Emily M. DeArdo's Blog, page 42
March 21, 2019
I Never Want to Get Used to This
I came home from grocery shopping yesterday and found a box against my door.
This is the box that holds my contract, as well as some AMP swag (yay swag!) and other notes that are important in the Writing of The Book.
I still really can’t entirely believe this is happening.
And yes, the book is being written. The contract will be signed and mailed today so yay!
March 20, 2019
Orchard House
I’ve decided to call the new place Orchard House, for a few reasons.
One, Little Women was the first “adult” book I read, back in third grade, and it’s always resonated with me, in various stages. As a kid, I liked Amy, because she looked like me (the blonde). Of course I evolved into Jo, the writer; Beth, the one who stayed behind, was also relevant for a lot of my life, although I’ve never been that sweet, and she played piano, which I do (sort of—I’m self-taught). Meg, the oldest, has also had resonance over the years.
Also, Orchard House was a cozy place of creation—the girls were always making something—but it was a home. Sort of idealized, yes, but a comfortably, cozy, safe place. Who doesn’t like that idea?
And of course, there will be lots of writing happening here. So I’ll be channeling Jo in her attic room. Although my room isn’t an attic and it’s a bit nicer.
I love my desk!
So, a snapshot of the new place, and it’s name. More decorating photos to come, but I wanted to introduce you!
March 12, 2019
The Week of Everything
A gorgeous rose from the bouquet my brother and sister in law sent me, celebrating the book!
This is the week of everything.
I’ve started writing the book.
I will sign the contract this week.
I’m moving.
Yup, it’s a lot.
But in the midst of all this good stress (and it is good stress), I’m really thankful for my body.
And that’s weird for me to say, because normally, my body and I are at odds. It’s not perfect, by any standard. And it never will be. It’s always going to be ‘Healthy for me’, which is not healthy for anyone else, generally.
But right now, it’s able to take out big bags of trash, and go under beds and cabinets, and pack boxes, and clean toilets. It’s slow going, because my knee never really recovered from the meds last fall, which messed it up, and I still only have 54% lung function (which is so much better than 19%, don’t get me wrong!), so I don’t work as quickly as someone else might.
But my body can do these things. And I’m really grateful for that. It can do these physical tasks, and I can type these words.
So even though it’s the week of Everything, and I’m running around like a crazy person, I’m glad I can run around like a crazy person.
No yarn along this week, and no quick takes, because it’s The Week of Everything!
But next week, maybe a tour of the new place?
March 8, 2019
Did That Really Just Happen?
Well, guys.
It happened.
I have a book contract.
Yes. IT’S TRUE!!!!!
I’m going to write a book for Ave Maria Press, uniting my story with a Way of the Cross. The book is tentatively titled The Way of Your Cross, and it’s devotional in nature. It’s going to incorporate Pope St. John Paul II’s Salvific Doloris (On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering), Scripture, all sorts of stuff.
I am thrilled to death. And also flabbergasted. And….just amazed. It’s sort of like the world’s best caffeine high.
I’ve been going around the world like Belle in the bookshop.
I mean, it’ll be a real book! On REAL SHELVES! That people can REALLY GO TO A STORE AND BUY!
I feel a lot like Jo in Little Women. “I'‘M AN AUTHOR!!!!”
I can’t quite process this.
(Last GIF, I swear:
The book will be for sale next Lent, we’re hoping. That’s the goal.
Now I have to write the thing.
Obviously I will keep you updated! If you want to know about book stuff FIRST, then please sign up to follow the blog, so you get all the news first!
Thank you for all the support and prayers, everyone! It means the world to me!
March 6, 2019
Ash Wednesday Yarn Along!
It’s Yarn Along Time!!!! :)
And it’s Ash Wednesday, so happy Lent to you! And yes, I do mean “happy” Lent. I really like Lent, probably because: 1) I’m a spring baby, and 2) I was born on Good Friday. So, I like Lent. And I also need discipline every once in awhile (who doesn’t), and the spiritual rigor of it, the peeling away of the non-essential, is a good thing.
Anyway, to the yarn!
