Happy Easter

Whoa Baby! (The News is Out!!)

The day has arrived. I have put it off for far too long. I have sidled around the issue, ignored the computer, made excuses, fussed, etc. But the day has finally arrived. The blog, the blog readers, the Intra-web at large--they must be told.

Dear Readers, Thomas More and I would like to introduce Wee Winter:

**Cue: tears of joy!! high-pitched screams and exclamations!!!!! fainting spells!!! Hearty pats upon back....Etc.***

I am, for those of you who would like to know, currently 15 weeks pregnant with Wee Winter, who is not so wee as he/she/it once was, measuring about 4 inches long (from crown to bum), complete with all the essential parts and pieces, fingerprints--even eyebrows. The picture above is a at 13 weeks. He/she now looks a bit like this:

A-May-Zing. We went in for our first ultrasound during week thirteen and watched little Ruprecht/Hildegaard jumping around like a...like a...well, actually, kind of like Mr. Bean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4moPhSeDWFI

Despite the relative hugeness of the Child (if you think 4 inches is small, think again! Four months ago this kid didn't even EXIST!!), and considering the wacky moves he/she is perfecting, I have yet to see or feel much confirmation of Babe's existence. Despite the MASSIVE amounts of food I have been consuming, I have gained a meager 2 pounds, which I shouldn't complain about, I guess. "It'll come, Love, it'll come!" say the wise matriarchs of Fife (smirking into their coffee mugs).

Here is a game for you (!!!). Spot the 15 weeks pregnant Bump! ("Oh No," you say, "not ANOTHER pregnant woman bearing her gut!" And I say, "oh yes!" with only minimal shame. Being pregnant makes you do weird things.) So here's the comparison:

5 Weeks Pregnant:

15 Weeks Pregnant:

Yes, yes? There is a bump?

But seriously, about this blog, and belly pictures, and links to baby-food sights, and "How to build your Own Midcentury modern dollhouse" etc etc. I don't really want this blog to become a "baby blog" or a "mommy blog." This is not my goal or intention. I considered omitting all reference to the pregnancy, but decided that such a stupid and arbitrary omission would be problematic at best. This coming event will, after all, ROCK MY WORLD in a way it has seldom (never!) been rocked before. There's a PERSON in my belly! How, pray tell, did THAT happen?? (yes, I know HOW...but isn't that just weird that doing that results in:

Ooops--I meant...THIS:

Yes. It is a miracle (one way or the other!). So I will be posting from time to time on pregnancy/baby related topics. I will probably gloat over my hugeness (and whine about it too). I might also rant a bit about healthcare in the US of A (and how I CAN'T GET STINKING INSURED!!!) and about baby names (a long-held obsession which I am now free to indulge) and even about strollers...ug, I know. (Remember: pregnancy makes you WEIRD. Who knew I would start having NIGHTMARES about strollers???).

But just so you won't all abandon ship here and now, I promise that the next post won't be baby-related at all. Any topic suggestions? I was thinking about delving into the world of Scotch Whisky (T.More, of course, will be doing all the drinking!!)

Joy is Friends and Candy Mountain!!!

Last week saw the (joyful) arrival and (sad) departure of our friends Jeff and Blake (pictured above), who came to see us all the way from the U.S. of A. Well, came to see us and the castles...and the mountains...and the *newly blooming snowdrops and winter aconite*. It was very wonderful to have these lovely men in our current place of abode, and I do hope that they enjoyed themselves. Though I was still wrestling with an annoyingly stubborn essay even into their visit, we all managed to have a wonderful time, sampling fine fish-and-chips establishments, sipping various tradition Scotch Whiskies, driving through the highlands, romping through glenns, eating in pubs, playing Euchre (hurray the Midwest), and (of course) watching youtube videos, the most important of which was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5im0Ssyyus

Watch and you will certainly be edified.

AND here is a selection of photos for your enjoyment!!

Sunset on the night O Arrival

Jeff photographs the Small Bacons at Cambo House near where we live.
Thomas More, Marley and Cambo House Garden

The grounds at Cambo House--Gorgeous!

See!!! Snowdrops and Winter Aconite!!!

The Cambo Vale which leads to the sea...

Blake, Jeff, and Sarah frolicking in Pitlochry on the way up to the Cairngorms.

Mary of Egypt and Jeff on the suspension bridge in Pitlochry. We should be fashion models, yes??The guys and the Glenwhinnie (spelling?) Distillery in the Cairngorms--the highest distillery in Britain. Very interesting!!
Outside the Distillery in the Cairgorms.

T.More and M.of Egypt on the still-frozen Loch Eileen and Castle!

What a Stellar picture of us....ALL of us. Wow.

Advertisement for Wellington Boots.

In the Cairngorms...

Our lovely B and B. Our room had a GORGEOUS view of the mountains...I did NOT want to go home! So clean, so wonderful--and HUGE breakfast every morning. Aaahh...

