigan joked, "Was DeVry not available?"  (What a great show!  My husband and I arrived a few hours beforehand, after our 16-hour road trip--with plenty of time pull up a good patch of grass fairly close to the stage, along with our youngest son and some other family members.)

Okay, let's see.  What else can I tell you about the weekend?  Oh, yeah...by now you've probably heard about the souvenir soda cups from the game.

Notre Dame is taking some good ribbing all over the Internet, but that's okay. We are the Fig-Thing Irish! We are fans of all things fig!  Go, fig, win!

Our son, who is a junior out there this year, thinks the students should just run with it--you know, make t-shirts with a picture of the ND leprechaun's head, arms, and legs poking out of a Fig Newton body, or something along those lines.  If we laugh at ourselves, ND-haters won't get any satisfaction out of making fun of us over this unfortunate typo/editing disaster.

Sheesh--typos!  They are absolutely the bane of my existence.  Now they're the bane of ND fans' existence as well.  But you have to pick your battles, and you can't fig about every little thing.  Sometimes you just have to put down your dukes, laugh, and move on.

It sure was great to see my baby boy out at Our Lady's university.

I love that kid.  Can you tell I love that kid?  (He's funny, isn't he?)

It was also great to do some shopping for my grand-babies: cheerleading uniforms for the twins and a polo dress for Little Gal.  I'd say we've got them all outfitted for the ND-Air Force game a few weeks from now. That's the next game we plan to attend, out at the AF Academy in CO--which is literally minutes from where our little sweeties live.  Papa and I will be killing two birds with one stone when we head out west on that trip.

Do you think we're trying to brainwash our grandchildren?  (And is there anything wrong with that?)

I almost got a chance to meet up with South Bend native Katrina, whose blog is called "Cedars & Tiny Flowers," but our plans fell through.  I'm hoping when we go back out to ND for the Oklahoma game she and I will be able to make it work out.  That would be wild to meet a blogger I admire but have only known on-line up to this point.

So you see, life is good.  I'm a lucky, lucky lady, and don't I know it.  I'm traveling a lot these days to see my far-flung chicks, but I'm fortunate that my husband's airline career provides us with a way to do that without going into the poor house.

That's it for now, but before I go I just want to say thank you to my blogging friend Sarah Therese over at "Footprints on My Heart."  Aside from writing for her personal blog, Sarah has also joined other young Catholic women bloggers at "The Catholic Young Woman," and today she posted a great review of Finding Grace on that site.  If you'd like to read it, just click on this link:
http://catholicyoungwoman.blogspot.com/2013/09/finding-grace.html.

Again, thanks, Sarah Therese.  And thanks, too, for the "Scrumptious Blog Award" nomination!  (My cup runneth over!)  I will work on that in the coming days.  :)

On Marriage

I read the most beautiful blog post about marriage yesterday on "The Catholic Young Woman."  It was written by a young, newly married Catholic blogger named Clare Asper. With my middle son's impending marriage in December, I find myself thinking a lot about weddings, but more about the true meaning of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.  I read this post and thought this young bride spoke on the subject so eloquently that I wanted to share it with you today.

http://catholicyoungwoman.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-light-of-love.html

I urge you to check it out.  It is simply beautiful.

And now, I must go.  The Notre Dame campus is calling me--and that's a call I'll always take.

Have a great weekend!

A Tale of Two Teeth

Warning, readers: I'm about to tell you a story about teeth.  (Sorry if that sounds boring; by the end, you may feel as if I've administered a healthy dose of laughing gas.  Only you probably won't be laughing.)

I thought about this post yesterday afternoon while on my four-mile walk, so please take that into account when you look at the selfies I snapped for it right after I got home.  (Here's another warning: yes, there are selfies in this post.  And that sheen on my face is not sweat; it's what they call a "glow.")

If you read my blog yesterday morning, you know that I wasn't feeling like the most lovable of wives. The night before, I'd made my husband feel like he was so, so wrong, even though he wasn't because it absolutely WAS about the nail--that is, the tooth.

Okay, I better back up here.  I have been going through a rather painful and discouraging saga involving the molars on the upper right side of my jaw.  It started quite a few years ago, with an aching pain that made its way through my cheekbone and right up into my eye. Nothing ever showed up on x-rays, so I went around thinking I was just one of those people who suffered from inexplicable pain.  Or that I had sinus problems that made my teeth ache. "My face hurts me.  Does it hurt you?" I'd jokingly ask my long-suffering husband. (Hardee-har-har.)

Finally, a little over five years ago, I could no longer bite down on my two back molars and the wisdom tooth behind them, and something had to be done. The wisdom tooth was extracted and the two molars in front of it first got crowns, and then had root canals.  Some of the roots of those molars were curved and hard to fill, and the endodontist who worked on them warned me that those teeth might not last forever.  For a time, however, it seemed that my problems were at long last over.  I had a full set of teeth and I wasn't in pain.