OK, so the details:
This is the Feile shawl, which I am loving. I love how the stripes change—do you see how they had a sort of neat pattern going on, and then switch to solid stripes? Love that. Eventually, the contrast color, the blue, will become the dominant color as I work toward the end of the shawl, with the white being the contrast. This is a really easy shawl, but the fun is in the slight pattern changes. The thing that’s going to be a pain is all the end weaving in! But oh well.
I’m using Frabjous Fibers yarn, the Mad Hatter base (sport weight). The white speckled is Victorian China, and the blue is called “Muchness” (seriously, isn’t that great?). I’m using Knitpicks sunstruck needles, size 4, on one of their interchangeable cables.
The book is a great one for Lent, I think: Catherine Doherty’s The People of the Towel and Water. It’s about doing every day activities as prayer—really being present in the moment, and allowing everything you do to be prayer, working for God, even when you’re sweeping or cleaning or writing (or knitting!). Catherine founded Madonna House, and I’ve been reading some of her writing lately. I recommend it!
March 4, 2019
Listen Up! (For World Hearing Day)
(c) Wikipedia
World Hearing Day was yesterday, and so I thought I’d put up links to the post I wrote last year, about my CI and how it works and ways people can make hearing better for everyone!
So if you missed them the first time:
Part II: How the Cochlear Implant Works
I am (hopefully!) getting my CI upgraded in the next few months. The current processor I have has been “obsoleted”, meaning that if it breaks, Cochlear (the company who makes my processor) won’t fix it, they won’t sell any more replacement parts for it, etc. Now, they do this, in part, so that insurance companies will pay for new processors, because if it can’t be fixed anymore, then, yeah. Probably need an upgrade. This one should be better and allow me to hear more, but I have no idea until I get it. :) I do know that it will have bluetooth capability so it can stream my iPhone sound directly into my processor, and this might be a big thing. We’ll see what happens and I’ll let you know!
And thinking about my CI is timely because of a conversation I had in a lung transplant group on facebook. We were talking about the toxicity of a certain class of meds, and that they are crazy hard on the body. Some people were adamant that they would never take a drug in that class.
But here’s the thing—all meds are toxic at some point. They just are. Tylenol is! I knew that the ototoxic drugs were destroying my hearing. But I decided I’d rather be alive, than dead with great hearing. It’s about choices. And sometimes, yes, you just have to cut out a class of drugs. The meds I took over the fall for a sinus infection have pretty much messed up my right knee permanently. I’m not really happy about that. But you know, I like being alive, I like that we managed to stop the infection without it 1) getting into my lungs and 2) requiring the big guns of IV meds and /or hospitalization.
It’s a trade off.
March 1, 2019
Seven Quick Takes--Bits and Pieces
Linking up with Kelly!
—1—
So the month of February has been STRESS CITY and I’m glad it’s over and I’m back to sleeping properly. :) I had to record a talk, which I was nervous about, and then I had book proposal stuff to do, and then I have MOVE stuff to do, and while all this stuff is good stuff, it’s also a lot, so whew. But things have calmed down a bit and I’m back to being stressed but not insanely so.
—2—
The book proposal is going to the publisher groups today for them to look over. Please pray for it?
—3—
One of the reasons I think I was stressed is that I couldn’t knit! I was waiting for a special order of yarn to come in so I could get back to my knitting project, and now that it has, I can knit again!
It looks sort of messy because of all the little tails, but it’ll be fine. :) This is the Feile shawl, which uses a variegated yarn and a solid color. It’s a really easy pattern and already I’m thinking about the variations I can do on this theme.
The yarn is INCREDIBLY yummy—it’s Frabjous Fibers Wonderland Yarns, Mad Hatter base (sport, which is a little heavier than the fingering yarn that’s called for). The speckled is in Victorian China, and the blue is Muchness. It’s a gorgeous blue, really sort of blue violet, bluebell-y color, and I adore it. I could wear this color all the time! So I have a feeling this shawl is going to get a lot of wear.