March Marches On...and so do I

The light is returning and so is the academic intensity. Excuse the blog laxness. I have several very good reasons for my absent-ness. I will elaborate on these later. The current most pressing excuse is an essay due next week--but due sooner for me because of Dear Friends who are coming to visit Thomas More and Myself!!! We are so very excited. And we pray for sun. And more snowdrops and winter aconite (the snowdrops are up! the winter aconites are Yellow! the sun doesn't go down until 6 PM! Is spring coming? ? ? ?)

I am writing a paper about metaphor, looking specifically at two poets, one of whom is George Mackay Brown. GMB lived almost his entire life in the Orkney Islands which are tiny and remote. He describes the people of Orkney as "fishermen with plows," but as you read his poetry you get the feeling that they are really Vikings in hiding, Vikings undergoing some sort of penance. The Last Vikings. For my post today I will include one short poems by GMB. The long poems are the best, in my opinion, but this is a lovely thing.

from

The Sea:

Four Elegies

The Lost

One stumbled on a grey hill, very steep.

On drank deeply, and found himself at a carousel of angels.

One whispered in the secretest cell of salt.

One (young) exchanged many untasted Aprils for a brief ecstasy.

One who had turned hundreds away from the door of The Salt

Mother knocked on her window that night, alone.

One wrote 'amen' on a spindrift page.

Were they offered for all seareft--piracy, pain of fish, the

black and gold cargoes?

A storm-ripened one went swiftly that March among

Sea-scythes, flails, winnowings.

After the third wave, the sea-querns had him.

The Atlantic was veined all summer with slow pure glitters.

****George Mackay Brown was a devout Catholic. He had a special devotion to St Magnus of Orkney, whose feast is on 16 April. I will try to remember to do a bit of a post on GMB and St. Magnus on that day!

Not So Seraphic

*

I am husband-less again. And hungry. These two states seem to go hand in hand. I find it incredibly difficult to take care of my own lone self. I don't want to get up in the morning. Or make the bed when I do get up. Or get dressed. Or let the dog out. Or go to the store. Or eat. Or anything. These are some of the many reasons I am Not So Seraphic these days.

I returned to the Kingdom of Fife on Monday, dog tired with too many relatives, too many airplanes/ports, and an overabundance of jetlag germs. The flat was cold, the sky was grey, it was--after all--Scotland in early February. I don't mean to complain--really. But be compassionate on a poor sinful soul. Everyone has "that kind of week" every now and again. Forgive also the purely journalistic blog post. Intellectual vigor is temporarily lacking--so this is the best I'm gonna do.

Thursday was the day I was to meet my NEW TUTOR: the Illustrious DON PATERSON (i.e. won the T.S. Eliot prize TWICE--which is something that even Seamus Heaney hasn't done). And--not only was I to MEET him, I was required to bring him a poem...a poem written by *myself.* This is, of course, why I came to Scotland in the first place. I am THRILLED to be under the tutelage of one such as Don Paterson. But January has been tough on the poetry-brain of Mary of Egypt. Too much darkness, not enough Muse. For the past month I have been working fitfully on a poem about jars. Yes, JARS. Like glass things you put salty vegetables in and they last for 100 years.

But also "jars" that hold things...like acorns, which hold that yellow stuff, birds' eyes that hold everything they see, eggs that hold baby birds. Etc. etc. This has been really worrying me--all these jars. So, over the past month I accumulated various word documents which contained little phrases like:

"pinatas...maybe. in a tree."

or

"pod of milkweed. cortex. peas."

Or

"getting rotten?"

or

"seeds in a cone of mud (kind of jar)."

With the help of my moleskin and my little thumb drive, I worked on this "poem" for 28 days in four countries, six cities, and on several computers.

On Monday I returned to my Scottish abode. I pulled out my notebook, my laptop, and my trusty thumb drive--finally ready to synthesize and refine my jar poem, to make it worthy of the likes of DON PATERSON. Thumb went in disk drive...cursor to "documents," "open..."Jars"". "Jars" would not open. I tried laptop number two. "File Corrupt," says laptop number two. What does this mean?? "Corrupt??" Like, full of sin? Like, my jars of seeds and strawberries and things were "getting rotten"??????? "File Corrupt."

Needless to say: I PANICKED. I called a friend who has a boyfriend who is a computer guy. He is sweet and tried to help but to no avail. I sent the "Corrupt" file to my father-in-law who has a computer science degree from CalTech, but to no avail. Alas. "Jars" was totally corrupt. Rotten to the core. Gone. Zippy.

So I screamed and cried and the dog hid under the bed.

This was Monday and my meeting with DON PATERSON was on Tuesday morning. So--I rallied (finally) and wracked my jetlagged brain and scoured my little messy notebook. I worked hard and long, while trying to maintain a Divine Parnassian Calm.

To make matters a bit more traumatic, Wednesday was a Very Important Day for non-poetic reasons. Namely, it was the day that Seraphic was to come to St Andrews and discourse upon the vocation of Singleness and the vocation of Marriage to our Catholic Chaplaincy. "Seraphic" (which is not her real name but a blog moniker) is one of my favorite bloggers, who writes about things like marriage, (the practice of) writing, Catholic theology, Catholic liturgy, shoes, and Scotland. All these things I find fascinating in themselves, but Seraphic has a particularly engaging style and eager wit, so I love her.

