I am at a loss how the last post went so awry. A lot of you DID read it as I meant it: those were the “Ha ha ha!” comments. Some of you “agreed with me”—but about things I definitely wasn’t saying. Some of you “disagreed with me”—but about things I definitely wasn’t saying. And my guess is that there were tons of people who didn’t like the post but didn’t leave a comment.

I come from a Christian family and was myself a Christian until I was 21. Many of my dearest friends and relatives—people I love and respect—are Christians, and I wrote the post keeping their feelings in mind. Most of the things in the post are jokes I’ve cracked to MY MOTHER, who is the Christianyist Christian I know, and she LAUGHED. I mean, “resenting” God! Ha ha ha ha ha!! That title CRACKS ME UP! Like saying an ant resents our town’s planning committee’s zoning decisions! Ha ha ha!

I went to a Christian college that thought it was not only right but GOOD to discuss (and even joke about) the things in the Bible that are incompatible with what the majority of the world’s population would EVER sign up for if it were in the Christianity contract. On paper, looking at the Old Testament, I doubt any of us would join. “Hey, would you like to this religion? God is running on a platform of virgin rape, civilization destruction, and sending bears to massacre little children!”

Er, no. And so my assumption is that Christians DON’T have those stories as part of their belief system, and so those stories are safe to make jokes about. If I make a joke about a story in which God sends bears to maul children for teasing a prophet, I’m assuming that doesn’t attack ANYONE’S personal belief system. And if it DOES attack your belief system, uh…..I mean, I guess I want it to, then, just as I would if your belief system involved bombing daycare centers. At my college, the discussion usually ended up with us trying to figure out what was true and what was a parable, and where the line could be drawn between scripture being inspired by God but written down by men, and how much we felt we could chalk up to the human mind not being able to understand the mind of God.

In the family I grew up in, too, discussion and frank talk and jokes about “women not talking in church ha ha ha” were allowed and encouraged. My dad was a minister and a Hebrew language scholar, so he had many excellent explanations for how parts of the Bible had been mistranslated or taken out of context. Blind, unquestioning acceptance of every word in the Bible was not considered part of being a thinking Christian. The conclusion of a hard discussion about, say, killing children for teasing a prophet, was that we DON’T like that and we DON’T understand it, but that not liking/understanding some part of the Bible, or feeling like we don’t like/understand a way God did something, doesn’t make us bad Christians or non-Christians. What it means is that we have to wait until we got to Heaven to understand the big picture—or to find out how something was mis-recorded.

NOTHING I wrote in that post criticized CHRISTIANS. And I apologize to those of you who thought I shouldn’t write about just one religion, but like most of us I’m only FAMILIAR with one religion. I’d write about the others if I knew any others. It’s not like I’m a world religions scholar but am singling out Christianity to pick on.

NOTHING I wrote in that post was intended to MOCK anyone, even though the word “mock” came up again and again and again in the comments. “Criticize”? Sure, you could call it that, if you don’t think it’s okay to joke about anything in the Bible. But “MOCK”? To quote The Princess Bride, I do not think that word means what you think it means. How is it “mocking Christians” to discuss the problems in the story of Job? Don’t Christians think there’s a problem there too? I was assuming they did. I guess I might have mocked someone if I thought they didn’t think there was a problem—but since my assumption was that everyone agreed there WAS a problem, I didn’t get around to doing any mocking.

NOTHING I wrote said or implied that Christians were dumb. I don’t even understand how anyone could have gotten that. I didn’t discuss Christians AT ALL. And again: my assumption is that Christians DON’T think it was awesome when God authorized the rape of virgins. If you thought I was saying Christians DID think it was awesome, I guess you could say I was criticizing Christian beliefs, but saying Christians are DUMB? Whuh?

I don’t mind telling you it made me both hurt and angry that a few of you said you were ditching me because of that post. That makes me feel like you expect me to be perfect: one screw-up and I am WORTHLESS and you are GONE. I make mistakes. Sometimes I might do a poor job of communicating what I mean, or sometimes I might make a joke you don’t think is in good taste, or sometimes I might have an opinion you disagree with. But if I’m not perfect, or exactly as you want me to be, you’re taking off. That’s not a fair standard to hold me to, and it’s not a standard I hold you to.

