Friday, February 19, 2021



Well, the stove is still sitting in the hallway, taped and packaged and sealed. By the time Mr. Moon called the gas guy to tell him that we were ready, it was too late to schedule us for today. I do not know if he works on Saturdays so it may still be a few more days at least. 

Sigh.

It's okay. It's all fine. It's better than fine. We finally got that damn range hood figured out and installed. That took eons. And the sucker is heavy. Mr. Moon had to cut a little piece of metal to go in it, carve out some of the cabinet it butted up against, tape down wires, and a lot of other stuff. We finally figured out how to fit it in but then it had to be held there so that he could attach it with screws. I suggested calling our neighbor to see if he'd lend us his arms but my husband figured out a way to prop the back of it up with a board and I could hold up the front so that he could get the screws in. 
Success! Finally! And then he hooked up all the electric stuff- the lights and the fan, and we are good to go. The only hitch now is that there is a little dent in the front where one of us (not me, thank god) must have banged it but it is easily covered up with a Frida magnet which I probably would have put up there anyway. 
Unlike my old range hood, this one's fan actually has sucking power. There are three speeds, all of which could probably pull my hair out of its barrette. One can use either one light or two and with both of them, I could perform surgery underneath if I knew how to perform surgery.
Which I do not. 
Anyway, the kitchen is back in order, the old stove is in its nook so that I don't have to cook supper tonight in the middle of the kitchen like I did last night and I am grateful for it all. I'm even grateful for the experience of helping my husband install that range hood. It was frustrating and difficult but we did it together and I tried to be a good helper. We never lost patience with each other, we laughed a lot. 
And we did it. And of course, mostly he did it and once again I am amazed at his knowledge and skills when it comes to things like carpentry and electrical stuff. 
He's a gem. 

Steve Reed asked me to post a picture of the little religious icon I found under the stove when we pulled it out and here it is.


I don't even have the words to express how sad I find it that Catholics refer to their goddess as she who was "conceived without sin." As if love-making is sin. 
Ah well. I'm not here to discuss religion tonight but here's a post where I wrote about the subject eleven years ago. 

It's martinis and clean sheets night, y'all. At least here in Lloyd. 

Happy Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

41 comments:

  1. Lovely bonding experience- one of those Moments when you are old you will look back on as one of the best. Let me know...
    Religion is stupid but I love catholic swag. I have a bunch. I like the statues and spookiness of the churches. Clean sheets here too, but no martinis, Stella just left and we ate cake!

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    1. I REALLY used to love Catholic swag. I've sort of come to my senses but man, they have some good stuff.

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  3. I, too, adore the mermaid image! The Mary Medal, too. Happy Friday Ms. Moon.

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  4. That's known as the Miraculous Medal. The wording refers to Mary's having been conceived and born without the original sin supposedly on every human since Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. Nothing to do with sex, though people often make that confusion. Also known as the Immaculate Conception, again, about original sin, meaning the sin of Adam and Eve in disobeying God's wishes, ending up in booted out of Eden. All about eating apples, but I don't quite know why that was bad, either.

    I deleted earlier and rewrote because I'd misnamed the medal, oops. Some people look on it as a devotional object.
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    1. I always thought that the Immaculate Conception meant that Mary had gotten pregnant without having sex. Huh! Thank you, Boud! I don't buy the whole "original sin" thing. Religions are always claiming sins that only they can redeem us from. It's a scam. Just my opinion.

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  5. It's wonderful you can cover the dent with a magnet that probably will be there as long as the little icon was under the stove. And so it goes...
    That hood is a beauty. It looks far more complicated than mine (two lights only), and I still don't know how to defrost or pop popcorn.

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    1. Do you have a combo microwave/exhaust? This is just an exhaust fan range hood. And lights. It's so very nice and shiny now. I need to keep it that way for August's sake if nothing else.

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  6. I love that you have Friday date nights. We do too and simple as it us we look forward to it all week. We do red wine or margs instead of martinis. Lovely mermaids card.

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    1. It's a sweet routine, isn't it? And since the pandemic we sometimes share that time with Lon and Lis on the phone which is also sweet.

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  7. Mr M is magic. We lived for seven years with a toilet that didn't flush. Seven years.

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    1. Good heavens Jo - How did you get the seat down?

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    2. Jo- I'm sorry. That's a pain.
      Very funny, Mr. P.

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  8. It's never too late to learn to be a surgeon. Under the bright lights of your new cooker hood, you could begin practising with roadkill before moving on to human beings. Your nursing background will be of great assistance in understanding how the constituent parts work together. Before you know it neighbours will be calling round for hip operations or even brain surgery. You could make a whole pile of money.

