I just bought some new shoes and they are ridiculously white.

There should be a paint called shoe white, and that would be the standard by which all other whiteness is measured; there could be a shoe white, and off-shoe white, and a country shoe white.

To slow down Global Warming we could build a huge barge, fill it with new white shoes, and float it to the North Pole to replace the melting ice caps.

I don’t know when different language skills are supposed to develop, but I”m constantly amazed by my son. Lately he’s been using similes.

» He bit the front leg off an animal cracker and said, “It’s like a drill.”
» I blew a raspberry on his belly and he said, “It’s like a lawnmower.”
» He crumpled his napkin and said, “It’s like a shovel.”

Okay, I don’t know what that last one meant, but 2 out of 3 is pretty good for a 25 month old.

Lillian has started waving and clapping. She says something like “Hi Da Da.” Which sounds a lot like “Bye Da Da.” So that’s what she does every time I leave the house and every time I come home.

She’s also finally over her “I only love mommy” phase, so I get to play with her a lot more now.

I’m embarrassed by the broken “Categories” image. I’ll fix it when I can.

I like this wordpress theme, but I’ve had to rewrite almost all the HTML & CSS. I didn’t mess with the left sidebar because the theme author made it pretty complicated, and I didn’t want to dig in there and straighten it out . . .

The Meltdown

My tire didn’t just go flat, it exploded. No hope for repair, no future as a tire swing.

I’m a handy guy, so I thought I’d change the tire myself. After my last flat, I even bought a 2-ton jack that I keep in the trunk of my car, most of the time. The only time I take the jack out is if I need the trunk space to haul stuff. For example, if I had just moved into a new house . . .

Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), I still had the scissor jack with the spare. So, I loosened the lug nuts, jacked the car into the air, took one lug nut off. That’s when I noticed the car shifting.

This was one of those slow-motion experiences. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. I glanced back towards the trunk with my angry face–that’s the natural expression my face reverts to when I don’t understand what’s happening–then I realized the car was falling, and did a weird flop/hop backwards out of the way.

Here’s the kicker. Are you sitting down? The jack sunk two inches into the pavement. If you drive past our local library you’ll notice a huge divot in the ground. That marks the spot where my life as a blogger almost ended (of course, I’d probably also be excused from changing any more poopy diapers . . . no, not worth it).

The Insurance Company and their Outsourced Phone Service that Connects to the Outsourced Road-Side Assistance Company that Calls Someone Else to do the Work

I’ve paid five bucks a month for the past five years for Road-Side Assistance, and this is the third time I’ve ever used them; I think I’m losing that gamble.

I walked over to the library and find a modern miracle–a working payphone. I called my insurance company, gave them all my info, got redirected to the Road-Side Assistance Phone company, gave them all my information, got redirected to the actual Road-Side Assistance company, only to discover the operator couldn’t hear me. Eventually, she realized I’d called from a pay phone and explained that there is some technological glitch with payphones that makes it difficult for her to hear people who call from them. . .apparently cell phones have better connections than land lines. That amazed me, but for some reason it also made me laugh and everything started going back uphill from there.

I was at the library so I checked out a book and found a nice place to read (that’s all I wanted to do anyway).

In about 20 minutes, someone from a local tow company pulled up next to my car with AC/DC blaring on the radio and I had a flash back to high school. The repairman was a great guy, and he changed my tire in about 5 seconds.

The Moral of the Story

If you pay $60 a year for Road-Side Assistance, make sure you also pay $60 a month for a cell phone. Of, course that could probably all be avoided if you paid $260 a month for a new car. And while we’re spending money, let’s throw in $2600 a year for insurance that redirects you three times before sending someone else to do the work.

The Other Moral of the Story

It’s good to be the middle-middle man.

Preface

On facebook.com there is a group titled “We Are Catholic!” The group has a discussion board where teens discuss various thoughts about our faith, and one teen posted a question about discerning her vocation. Dozens of people replied, including me; Here is what I posted.

What’s the Worst that Could Happen?

I read somewhere that moving and changing jobs are two of the most stressful events in a person’s life. I don’t know who conducted that study, but I’m guessing they weren’t Catholic; Discerning a vocation is one of the most traumatic experiences a faithful young Catholic goes through. It is especially traumatic because it can go on for years, and includes dramatic shifts from one vocation to another. Shifts that are sometimes peaceful, sometimes passionate, often difficult, and occasionally angry.

However, there is something even more traumatic . . . that is, after fully committing to one vocation, you still have serious doubts about your choice.