Edit: Because of a misunderstanding, I’m editing to add that comments are closed on this post to avoid splitting the discussion into two discussions (one on the previous post and one on this one), which gets confusing for everyone and means that I’m answering/clarifying things in two locations.

Creating people who have trouble with a certain kind of temptation, then putting that exact temptation right in front of them FOR NO REASON AT ALL. Then punishing them PERMANENTLY for giving in to the temptation, and not just them but ALL FUTURE GENERATIONS. I wouldn’t do that to my kids. Can you imagine? “Hey, Elizabeth, I’m going to put this box of SUPER SECRET AWESOMENESS here on the table right in front of you, but don’t touch it! I could have put it somewhere else and never mentioned it, but instead I will put it in the middle of the living room and tell you repeatedly that you can do anything you want EXCEPT play with this box, this wondrous wondrous box. Now I’m going to turn my back and switch on this video camera. …You touched the box? Then I’m kicking you out of the house, and your kids and grandkids can’t ever visit either!” And all this in, like, the first five minutes after humans were created. Creation: FAIL.

The thing with Job, where God got into a pissing contest with a former employee and killed all Job’s kids. But he gave Job NEW kids after proving his point, so THAT’S okay. Compensation: FAIL. Why not bring the dead kids back, since that was ENTIRELY POSSIBLE?

The whole Noah’s Ark thing, which is for some reason considered a cute nursery theme. Aw, two of every animal, the only two who weren’t wiped off the earth by God’s tantrum! Adorbs!

Some little kids call Elisha bald, so God sends bears to rip them to shreds. Er? Proportionate discipline: FAIL.

All the TESTS and TRICKS. Geez, a person could get JUMPY with all the set-ups. Touch the ark totally by accident? SMITE! Express doubt that someone who leads people for 40 years aimlessly through a desert knows where he’s going? EXCLUDE! Follow the rules set down by God himself in the Old Testament? PUBLIC SHAMING BY JESUS!

All the “women are soooooooo unclean” things. Yes, IF ONLY SOMEONE HAD CREATED THEM DIFFERENTLY, huh?

OMG, all the “virgins as loot of battle” crap. Totally God-sanctioned! Take the girls for your own pleasure, as many as you want! But only the virgins, because Used Girls are ICKY! Kill those ones, ew.

How hard is it to set down some consistent rules? Seriously. If something is forbidden, say so don’t pussyfoot around with arch hints and contradictory statements and tiny little mentions and inconsistent anecdotes. We have ONE MANUAL, and it needs a MUCH better writer.

“I’ll call you,” followed by more than 2000 years of waiting by the phone.

I had SUCH a good mail day yesterday. I just HAULED IT IN.

FIRST, I got one of Under Construction‘s wooden hand-painted postcards, and since I (1) collect postcards and (2) felt like I might DIE if I didn’t get one of these and (3) didn’t know if I’d get one or not until it arrived, it was a very happy mail day indeed.

SECOND, I got my order of postcards from Lila Ruby King on Etsy. I love Lila Ruby King stuff, and the postcards were even better than I’d hoped. Now how am I going to SEND any of them? THEY ARE TOO SPECIAL TO USE UP.

THIRD, I got a GPS with our tax refund, and it arrived yesterday. I am so happy to have it, or at least I will be after I get over the hurdle of taking it out of the box and setting it up. I wince a little as I tell you this, because it seems like bad form to be announcing an expensive electronic purchase when I read your blogs and know some of you would use that same money for, like, BREAD AND MILK AND ANTIBIOTICS FOR YOUR BABY. But I wanted to tell you about it anyway, first because it was on such a good price, second because I always want to know what someone else buys, and third because this is a post about my happy mail day and this was part of it. A GPS! It’s not an electronic device, it’s ANTI-ANXIETY MEDICATION.

1. Gather up the revolting laundry, all the while cursing the day you obligated yourself to a creature who would do such a revolting thing. If there is a LOT of laundry, gather up just some of it—about enough for a low-setting load of laundry.