I invited Seraphic to come to Catholic Night because I hoped all my Popish friends would like her too. I am so very happy that she came. She is truly delightful in flesh as well as blog. She discoursed admirably upon delicate subjects. She put up with our singing at Compline. She even went to the pub to be jolly with the little people. BUT she came upon Black Wednesday. I hope my personality did not appear too dour in Seraphic's eyes. And I wish I wish I wish I could have gone to the pub to be jolly with the papists...but alas. I went home to struggle with "Jars."

After a night of little sleep and many tears, I finally shored my fragments against the ruins and produced something resembling the Thing I had hoped to make originally. I stumbled to workshop to face DON PATERSON.

And--to my utter astonishment--DON PATERSON *liked my poem.* He said things like "lovely" and other nice adjectives. Not that there weren't lineation problems, clarity problems, syntax problems and other trivial glitches...but--overall--he liked it! I was so relieved. I nearly wept.

THEN--after a few minutes of further edifying discussion, one of my colleagues--unaware of my sleep-deprived, emotionally delicate state, chose to point out a SIN AGAINST REALITY which was lurking in my FIRST TWO LINES! A Sin which "totally delegitimized" the entire poem for my colleague. The first two lines are:

Swallows in October hoard

seeds in cones of spit and mud.

Can you spot the Grave Error?? Well, let me tell you, loveys. SWALLOWS do NOT store up seeds in their little mud houses. They store eggs and baby swallows. And they DON'T do it in OCTOBER. I am not being sarcastic. This is a major problem. Poets, of all people, should be true to reality. If they choose to write about swallows, their verse swallows may not do things that real swallows never do. I recognize the error of my ways and repent in dust and ashes. (Now whether or not this error "delegitimizes" the *entire* poem...I remain unconvinced.)

This shattered me. I still haven't quite recovered. Surely sleep and food will give me strength and courage to face my swallows again and take away their seeds and their October hoarding. Maybe I'll do it after dinner. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after.

As I stated at the beginning: Not So Seraphic. Oh Well.

**the picture at the beginning is for the benefit of DON PATERSON who (hopefully) will never see this post. DON PATERSON hates cat poems (this includes the T.S. Eliot book of the same). Whether or not he hates *actual cats* has yet to be determined.

One Moroccan Minute

Tis January in Scotland. In my humble opinion, "January in Scotland" should not exist. It was not part of the Divine Plan. January in Scotland is colder than December in Scotland. And there is no Christmas. (Rabbie) Burns night just doesn't cut it. Since university festivities do not commence until February, Thomas More and I have been suffering from a smidgen of cabin fever and cold toes--so after Hogmanay we went directly to weather.co.uk and searched for the warmest place in the world that was not A) South of the Equator, or B) South America. Besides Egypt, which is apparently full of drunken uni kids this time of year--MOROCCO seemed like the best choice. So off to Morocco we went!My conclusion upon return: Everyone who lives in

Fife should go to Morocco--promptly. We got on the plane in Northern Britain with

temperatures hovering near zero degrees Celsius, wind whipping frozen sleety-snowy stuff into our ears and hair and underwear etc. We stepped off the same plane in a light mild breeze, 15 degrees Celsius (60 deg F), clear night sky, the scent of hibiscus and desert sand wafting in the air.

We spent half the time in Marrakech and the other half in the beachtown of Essouaira (which I probably spelled incorrectly...). While in Marrakech we stayed in an Arabian palace. No kidding. I felt like Princess Jasmine. For real:

There was a courtyard with orange trees, palm trees and exotic birds singing and fluttering in the fountain. We drank fresh orange juice for breakfast. We lay in the sun on the rooftop patio, listening to the call to prayer from the neighboring mosque.

The medieval section of Marrakech--where we were staying--is like something out of Arabian Nights. Tight narrow streets twist in an intricate pattern, a true labrynth which completely baffled us. Merchants sell live chickens, bright glass lamps, sheep skin, wool carpets, bottles, spices, smoked meat, antiques, shoes, "special" tobacco--anything your heart could desire and probably some things your heart will never ever even THINK about desiring... We got lost, overwhelmed, ripped off...(but we bought a nice little painting of horses!). And we got to see monkeys and snake charmers! Here I am with some poisonous vipers!!

Another Marrakech highlight was the Majorelle Garden. Designed by two artists in the 20s, this urban oasis was refurbished by Ives Saint Laurent, who loved this truly lovely place:

Essouaira was peaceful and bright. We could hear the waves everywhere we went. We strolled the boardwalk with the locals, walked the ramparts of the old fort which looks out to sea. We rode horses through the waves at sunset (which was NOT as relaxing as it sounds and looks...Let's just say that I THOUGHT I was a competent rider, but apparently not...I'm not so good with fiesty little Arabian stallions, who knew?)

Now we are back in the coldness and darkness of January in Scotland--which is mercifully near its end. Tomorrow we head off again! This time to some place even colder and possibly darker than Scotland in January--namely Kansas City in January!

Just Another Reminder (Christmas Isn't Over Yet!!)

This is fantastic. Please, please, please watch this video.