—4—
Moving is rapidly coming up and I’m in the stage where I want to throw out everything except books and yarn and tea and just start again. :-P (Well, and my bed. ETc.) There are boxes and bags everywhere, it’s definitely chaotic around here!
—5—
I’m really late to the party but I’ve been watching Best Picture nominees (Green Book won, if you missed that). I’ve seen Black Panther and A Star Is Born so far, and Roma is next.
Black Panther was….good, but not Best Picture good, in my opinion. I’m not really a Marvel comic book person so watching the movie I had to infer a lot, which I generally don’t like, but I understand I’m not the target audience. I loved the costumes and the sibling relationship was the best part. But the actual action seemed….slow, to me. I know, again, I’m not the target audience. But not good.
—6—
I did, however, really like A Star Is Born, and I didn’t think I would, because I am loyal to the Judy Garland Version, and it’s still a better version because, hello, “The Man That Got Away” and freaking Judy Garland. BUT—this version was good. Good pacing, I surprisingly liked the music, and the acting was solid, even remarkable at times.
Yes, there was too much swearing.
BUT, I really did like this movie. Last scene? Total goosebumps.
—7—
Do you have Hosanna for Lent yet? Go get it!
February 27, 2019
For Lent: Hosanna
Hosanna is the new Take Up & Read offering for Lent, and she is so lovely!
I know I say that about all our books, but guys, she really is.
ESSENTIALS:Hosanna covers the Gospel of Matthew
It runs from Ash Wednesday (ahem, next week!) to Easter Monday, so it’s the entire season of Lent!
Extra deep dives on the Beatitudes (photo below), and special Scripture for the triduum!
A variety of contributors, as always, and gorgeous art by Kristin Foss.
Plenty of space for journaling!
SCRIPTURE MEMORY every week.
Here are the deep dive into the Beatitudes pages!
Daily Scripture written out, with plenty of room for lectio divina on the next page.
On Saturday, we give you a selah day , meaning time to relax and go back and do pages you may have missed, or just check in with yourself, your spiritual life, and how the week went for you.
All of these books are a true labor of love—we love writing them and making them for you, but we really love sharing God’s Word with you! Come join us this Lent!
February 19, 2019
Got $20? You can feed a child for an entire YEAR!
I am a BIG fan of Mary’s Meals, and you should be, too! Let me tell you why.
(Also, SUPER cute video at the bottom!)
One of the Mary’s Meals t-shirts I picked up at the Columbus Catholic Women’s Conference last weekend.
As we approach Lent, people start to think about Lenten penances, and the pillars of Lent: Almsgiving, Fasting, and Prayer. We should think about these things all year, of course, but especially during Lent, when we prepare for Christ’s Death and we imitate His 40 days in the desert.
It’s sobering to think about people who do not have enough to eat, who are truly starving. Not just “food insecure”, but really, truly, starving. People who will not eat on a daily basis. According to World Vision, one in eight people in the developing world do not have enough to eat.
Mary’s Meals has a simple idea: One nutritious meal every day for a child in a place of education.Children who are hungry can’t learn. That seems obvious, right? You can’t think if you’re starving.
Mary’s Meals wants to stop that—they want to help children LEARN and be fed.
So, in 18 country around the world, they set up food serving stations at schools, run by local volunteers, who feed the children a nutritious meal every school day. In some places, it’s an actual school. In others, like in India, it’s “non-formal education centers”, like railway platforms, where kids learn and eat. In Madagascar, they actually feed children in prison, because in the prisons, the food service isn’t consistent. The kids learn and get fed.
Feeding one child for an entire school year costs $19.50.That’s it! $20 feeds a child who otherwise wouldn’t eat. And when they eat, they are better equipped to learn, and as they learn, they can get out of poverty, get a job, and help themselves and their families break the cycle of crushing poverty.
Currently, Mary’s Meals is feeding more than one million children around the world! Which is amazing, but there is still more work to be done.
Magnus McFarlane-Barrow, the founder and CEO of Mary’s Meals, spoke at the conference last weekend, and he is passionate about feeing these children, about making a difference, and it’s so simple to do. This isn’t a hard thing. They will do anything to get these kids food; in Haiti, they deliver food to the foot of a mountain and carry the food up to the school settlement! Even though Mary’s Meals is dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God, and Magnus is Catholic, the schools serves everyone, not just religious schools.