Adults Who Struggle with their Vocations

I’ve read books by ex-priests and by divorced people who still struggled with their vocation after ordination or marriage (I won’t mention their books here because I don’t want to support their writings, which are often anti-Catholic, but if you send me an email I might share the authors with you).

I’m not talking about the occasional thought about what life would be like if a person had made a different choice. I am married, love being married, and have no doubt that this is the vocation God called me to. And even I occasionally wonder what life would be like if I had entered a monastery–that though usually pops up on days when I have to race a kid to the doctor, make sure my rent gets paid, fix the lawn mower . . . oh yeah, and find time to go to work, then get home and pass out only to be woken up at midnight to change a screaming baby’s diaper while I’m half asleep and accidentally put the diaper on the wrong end . . . on those days, sure, I do wonder what the monastic life would have been like. But wondering is different than doubting, and I’ve never doubted my vocation–there’s too much love here.

God has blessed me with a peaceful heart about my vocation, but I wonder why some people don’t find peace after they are married or ordained. After reading a few books by people who were unhappy about their vocation, I am willing to make a guess; their writings give me the impression that they struggled with Christ’s love. Feeling Christ’s love from others, understanding Christ’s love, and, most importantly, sharing Christ’s love by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Advice from Pope Benedict XVI about Discernment

If you are discerning a vocation, the first thing you should do is surround yourself with people of deep faith who are capable of sharing Christ’s love with you; Start with your family (if possible), then with your church (if possible). Seek Christ’s love for the rest of your life. Share Christ’s love for the rest of your life.

“Prayer itself, born in Catholic families, nurtured by programs of Christian formation, strengthened by the grace of the sacraments, is the first means by which we come to know the Lord’s will for our lives. To the extent that we teach young people to pray, and to pray well, we will be cooperating with God’s call. Programs, plans and projects have their place; but the discernment of a vocation is above all the fruit of an intimate dialogue between the Lord and his disciples. Young people, if they know how to pray, can be trusted to know what to do with God’s call.” Pope Benedict XVI [emphasis mine]

What The Rest of Us Can Do

For the rest of us, the best way for us to help someone discern their vocation is to fill their lives with love by listening to them and by praying with them. Listening to them is a key part of ministering to them; we must focus our ears so we can hear their hearts. Our goal is to help them filter out the noise the devil fills our lives with and to hear God inside.

“When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking” (CCC 1777).

And after the choice has been made, we should continue to love them the way Christ taught us.

St. Therese of Lisieux said, “My vocation is love.”

I’m trying to mow my lawn with a criss-cross pattern like a baseball field

A well mowed baseball field

My Lawn

It’s been a month, but I can’t make the criss-cross pattern stick.

Today, I tried mowing the lawn twice, once in both directions, but the second mowing pretty much erased all the lines from the first mowing. I’m ashamed of my failure, but I’m not giving up; I’m off to Google to see if I can find anyone else who has successfully turned their backyard into a baseball field . . . I do happen to know a professional baseball field maintenance worker (Dave do you think you can get me some base-line chalk?)

I don’t usually get excited enough about a computer book that I want to tell others about it, but I just picked up my all-time favorite super-geeky book ever.




Defensive Design for the Web
by 37signals

I’ll call this book an advanced web design book, but you won’t find a line of code in it.

The book focuses on how to make sure people don’t hate you too much when they encounter an error on your site.

I’ve never paid much attention to handling errors because my code is flawless . . . no, that’s not true, I’m just lazy. I just checked my host, and at least a handful of people get a 404 message (that’s computer speak for an error page), so I’m actually excited about reworking the 404 pages on all my sites. If you want too see an error on my site click on this link www.dougroyal.com/stupid-error/, and let me know what you think.

I just finished setting up an online trivia game about the Catholic Church.

Smart Catholic.net

The questions are more difficult than the ones in my board game, so I hope you enjoy the challenge. My wife is working with me to write more questions; she’s putting together a quiz title “Women of the Bible.”

I just published a fairly difficult quiz about Pope John Paul II. I love reading about him; his words and Blessed Mother Teresa’s words inspire me more than any Saint I’ve ever read about.

My next goal is to publish a quiz about the Gospels.

I hope you enjoy the game!

Here is a video that I plan to use the next time I plan a Youth Minister’s training meeting. This video captures the essence of what youth ministry looks like behind-the-scenes.

I was away on a retreat this weekend, and when I got home, I discovered I missed two very important milestones in my children’s lives.

1) Lillian learned how to crawl.

2) Isaac learned that it’s funny to spray people with the water hose.