2. Put the laundry in the washing machine and run a plain rinse cycle (no soap or anything, just water). My washer has a pre-wash setting that agitates the clothes for either 2 or 4 minutes, then spins it out, but without running the whole cycle. If your washer doesn’t do this, run the clothes through a regular cycle with plain water. This is just to rinse the actual urine out of the clothing.

3. Start again with fresh hot water, this time allowing the washer to fill only enough to barely cover the clothes. As the water is pouring in, add LOTS of white vinegar: for a fairly small load of clothes (with the “low” setting being enough to cover the clothes), I used close to a quart of vinegar. Also add a high-level load’s worth of whatever laundry soap you usually use. I added the cups of vinegar and soap right under the pouring water, to help it to mix in as the washer filled. If necessary, use a plastic coat hanger to push the clothes down into the water.

4. Leave that nasty mess soaking overnight or for a full day. A couple of times I used the plastic coat hanger again just to swish things around or poke down clothes that had floated up.

5. After the soak, without draining, put the washer on a higher setting (like, if you had it on low for the soak, put it up to medium) with hot water, and add 1 cup of baking soda, or even a cup and a half wouldn’t be overkill. Stupid cat. Run the clothes through a full cycle.

6. Sniff clothes. Better, huh? Put them in the dryer. Glare at cat, and do that thing where you point first at your own eyes and then at the cat’s eyes.

7. …Oh, NOT better? It’s possible you’re screwed: I had a nylon jacket that NOTHING worked on, not enzyme cleaners, not vinegar, not sunshine, NOTHING. And I had a few items of clothing that smelled okay right out of the washer, but after they were dry I could tell they needed a second run through the vinegar/soap soak and the baking soda cycle. But this treatment saved MOST of my laundry.

8. Buy lidded laundry hamper.

Today’s “feel better” attempts so far: lip gloss, new pens to try (I got the Uniball kind this time), three chocolate-chip muffins, unloading some of the posts building up on the baby names blog, putting a cat on my lap while I sit at the computer, ordering new jeans for me and a couple of clearance dresses for Elizabeth who is on a dress kick.

Score! Land’s End dress for only $6.99!

Another Land’s End dress, for fall, $9.99!

My sister-in-law sent me a care package, and do you know what is TOTALLY DELICIOUS and I’d never have thought it would be? Dried sweet corn! OMG. It is so tasty. This is the kind she sent me: Sensible Foods Organic Crunch Sweet Corn. I saw it and thought, “Oh, how…INTERESTING to try!” And before I knew it I’d eaten the whole bag (except what I shared with the kids, who also liked it) and was going online to find MORE MORE MORE.

The cat is still peeing in our laundry, so I am buying lidded hampers, a Feliway refill, new socks and underwear and t-shirts and towels, Nature’s Miracle, and two pairs of Etsy earrings. I am calling the earrings a “thank you for not euthanizing me” gift from Mouse to me.

And check out THIS development:

This is how Benchley sleeps: DRAPED.

I’d have more hope that this meant the end of the Pee Punishment, except that this picture was taken yesterday and she peed in our laundry this morning and then the cats had a big hissy spat. Plus, this might end up meaning my computer chair will be involved in a territory dispute and will need to be burned.

It is less than three weeks until my solo trip to see my brother and sister-in-law and niece and sister-in-law’s sister! And then it is only about a month after that until my brother and sister-in-law and niece move to a location an hour away from me! (We are still working on my sister-in-law’s sister.) The only downside of their move: I think it will look silly if I still bring my pink suitcase on visits to see them.

I was doing Postcrossing postcards last night and something fun happened. I had just finished a postcard and I got my next address—and the address seemed verrrrry familiar. It was to another person at the same address! I love when stuff like that happens. Once Paul and I both got the same person to send a card to. We realized it because he read aloud the person’s wish list and I recognized it as one I had seen a week or two before.

I don’t want to get all INTO IT here, because I know all of you with dishwashers already know all the problems with dishwashers. I just want to say that sometime soon I am going to have to point out to someone that “starting the dishwasher running” does not count toward doing one’s fair share of dishwasher duties.