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    1. Yes, I was thinking that cat surgery might be the ticket. I could make quite a bit just doing neutering and spaying, I think. But I'd hate to get nastiness on my new stove. So, probably not.

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  9. I remember having to install a hood fan in our apartment with the big guy. It was damned hard. This time we got the contractor to do it when we did our ktichen reno.

    I love the mermaids and hope you two had a lovely evening.

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    1. Well, as I've so often said- my husband hates to pay someone to do something that he can do. He is getting a little better about that but not when it comes to "small" things like hood installations.
      We had a nice evening. Thank you.

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  10. Marc can be a handy guy when needs must but he doesn't like to. he did all the plumbing fixes at the old city house and we rebuilt the shop there one wall at a time propping up the roof as we went. and he built the barn out here and we put up the wainscoting in the house out here but now we have Rocky and Marc is just as happy, happier, to pay Rocky to do what needs to be done.

    I have a hood of sorts over my stove but no fan or exhaust, just a 6" square vertical tunnel that goes up to the attic in the middle.

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    1. Well, Mr. Moon still wants to do it all himself. That's just who he is. I envy you your Rocky, though.
      I believe this stove requires an exhaust fan. Not sure why.

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  11. Thanks for posting the icon! I've never understood the "without sin" thing either. The range hood looks great. It's the sign of a good marriage when you can both collaborate on a project like that and not get annoyed with each other. :)

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    1. I suppose, as Boud pointed out, that "without sin" means that she was born without the usual original sin which all of us are supposedly born with. Which, you know- is why we need the church.
      And the older we get, the better we seem to be able to get along on projects. We are more patient, I guess.

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  12. I am not a Catholic. Mary is not a goddess in Catholic teaching.
    Mary was conceived in the same way we all are.
    Catholics teach that she was not born with original sin, so the Immaculate conception is not to be confused with the virgin birth of Jesus.

    I respect that you hold none of these ideas to be true, but surely it is important to understand the foundations of Western Civilization?
    The goddess did not give us the Ten Commandments, the Jews did.
    There are many great women in the Old Testament.
    There were many great women who shaped Catholic and Protestant theology.

    Listen to Salve Regina (simple tone) 450 voices.
    Canto Catolico. YouTube.

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    1. I am quite aware that Mary is not considered a goddess in the Catholic church. Or any church, probably. I am also aware that supposedly Mary had the regulation biological father and mother. Don't worry. I wouldn't confuse her birth with the virgin birth of her son.
      I'm not quite as ignorant as you appear to think me. Why would you presume that I didn't know where the Ten Commandments came from?
      Which women shaped the Catholic and Protestant theology? If there were "many" I would think that the religions would be far more female-centric than they are.
      Here's a suggestion for you: Listen to the podcast "Breaking Down Patriarchy" for researched and scholarly views on women in religion.

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    2. You did write that *Catholics refer to their goddess as she who was conceived without sin* : I sought to inform your readers that there is a distinction between mariology and mariolatry: the Catholic Church has always condemned the latter.
      I am not, I repeat, a Catholic. My favourite American preachers are John MacArthur, John Piper and James White. We hold that in the words of Scripture, Mary was blessed among women.

      I make no presumptions about you, Ms Moon.
      My intention was to say that we do not owe any of our moral ideas to ancient goddess worship: it was a lucrative business, which is why its followers tried to drown out St. Paul as he preached, when they chanted the name of Diana for hours at a time.
      In the ancient world free men who worshipped Aphrodite could have sex with any slave they wanted, female or male, adult or child: Judaism condemned all this as did the first Jewish disciples of Jesus. How more anti-patriarchal can you get? We owe them.

      Every Catholic, Protestant and Greek Orthodox church I have attended is thronged with women.
      On his missionary work Paul travelled with women. It is true that Paul would not suffer a woman to preach, but that is because he believed women had a higher role, nurturing children in the faith.

      I support women who give instruction in the faith - two on YouTube, Alisa Childers and Julie Canlis. Listen to Julie on preparation for Lent. Alisa is good on the dangers of so-called Progressive Christianity.
      I supported the ordination of women in the Anglican Church.
      Two of the best spiritual books I have read were written by the Anglican writer Rose Macaulay, Letters to a Friend and Last Letters to a Friend, her correspondence with her American cousin, an Anglican priest. She was acerbic, hard headed, without sentimentality, and she would have used her razor wit on the fantasies of the New Age. I am reading her biography by Constance Babington Smith, having read her novel, The Towers of Trebizond.