Fast forward to earlier this summer.  That awful aching pain returned, and it was determined that the back molar either needed a surgical procedure to remove a twisted root, or it needed to be extracted. I opted for surgery, hoping to keep the tooth.  But that meant going on antibiotics before the procedure, and I ended up in the ER suffering from a severe allergic reaction to the medication.  I'd already had allergic reactions to three other antibiotics, and I was running out of options; so the endodontist advised me to just get rid of the tooth, since she couldn't guarantee the procedure would be a success anyway.

"You absolutely won't be able to see that the tooth is gone.  Even when you smile your biggest smile, it won't show."  That's what everyone--my dentist, the endodontist, and the oral surgeon--told me, and they were right.  "If you lose the one in front of it, though, that's a different story.  But really, you can't tell at all."

You're still there?  Okay.  Fast forward to a few weeks ago.  Guess which tooth started to give me problems?  And guess which tooth I had to have extracted about a week ago?

I'm ashamed to say that I have been the biggest possible baby about losing this latest tooth. My poor dad had to have the front of his right foot amputated, and he handled that better than I'm handling this.

Anyway, while my husband was away on a trip, I came up with a great plan to make it look like I have a tooth where there is none.  I combined some white and yellow gum to get just the right shade, made a nice little wad that fit just perfectly into the gaping hole on the side of my jaw...and check it out!

Before:

 And after:

When I showed my husband my ingenious plan for faking a tooth until I can get a permanent implant about six months from now, he said, "You really can't see that gap, you know, unless you exaggerate your smile and put your face right up next to mine." Men aren't mind readers, so it's not his fault that what I wanted him to say was something along the lines of, "Wow!  You should go into business making prosthetic teeth!  It looks so real, you'll totally fool everyone with that."  It's not his fault that telling me the gap is not really noticeable made me act in an irrational manner.  He was only trying to make me feel better.

But the truth is that I don't want to have to walk around with a wad of gum in my mouth at my middle son's wedding in December, and luckily, it looks like I won't have to.   My dentist suggested making some sort of temporary "tooth" that I can wear until I get the implant.  It's expensive, and it won't be covered by insurance. But my husband is a softie and wants me to be happy, and I did tell him that "all I want for Christmas is my two back teeth."

It's silly, I know, to be so concerned and embarrassed about missing teeth.  I've had myself fooled, thinking that I'm not a very vain person--because the grays are coming in, but I don't color my hair, and the wrinkles are multiplying, but I don't plan to resort to plastic surgery or Botox.  But this whole saga with my teeth has made me realize that I am indeed much too vain about my appearance. I recently read Michelle Buckman's awesome novel Rachel's Contrition, and in the course of the story her heroine is deeply affected by St. Therese of Lisieux's autobiography, The Story of a Soul. Reading Buckman's book made me want to redouble my efforts to follow the example of that amazing saint, who never would have let the extraction of a couple of teeth fill her with self-pity and cause her to be cranky with her loved ones. But in spite of all my good intentions, I've already failed in that mission. Boy, I could sure use some help carrying my measly little crosses without complaint!

I'll end this way-too-long-already tale with two thoughts: thank God for patient husbands and modern dentistry; and St. Therese of Lisieux, pray for me!

Why I Love My Husband (Installment #1)

In this modern world where man-bashing is such a popular sport among women, I thought I'd join up with Kaitlin of More Like Mary~More Like Me.  Tired of hearing women complain about their husbands, she wrote a blog post bragging about hers, and she got so much positive feedback that she decided to start a little link-up.  "Let the bragging begin," she challenged.

Challenge accepted!  (Oh dear, mea culpa.  I'm embarrassed that I know the TV character who is associated with that quote, because he's a scoundrel of the first order.  But Barney Stinson could be one of the funniest jokesters on the tube, if his humor and that of the whole gang at "How I Met Your Mother" wasn't cringe-producing-ly inappropriate more than half the time.)

There are an awful lot of reasons why I love my husband--too many to count.  But the one I'm thinking of today is that he loves me even when I know I'm at my most unlovable.  He loves me in spite of all my faults. He loves me when I would drive any normal, less saint-like person to the brink.  He loves me when I am moody, overtired, and unreasonable.  He loves me when I'm being too ridiculous for words.  (Have you seen the "It's Not About The Nail" YouTube video yet?  If not, take a moment and watch...and laugh...and if you're like me, girls, sheepishly wish it wasn't so very true!)  When I think I look the most hideous, he sees only beauty (love most certainly is blind, thank the Lord!).  I don't really understand why he loves me sometimes, but he does; he's a rock, the one person I can always depend on to be there no matter what.  He would never give up on me, and his love is nothing short of miraculous.