All right, enough whining! It really does help to vent it into a blog post: writing it down lets me stop thinking about it so much. And notice both whiny posts were in the late afternoon / evening: I go through the whole day just feeling kind of bleh, and then it’s evening and I’m tired and there’s no dessert and the coughing is starting and it’s ACK DESPAIR TIME ACK!!

Next time I see the doctor I’m going to ask about the coughing asthma thing. It definitely gets worse when I lie down; I’ve been sleeping upright in the recliner the last few nights because if I lie down I wake myself up with the coughing. I once tried my mom’s rescue inhaler (er, I mean, JUST KIDDING, I WOULD NEVER BREAK A FEDERAL LAW BY USING MEDICATION PRESCRIBED FOR SOMEONE ELSE) and it didn’t help (IN MY IMAGINATION, WHICH IS THE ONLY PLACE I WOULD USE SOMEONE ELSE’S MEDICATION), but perhaps a different medication would help. And in the meantime I’m going to try the Zyrtec.

The stranger cat is probably out of the basement. We put the cat door on in/out mode so the cat could leave if it wanted to. My plan of posting Found Cat signs was not going to work: we couldn’t get a hold of the cat even if the owners called us. We will just have to hope that it is an owned-but-collarless cat and that it will find its way home, and that if it IS a stray it will find a family that doesn’t scare it half to death. We ARE kind of LOUD.

I agree with everyone who said the Pill is probably contributing to the moody despairingness. Problem: if I stop taking it, Paul will get Teh Snippage. Soon I will be ready for that, but not yet. I am hanging on to a tiny lingering hope that he will say, “Actually, now that the four oldest are in school, I guess we COULD handle another!” So. Stuck with the hormonal craziness element for now.

Okay, now I am going to go get another cup of coffee, and put on one of my pretty rings, and finish up today’s Milk and Cookies post which is going to be about earrings for 14-year-old girls so that means I get to look at more pretty jewelry and that should be cheering.

I am feeling all stressed by this post by Temerity Jane: You Don’t Know My Hypothetical Future Child. Should I Have It?“—because on one hand YES YES OH GOD YES, and on the other hand, last week there was a perfectly legitimate reason to give my 5th grader permission to cross a busy street with a friend without any grown-ups helping them, and I was so stressed out about it I started crying, and even though everything was fine and he got across the street and back again without being squashed, ever since then I’ve been continually stressed by the idea that THE CHILDREN’S LIVES ARE IN THEIR HANDS and, simultaneously, OUR HAPPINESS IS DEPENDENT ON THOSE LIVES, and, from that, WHY THE HELL DID WE HAVE CHILDREN WHEN ALL IT IS IS SUFFERING AND EXPENSE AND POTENTIAL DEATH-WISH-INSPIRING LOSS?? If one of my children died, I would EMBRACE MY OWN DEATH and I am not exaggerating even slightly. So what to advise someone considering children? It is the most wonderful thing that can ever happen, and it will make you consider scenarios in which you would embrace death? That doesn’t really fit on a “Congratulations on your pregnancy!” card.

Or maybe I am stressed because a cat that doesn’t belong to us is in our basement. We have the cat door set to “in only,” so that Benchley can always come into the house but can’t go out unless we let him out, or unless he darts sneakily past us as we open the front door. So anyway, an unknown cat came into the cat door and can’t get out, and it’s not wearing a collar so I feel responsible for its well-being, but it’s so scared of us it’s hiding in the basement and I can’t find it, and what if its owners are worried about it RIGHT NOW? Or what if it is a stray and it’s our next cat and all of this is part of The Story of How We Got Our Next Cat? And meanwhile Paul is saying, “Set the cat door to in/out, why don’t you,” and how can he find the situation so simple?

Or maybe the problem is that my headcold morphed into my annual Horrible Coughing Thing, where I cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough at 2:00 in the morning, and so I can’t get back to sleep even though I switch from the bed to the recliner to be more upright, and when I wake up at 5:30 I feel as if coffee might help but then it doesn’t really. And then I wonder if it could be asthma, but it doesn’t really fit the symptoms of asthma, and whenever I go to a doctor he’s all, “OH, well, a virus has to run its course, careless little dismissive laugh as if you’re being a hypochondriac about nothing!”