      Jesus appeared to women at his resurrection and stayed at the home of Martha and Mary. He referred to himself as a hen that gathers her chicks. Throughout Christian history even the patriarchal popes consulted with women like Saint Catherine of Siena. Pope John Paul II canonised a number of women.

      Three Catholic novelists I can think of rejected the patriarchy conspiracy theory: Muriel Spark, Beryl Bainbridge and Alice Thomas Ellis whose columns for The Catholic Herald were collected in a book, *God Hasn't Changed*. Cardinal Basil Hume had Alice fired from her job because he did not like her traditional Catholic views.

      I shall listen to the Podcast, Breaking Down Patriarchy, because I know and respect Christian feminist theology.
      My disagreement is when any new theology becomes unbiblical and agnostic - the writings of Phyllis Tickle is one example, though I liked her anthology of prayers, The Night Offices.

      Finally can I refer you to the Countess of Huntingdon, a member of the English aristocracy who was converted after hearing John Wesley preach? She became Calvinist after hearing George Whitefield. The Countess gave up card playing, gambling and wine after Whitefield, who then preached in America.
      Your greatest theologian Jonathan Edwards was an important figure in my own conversion at the age of 57.
      Thanks for allowing my long comment.

      Haggerty

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    3. Thank you, Haggerty for your long and well-thought-out comment. I cannot agree with you on the status of women in the church. SOME women may have been treated well, most were treated as chattel. I had never heard the terms "mariology" and "mariolatry" but I do grasp the difference. It makes absolutely no matter to me whether Catholics study and revere Mary or whether they worship her. Despite the church's condemning of the latter, I think that many Catholics do worship Mary, perhaps more in other countries than in America. Have you heard the old joke? "Italians do not believe in God but they worship His mother?"
      I long ago gave up on "belief" of any formal sort. I read the Bible cover-to-cover when I was probably fourteen. Of course I didn't understand it all and of course I've forgotten more but I do know that when I was finished, I had lost whatever desire for a religion that I may have once had. I do recognize that many, many people find great comfort in faith and belief. I sometimes wish I was one of them but the fact is that I am not. I always say that I just don't have the gene and I think there may be something to this.
      I respect the old tales, I respect the wisdom, I abhor many of the teachings. I agree that women are now more able to hold roles that only men could hold (outside of the Catholic church, of course) than they could before but the very idea that they have not always been able to do so speaks volumes as to how the church has regarded women throughout the ages. And when you say that Paul would not "suffer" women to preach because of their "higher" role of raising their children in the faith, I can't help but think of all of the religions which forbade women to speak in church in roles of leadership for whatever reason, all of them ridiculous. The Church of Latter Day Saints still does not allow women to hold their priesthood because of Paul's exact same reason which has held back generations of women. And if you think that the Mormons are not as "genuine" a religion as some of the older ones, I would have to agree that this is true, but that does not make the older ones less absurd. We are used to their laws and rules and even if we disagree with them, we tend to shrug and say, "Well, that's how it's always been."
      And to call goddess worship a "lucrative business" is completely ridiculous. What on earth is more lucrative than the religion biz? From the Vatican to the megachurches, the money flows one way and it flows like a rushing river. Promises of salvation and eternal life are traditionally, historically, and thoroughly proven to be the best sales deal in the world.
      I had never heard of the Countess of Huntingdon and quite frankly, I am not sure why I should be impressed that she gave up cards, gambling, and wine because she heard a good preacher.
      But. Again. I thank you for your comment and also, for giving your name. Or, a name. Just because I can't agree with you doesn't mean I don't respect you.

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    4. I laughed at your joke, *Italians don't believe in God, but they respect his mother.*
      The Marian veneration looks like worship to many Protestants.
      Yet I am puzzled by the absence of Marian hymns at Protestant Christmas services: I wish we sang Salve Regina (YouTube) Canto Catolica.

      The Marian Apparitions are condemned by reformed preachers.
      Again they puzzle me.
      Children at La Salette were told by the Apparition that Rome would lose the faith. The Cure d'Ars (later Saint John Vianney) called them little liars, and later changed his mind.
      How could children have invented such an idea in the 19th Century? And again at Fatima the Apparition told Lucia that the final battle between Christ and Satan would be over marriage and the family. Again, how could a young uneducated girl have imagined how family life and morality would change?
      Christ in the Gospels always preaches repentance, even to his own Apostles, and so does the Apparition at La Sallete, Lourdes and Fatima. The Apparition speaks of Judgment as Christ does.

