7 Quick Takes Friday {Take 7}

-1- Today is the feast of Edith Stein, known in her religious life as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross:

So for all of those Carmelite sympathizers out there, this is a big day! I just love this saint (even considered Teresa Benedicta as a baby girl name :)) because to me, she is the epitome of a modern female saint. An independent woman, she came to the faith on her own (she was Jewish by birth) and was a highly respected scholar in philosophy before entering the convent. I recall reading somewhere that her mentor, Edmund Husserl, commented once that the best pupil he ever had was Edith Stein, rather than the well-known Martin Heidegger. I read her story to Henry last night, who was all wide-eyed over her being sent to, and dying at, Auschwitz. A very, very moving life and death. I have one of her books, which I simply *must* read one of these days, Essays on Woman.

-2- Yesterday, in the midst of my feast of St. Dominic festivities :) Mike and I took Henry to a local amusement park. I have to say, although I'm going to be honest and admit that I, ah hem, loathe gently dislike amusement parks, I had a very good time. Henry was SUCH a good boy and had a great time. I'm just sort of a freak at these types of places now that I'm older. I used to love any and all roller coasters. Now, I clutch that safety bar in front of me like the sheer force of my grip will make a difference should the ride malfunction and we all plunge to our deaths. I just can't enjoy them the way I used to. Plus, I get dizzy with anything that just spins relentlessly in a circle, and heights make me tremble (just looking at those swings that go up real high makes me woozy). Amusement parks also require a lot of physical closeness to my follow man, and well, I don't always want to be so close to him. :) I'd rather not have the loud, obnoxious guy from the line right in my car with me, and everything just smells funky in those places. Even on a ride as tame as the bumper cars I just want to apologize to everybody all the time for hitting them. Everything just goes against my very nature as an introvert. So you can see, amusement parks are not my best friend.

-3- Also yesterday, I got all Pioneer Woman and purchased a canning jar for the very first time. My object? To make dilly beans (recipe near bottom of Shelia's post). I love dilly beans but I've never made them myself. Anne "helped" me wash the beans and snip off the ends. Then we put them in the jar with the required ingredients, and voila! It's sitting on my counter looking a little ominous with stuff floating around in the water (is it supposed to look like that?!), but I'm hoping that in a week we'll have crunchy dilly beans to snack on. I'm determined that I will trick the children into eating vegetables in whatever way I can.

-4- I ordered Henry his new Bible! I made him look through all of the suggestions with me, and he chose The Golden Children's Bible. We're both terribly excited for it to arrive.

-5- Also in that same Amazon order, I picked up a book for myself on Catholic sacramentals, and I'm bursting with giddiness on this one. Now that Shauna'h's series on catechesis is complete, I'm looking for new ideas for Catholic Nook posts. I do have some ideas, of course, but where at all possible I love adding to my personal library of reference books. Both books should arrive next week. If anybody would like to see me cover something specific in the Catholic Nook (can be any Catholic tradition, devotional practice, sacramental, etc) do leave me a comment so that I can make a list. :) Lists are our friends.

-6- I keep being squirrely on what I'm using for spiritual reading lately, sorry about that. I have one book listed on my sidebar as what I'm reading, but then I get distracted and pick up and finish something else. I think it all ties into those brain cells I've lost since I had children and since I passed age 30. Anyway, what I'm reading now is Redeemed: Stumbling Towards God, Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding, by Heather King. It's going quickly (very interesting!) so I'll likely have a Catholic Book Club post up next week.

-7- I have dance tonight, and we're preparing for two performances that we have a week from Saturday. You'll all be pleased to know that my blue costume is now *sewn shut* at the halter, so we will have no further little close calls like we had recently. There may be solo opportunities, so I braved Audacity to edit some music that I like down to a length between 3 and 4 minutes. I don't know what it is (likely my ineptness) but I have a difficult time using Audacity. It's always doing things I don't want it to do and NOT doing the things I want it to do. After an hour with only a single utterance of profanity *halo* I now have two solo songs to choose from that I really love. I'm thinking I'll just re-use those when these public solo opportunities present themselves so that I'll feel comfortable improvising to them. Both performances will be outside so that will lead to more windy fun with our flower trays. I love belly dancing. It's never boring, I can tell you that.

Head over to Conversion Diary for more 7 Quick Takes!