Well! A person might turn to Oreos in circumstances such as these! But a person is continuing to eat RAW SPINACH despite a lack of precipitous weight loss as a result of such righteousness, and so a person might feel VERY SORRY FOR HERSELF.

I have been so cranky! So terribly cranky! I am moping around feeling incompatible with the beautiful spring sunshine.

I am working on soothing it through the acquisition of material possessions. Look at my pretty rings!

What’s prettier, the rings or the clearance stickers? Two of them are “cocktail rings,” and six of them are for everyday glamor. (I think it should be spelled “glamour.” Why is spellchecker arguing with me? Does it WANT to pick a fight?) I am wearing a deep plum flower ring right now. I am waiting to feel better. I do feel a LITTLE better.

I am also a little tipsy, because when material possessions didn’t work I turned to liquor. I mean, obv: first step shopping, second step booze, that is the sequence of events. Still cranky, though. Still feeling as if the world is populated by difficult and unreasonable people who honk when you’re stopped at a crosswalk because they assume you’re an idiot who would stop in the middle of the road for no reason.

How can I be feeling TOTALLY OVERWHELMED by children and really VERY GLAD to see the caboose heading through the milestones—and also still longing for JUST ONE MORE? I had a dream that I was pregnant with another boy, and that he was due on my birthday but we’d waited until just 2 months before the birth to tell everyone. I woke up thinking of baby names. Oliver Frederick. Simon Pearce. Oliver Pearce. Simon Perry. Sigh. Sadness. No one to use the names on. Paul says we can use the names on cats, but that doesn’t satisfy at all.

Soon we’ll get a kitten. That will help briefly.

I’ve wanted to increase my exercise with this diet I’m on, but instead I’ve decreased. I’m down to two times a week. And when I do exercise I feel tired and angry, before and after. I wait for the satisfaction of having done it, and instead I feel worn out and unpleasantly sweaty and like a pawn of stupid social pressure.

I took a pregnancy test today, even, because I’ve been so tired and cranky and queasy. Negative. Okay, I just went to the trash and dug it out to make sure it was still negative. (Still negative.)

What else could explain the tiredness, the queasiness, the salt cravings, the UNIVERSAL MALAISE? Oh no, is it Pre-Menopause?? Surely not yet. And yet the fact of it looming on the horizon, the hot flashes and the boob squashing, the knowledge that babies through biological means are no longer an option—well. I don’t want to think of it. I want to flush the Pill and add to my exhaustion and stress. No I don’t. Yes I do. No I don’t. Yes I do.

Giving things away: not working. Exercise: not working. Eating better: not working. Taking time away from he computer: not working. Shopping: not working. Cuddling the children: not working. Counting blessings: not working. Being mad at everyone in the world: not working. If you suggest religion or yoga I swear I will scream right in your ear until the ringing is permanent.

I have new shoes! I have warm cats! I have a solo trip to see my niece coming up in a month! I have eight pounds of chocolate-covered dried cherries! I have nothing to be sad about except what looms theoretically in my future! Yes, well, I told that to my psyche and it threw a vase at my head.

It is time to hand out Earth Day presents, and perhaps if we do this again next year I should start the giveaway several days BEFORE Earth Day, to make the presents feel more festive? Because it feels like Earth Day is over, which it is, and that it is too late for Earth Day presents. Well! Next time!

Anyway! Winners!

jen(melty) – cloth napkins

Jen of Daily Dose of Devan – cloth napkins

Laura (April 22, 8:17 a.m. comment) – cloth napkins

marilyn c. cole – reusable pads

Annika – reusable pads

Sam – reusable pads

Mama Bub – reusable bags

Jenni of Oscarelli – reusable bags

So! Now we begin the snowstorm of emails with addresses, and then little packages winging their ways to the one corner of the earth! Email me at swistle at gmaildotcom with your shipping info and we’ll get this show on the road!

And thank you for all your good ideas on that post! I really enjoyed reading about some of the things you’re doing, and I found myself this week reaching into the paper recycling bin when I needed to jot a note or print a draft or figure out who won what in an Earth Day giveaway.