This sort of all-forgiving, unconditional love reminds me of God's unwavering love for all of His children, no matter how sinful they are. That's one of the many reasons why I love my husband, and why I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the best possible person to be the head of our own little domestic church, our family.

{simple saturday}: Bridal Shower

Hello, blog world!  How have things been?  I've missed you!

But it was a busy, action-packed long weekend for me down in VA, visiting with my middle son, his bride-to-be, and other assorted family members.  My husband's older sister and her daughters threw a lovely family shower for my son's intended on Saturday night, and I thought one simple picture would give you an idea of how simply wonderful it was.

So here I am posing side-by-side and cheek-to-cheek with my soon-to-be daughter-in-law. (How's that for a string of hyphenated compound words, all in one sentence?)

Okay, I lied; make that TWO simple pictures.  Now here's the blushing bride-to-be surrounded by a bunch of Pearls who are thrilled to welcome her onto the ever-growing family string.

I know how much she loved wearing that hat, fashioned out of the bows and ribbons from all her gifts. Almost as much as she loved modeling her new "Little Black Apron," complete with a June Cleaver-esque pearl necklace attached (a gift from me--and as luck would have it, I have one of my own, so we were able to do the twin thing).

When I started this post, I thought I'd try to link up for {simple saturday} with Iris, but even though most link-ups do stay open for a while to give us procrastinators a chance to join in, I see I'm a bit too late for that.  I'm a just a wee tad out of the loop here.  I haven't just been avoiding Iris; I've been avoiding everybody!  I haven't just been not-blogging; I've been not-reading other blogs I usually enjoy and not-commenting on them.  But sometimes my real life gets too busy and full to keep up with my on-line life (which I believe is a good thing!). I doubt you even noticed I was absent from the blogosphere the past few days, but I guess I'm officially back.  And after crashing back down to earth after such an eventful weekend, I hope I'll be able to come up with some interesting things to write about.  You know, because keeping up with my blog is just a very, very important job.

See you tomorrow...I hope!

Review by Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur

Back in April, Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur--a freelance writer, editor, and book author--was kind enough to read and then do a review of my novel Finding Grace, which she posted on her Spiritual Woman website.  In case you've been sitting on the fence, wondering if this is a book you should have your teenage daughter read (or even read yourself, because it's written for an adult audience as well), maybe this review will inspire you to get your hands on a copy...or inspire you to suggest it as a book club choice, if the gals in your group are looking for something a whole lot more wholesome than Shades of Gray...or inspire you to incorporate it into the curriculum of your homeschool reading group (for grades 8 and up).

I know I've been talking about my book a lot recently on this blog; but one thing I did learn at the Catholic Writers Guild conference a few weeks ago is that although Catholic writers are rarely rich and famous, they have an important mission, a vocation: they are evangelizers. As the coffee mugs that were given out in our conference goody bags say of those who work in the field of Catholic literature, "I am a journalist, I am an editor, I am a writer, I am a publisher, I am a CONTENT EVANGELIST."  If it's meant as an evangelization tool and it sits hidden away gathering dust on a shelf, then my book isn't going to do anybody any good.

And truly, when I set out to write this novel, I did think of it as doing my small part to evangelize.  I wanted to present an alternative to all the damaging secular messages that are being thrown at our young people on a daily basis--on TV and the Internet, in movies and books--and show the beauty and Truth of the Catholic Faith, and how the answers to all of life's most difficult questions can be found in its teachings.

Okay now, without further ado, here's the Spiritual Woman review.

********************

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Book Review: Finding Grace

Finding Grace
by Laura H. Pearl
Waterford, MI: Bezalel Books, 2012

“Finding Grace” by Laura H. Pearl  is a Catholic coming-of-age novel set in the 1970s. Grace Kelly shares a name with the famous princess, but little else. She’s a plain, awkward girl entering her teen years, struggling to find her place in the world as she grows up in Plattsburgh, New York. She has devout Catholic parents, a house full of older brothers, and a best friend, Irene, who possesses all the beauty and grace she lacks. 

What Grace does possess is the desire to become a saint. At her father’s urging, she begins to read lives of the saints and tries to fashion her life after them. Admittedly, this isn’t always easy. She is starting high school and becomes the favorite target of Sister Immaculata, the much-feared Latin teacher. She also becomes friends with two young men – Jimmy Sullivan and Tom Buckley, one who she dreams of being with, and one who dreams of being with her.

The novel follows Grace and her friends from 1972 – 1980, when she is studying to be a teacher in college. This was a turbulent decade when many of the world’s morals were changing. Grace struggles to keep her virtue and her resolve to be a saint. Her friends struggle with their choices as well.

Pearl depicts the era well, especially the changes wrought by Roe v. Wade. Two characters in the novels become pregnant and make very different choices. Pearl explores what those choices meant to the character’s future lives.

“Finding Grace” is a long book and not a quick read, but it is worth spending time with and following Grace as she grows into a beautiful young woman.