      The goddess industry was lucrative in the time of Saul of Tarsus, but religion today is big business, I agree. Gene Kelly visited Mexico before the Second World War, and as a Catholic he was appalled by the wealth of the clergy and poverty of the people.

      We need not be impressed by the way Selina Hastings (Countess Huntingdon) gave up gambling and wine. She saw that these things would distract her from the pearl of great price, which is how Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven.
      There is a Catholic prayer to Michael the Archangel, asking Michael to prevent *the ruin of souls* : I suspect this was on Selina's mind, the aristocracy being decadent and pleasure loving as John Wesley pointed out.

      The prosperity gospel is now widespread in Africa. Here in Scotland I heard a Nigerian preacher tell his African flock to stuff envelopes with money, if they wanted their prayers answered.
      Dreadful stuff.
      John Piper has condemned prosperity preaching, because only the preachers and church elders get rich.
      Again this reminds us of Christ's warning of ravening wolves entering his church.
      I wish you and your family a happy Easter.
      John Haggerty


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    5. Again, thank you. And now I can call you John. Here's the problem with me and religion- the main, basic, bottom-line situation: Since I neither believe in, or desire eternal life, there is not much of a carrot for me to believe in salvation. I do not think that humans need saving. We are as we are. Arguing about or even discussing the finer points of different religions holds no interest for me as I do not believe in the basic tenets. I see no need for a god to have sent a son to redeem the world. Actually, I see no reason that a god could not have had a billion or more sons. There may have been a historical Jesus but it doesn't really matter to me as it appears that this myth about his resurrection has overtaken what his messages were. Repentance can be healthy and good but spending one's life in it seems a horrible waste of time. If there is a god-creator, why do people spend so much time worshipping he/she rather than appreciating and cherishing what has been created rather than destroying it?
      As to the children who have seen apparitions- well. I'm sorry but I do not believe that either. And to say that the final battle between God and Satan will be over the family and marriage is, well- another myth. Marriage's definition has changed throughout the centuries. So has that of family. People tend to love their children and do the best they can by them in their own ways. Sadly, we humans often fail at that but it is not the fault of a faulty institution or changes in the idea of who constitutes a family and who does not.

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    6. I understand your world view. *We are as we are.*

      I can only reply by quoting your own words.
      *You find one roach and kill it, you ain't done shit. There are thousands more, hiding where you can't see.*
      IT'S NEVER OVER. June 23 2012.

      You are a very good writer.
      John

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  13. I wonder if you will have to change other things in your kitchen. You know how one change can have a domino effect...
    Good luck with the stove installation!

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    1. Oh god. I DO know how that goes. Change your end table and next thing you know you're adding an addition to the house.

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  14. I sure wish our hood vented out, it's one of those recirculates that just blows the air back in again. I've studied the situation and i can say venting out would be a real challenge. Anything can be done...
    30 this morning for our low, hottest low we have had for a week. Mid to high 40s later this afternoon. No broken pipes. I think the worst is over. I'm making my famous, (among my close friends and family) Texas Jailhouse Chili, today. Red beans boiling as I type. Have an awesome day everyone. We live about 35 miles north of Dallas city center.

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    1. Yes. That's what my friend Lon says- "Mary Moon, you can DO anything." With enough money and time and so forth.
      I'm so sorry you've had such horrible weather. Glad you didn't have any broken pipes.
      I'd love to try that chili.

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  15. All I could think of when I heard about the "delay of stove" was Carly Simon singing "Anticipation." Though not all the lyrics quite work--more likely you putting your arms around it than the other way around...at least I hope so. :)

    Hope you enjoyed your martini night.

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    1. Haha! It's given me some time to read the instruction manual. Cover to cover, of course!

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  16. If they had added a fourth speed to that vent/hood, you might have been able to give up sweeping the floors ever again. Something to think about. Enjoy those martinis and clean sheets!

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    1. And that would be a dream come true! Martinis and sheets were both amazing.

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  17. I’ll echo those explaining that “conceived without sin” meant Mary - by no means a goddess- was conceived and born without the stain of Original Sin as she was destined to be the mother of God. The Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with sex, nor does it refer to the Virgin Birth.
    Can’t wait to see the marvelous new stove and all that it produces.

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  18. I have certainly been educated as to Mary's status as a goddess today. Trust me- I am aware that she is not, within the Catholic church, considered a goddess. More's the pity.
    I always thought that part of the deal when Old Testament God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden and put the curse of original sin on them and all of their descendants, part of that had to do with how babies get here. I surely could be wrong about that.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.