This Lent, I think it’s a great idea to support Mary’s Meals however you can. Maybe you eat a simple meal and save the money you would’ve spent on going out—do that once a week, and at the end, give the money to Mary’s Meals. Maybe you can hold a bake sale or a fundraiser at your school. There are lots of ways to help!
Donate right here. Think about it. $20—a movie ticket and a soda, or an entree at a nice restaurant—that can feed a kid for an entire year. That makes a huge difference in a child’s life.
To find out more, watch Child 31, the documentary about Mary’s Meals:
And the follow-up, Generation Hope:
And if you like the actor Gerard Butler, like I do (he was in The Phantom of the Opera!), then you’ll love this video of him directing kids in Haiti at a Mary’s Meals school!
February 18, 2019
Be Like Briony! (Or: Disability and Reality TV)
So, I love the Great British Bake Off. Do you? :)
(For those of you who have no idea what it is: 12 bakers in Britain bake three challenges every week—two they can practice, one they can’t—they don’t even know what it is. The bakes cover pies (their pies, not American pies), cookies (biscuits in England), bread, patisserie, all sorts of things. At the end of each week, one person is “Star Baker” and one person is sent home.)
Anyway, I was watching the 2018 Bake Off on Netflix over the weekend, and I was super happy to see Briony, one of the contestants, on the show. Why? Well, first, she’s just great, but second, because she has a disability and she didn’t make hay about it!
She has what she calls a “little hand”—it’s a birth defect where she only has six fingers:
Explaining why she and Channel 4 chose not to mention what she has dubbed her “little hand”, the 33-year-old said: "I specified early on that I didn’t want them to make a big deal out of it because I just wanted to see how people would view it".
Williams went on to say that her disability is “a part of me, not all of me” before adding: “It’s not that I’m embarrassed about it or ashamed of it in any way. I want to be there on my own merit and I don’t want people to think that I’m getting special treatment.
Think about this. BAKING! With six fingers!
But what I love is that it’s never mentioned on the show. Never. She just bakes. She doesn’t use special equipment, there aren’t any “special moments” where she has a tender music fueled close-up where she talks about “overcoming”. She just does her stuff! And it’s great stuff!
When I was on Jeopardy! I didn’t really want to talk about my transplant. But….I did. Because that was the most “interesting” thing about me, apparently (eye roll). And they did make accommodation for me—but I didn’t ask for it—they did it in the interest of fairness, because they wanted to be scrupulously fair. So there weren’t any video categories for my game, or any music clues (even thought I might have done OK with that!).
The reason I like this so much is because I HATE a lot of reality TV—especially the talent/singing shows, where the singer comes up and does her bit and then spiels all about her issues.
Look. THIS DRIVES ME NUTS. I have always wanted to be judged solely on my abilities. I would never enter a contest and then pay the pity card. EVER. I didn’t do it for Jeopardy!, I don’t do it when I audition for shows, I don’t do it, period. Because I don’t want to get pity. I want to get respect for what I can do. So when I see people talking about how “Oh, this person with X was crowned Homecoming Queen!” or “this person with Y is on X Factor!” I want to scream. Because it makes it sound like that person only did these things because of pity. Not because of their excellence, their human qualities, their goodness, etc., but they become like side shows. “Oh, look, this person can be like anyone else!” these shows croon. Whereas Briony (and I hope, me) just go out and do it. We don’t have to draw attention to it. It just is. Not everything has to be a Special Inspirational Story of the Day!
Briony is my sort of person. She has an issue, yeah. But I mean, it’s not her whole identity. I’ll tell you I’m hearing impaired. Blog readers know it. But if you met me in actual life, you might not know. The people on Jeopardy! didn’t know until I told them. That’s how I like it. If I need accommodation, I’ll tell you. But I want to be judged on my merits, not on the pity you feel for me. I do not want pity votes.
Briony got on the show because she’s a kick butt baker. And that’s what matters!
